About J.P. Cullen & Sons
As you walk through the halls of J.P. Cullen & Sons, Inc., a feeling of pride, mixed with nostalgia, comes over you. The walls portray an array of awards, newspaper clippings, and dedicated staff members dating back to the day when an Irish immigrant from Dublin named John Cullen, along with his wife, Mary, and son George P., set foot on U.S. shores in 1856.
John took his family and moved to Haverstraw, New York to secure a job at one of 50 or so brickyards. The Haverstraw craftsmen are credited with many brick-making inventions and techniques, including being the first to add coal dust to the clay to make a stronger brick.
After John’s sudden death, Mary moved the family west to Janesville, Wisconsin where Mary and her son George P. capitalized on the city’s economic growth and began a long and successful business of building homes in the area.
George P. married Anna Lee and began a family, bringing seven children into the world. In 1881, their son John Patrick (J. P.) began his carpentry apprenticeship at 14 years of age, and his business as a contractor in 1892. Eventually J. P.’s houses sprang up everywhere in Janesville and a new generation of Cullen’s began to succeed.
In 1900, J. P. bid on, and won, the contract for a two-story brick school in Palmyra, his first such civil job. After the successfull completion of the school, J. P. then worked with brothers Dennis and Michael Hayes, who installed the first elevators in Janesville. J. P. was eager to be their superintendent for a subway construction project in New York, however the deal fell through, and J. P. came back to Janesville and began new projects to keep the company going.
Focused in the Midwest, J. P. started taking on larger assignments, building post offices, libraries, and other major ppublic structures. He took a personal interest in every job being built by the firm. The story of how he pedaled a bicycle 50 miles from Janesville to Mount Horeb to inspect a building showed the integrity the company had early on.
By 1906 J. P. named the company the J. P. Cullen Company. With the company on a roll, the firm edged into ever larger projects, such as the federal building and post office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Within five years, his son Mark A. joined the firm after briefly attending Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana and serving in the Army stateside during World War I.
At that time, one of the major industrial jobs the company handled was the construction of the General Motors plant in Janesville, known originally as the Samson Tractor Company. Cullen’s growth continued through the depression with the construction of a 13-story federal building in Omaha, Nebraska.
During World War II, Cullen built projects at Camp Grant, Illinois, the Badger Ordinance Works in Baraboo, and Camp McCoy in Central Wisconsin. When J. P. died in 1944, Mark A. took over the business and when he passed in 1970, Cullen Construction had grown to an annual sales volume of more than $15 million.
J. P. Cullen II, Mark A.’s son, led the family firm from 1952 until 1981, at which time his sons -- Mark, David, and Richard -- became the owners of J. P. Cullen & Sons, Inc.
Today, Mark serves as Chair, David as President & CEO, and Richard as Vice President of Field Operations.