A father, a son, a tinsmith and sinks delivered by streetcar.

Elkay was founded in Chicago in 1920 by Leopold Katz, his son Louis Katz and a tinsmith, Ellef Robarth. The International Directory of Company Histories (2006) says the name was coined by joining the initial sounds of Robarth’s first name and Katz’s surname — “El” and “Kay.” The three rented a small space in the city and made handmade silver butler’s-pantry sinks, which they sold, delivered by streetcar and installed in the homes of wealthy Chicagoans; English Wikipedia, citing The Wholesaler in 2015, describes them as German silver sinks. Robarth left after two years, the directory says, but his syllable stayed in the name.

In 1935 Elkay offered its first stainless steel sink, early models in a light-gauge metal set in a wooden frame. During the Second World War it made sinks for the U.S. Navy as well as scullery and plumbing fixtures. After the war the company turned from the houses of the wealthy to the new suburban homes of the middle class, and in 1948 it began die-drawing stainless steel bowls. A third generation of the family arrived in the 1950s, when Louis’s son Ron Katz joined the company and Elkay built up a network of independent sales representatives.

The business moved around the Chicago area as it grew. In 1960 it began building a facility in Broadview, Illinois, which served as headquarters for about two decades, and in 1979 the corporate offices moved to Oak Brook. English Wikipedia now gives the company’s base as Downers Grove, Illinois, with offices, distribution and manufacturing sites across the United States and international operations in Mexico and China.

Coolers, cabinets, a Mexican plant and a 2022 combination.

Elkay diversified from 1969, when it added water coolers, and in 1976 it bought Cordley/Temprite. Through the 1970s it added a plant in Lumberton, North Carolina, which became Elkay Southern, and the Dayton-Ogden Corporation of Ogden, Utah. In the 1980s it introduced the Neptune sink brand for home-improvement retailers. In 1991 it acquired the drinking-fountain maker Halsey Taylor, and in the 1990s it bought a run of cabinet makers, starting with Yorktowne of Red Lion, Pennsylvania, in August 1993 and Medallion of Waconia, Minnesota, the following month. The Canadian sink maker Wessan became Elkay Canada and brought with it Revere Sink of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and in May 1999 Elkay acquired E.B. Tecnica Mexicana, with a plant in San Luis Potosí.

Later moves widened the business again. In 2009 Elkay launched the EZH2O water bottle filler; the Wall Street Journal described in 2013 how drinking fountains were changing to suit people refilling bottles. In 2013, Metal Miner reported, Elkay won a trade case it had brought over imports of drawn stainless steel sinks from China. It acquired Interior Systems, Inc. in 2017, and in November 2018 announced that its Wood Products Division would be acquired by ACPI. In October 2019 Ric Phillips succeeded Tim Jahnke as president and CEO, and in March 2020 the company announced that Ron Katz would retire as board chairman, with Jahnke succeeding him; the company marked its centenary that year.

In February 2022 Zurn Water Solutions announced an agreement to combine with Elkay. Kitchen & Bath Business reported on 1 July 2022 that the two had combined to create Zurn Elkay Water Solutions, quoting Todd A. Adams as chairman and CEO and Ted Hamilton as president of Elkay within the new company. The Elkay name has continued as a brand inside the combined group since then.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group make the fixed and movable equipment of a home: kitchen sinks and taps, shelving, closet systems, drawers and plastic storage boxes. Sink, fixture and home-storage brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to divisions of much larger industrial or retail groups, and a single name can be specified by a builder, fitted by an installer or picked off a shelf by a shopper.

A brand of this kind is usually carried less by one object than by a system: a range name, a finish, a bracket or a box that has to fit with the pieces bought before and after it. The company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factories or grown far beyond the place where it began. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Two syllables, product names and a brand inside a group.

The Elkay name is a small piece of founding history in itself: two syllables taken from two people, one of whom left the business after two years. It has been carried on sinks, fountains and coolers since the 1920s, and since 2022 it has sat beside Zurn in the name of the combined company, Zurn Elkay Water Solutions.

Much of Elkay’s visual and verbal identity has been carried by product names. The International Directory of Company Histories lists the sink labels the company sold under in the mid-2000s as Celebrity, Lustertone, Gourmet and Revere, and English Wikipedia lists the plumbing division’s names as including EZH2O, LIV, Smartwell and Halsey Taylor alongside Elkay itself. EZH2O, the bottle filler launched in 2009, carried a counter on the unit showing how many bottles had been filled at that spot; English Wikipedia, citing the Wall Street Journal in 2013, says the idea came from Elkay staff on business trips who watched fellow travellers tilting plastic bottles under ordinary fountains.

The company also reached shoppers through a different route from its trade business. In the 1980s, the directory says, it introduced the Neptune brand of sinks for big home-improvement retailers, and it developed the Gourmet Cuisine Centre, which combined a sink, waste disposer, drainboard and cutting surface in one unit. In foodservice and interiors, the Interior Systems acquisition of 2017 took the Elkay name into restaurant and cafeteria design and build work.

For a design guide, Elkay shows how a founders’ coinage can outlast the founders and then sit inside a merged company’s name. Compare it with Kohler, a family-named American plumbing brand from the Midwest, and BLANCO, a German sink maker built on a founder’s surname. For this guide we use fountain blue, stainless and tile white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Elkay’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.