Glass Magazine Celebrates Seventy-Five Years

Above: Four decades of an evolving Glass Magazine.

As part of the 1973 Glass Magazine article, “ASG’s Outlook Optimistic,” author Arthur M. Acker, vice president of sales and marketing for ASG Industries, offers a brief history of glass, in seven paragraphs no less. Acker reflects on the broad history of the material, going all the way back to the Egyptian glazes of 12,000 B.C. and hops over to the stained-glass windows of medieval Europe. At the end of this condensed history, he wonders about the future. “Tomorrow, entire cities may be enclosed in glass domes that can regulate the weather!”

While it’s likely this observation is slightly tongue in cheek, the author’s forward-looking optimism about glass as a building material stayed with me after looking through several decades of Glass Magazine’s archive. Like the author, Glass Magazine has looked backwards, and forwards, to gather insights to support its glass industry readers.

First published in 1950, and debuting as the Glass Dealer, the magazine was a slim pamphlet offering news of the industry and notices of new products. As times changed, markets expanded and challenges intensified, the magazine adapted, offering insights for and from the industry, becoming a sophisticated publication that showcased everything from market analysis and technical expertise to expansive features that spoke to the full breadth of the glass industry itself.

Glass Magazine has also faced challenges, of course, namely the 2008 recession. Averaging 124 pages per issue in the mid-2000s, the magazine saw its length and circulation greatly reduced by the financial crisis, as many publications did at the time.

But the magazine, like the industry, has survived and evolved, adapting to showcase industry expertise online, across social media and in our weekly newsletters. And print has remained strong—last year’s GlassBuild preview issue was the largest that Glass Magazine’s production editor has ever produced, numbering 187 pages.

Here, in six editions of the magazine, is a snapshot of Glass Magazine through the years, demonstrating what has made it a powerful, vital voice for the industry, then and now. 

The energy crisis spurs innovation | January 1974

Architectural glazing raised its profile throughout the 1960s as the building material found more applications, including in external curtain walls. As a testament to its popularity, by 1970, there were more than 30 float plants in operation around the world. And then came the 1973 oil embargo. 

The embargo, imposed by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OAPEC, led to high prices throughout the decade as well as fuel shortages. It also caused those in the architect and design community to question the viability of glass as a building material. 

Throughout the energy crisis, Glass Magazine was there, making the case for glass. Many pages early in the decade, and into the 1980s, were dedicated to how glass could continue to be a viable, and vital, building material. 

In a short column, “On Construction and the Energy Crisis,” Gene Queathem, director of the National Glass Dealers Alliance (the precursor to the National Glass Association), struck a cautious tone, while remaining candid. “We are in for a substantial slowdown from the way things have been in 1973, and a generally hostile environment for construction,” he says, listing several ongoing challenges at the time, including a reduction in building incentives, institutional building projects and more.
He encouraged the readership to think long-term, and to understand that every shift creates opportunities in construction. “On balance …. I think the net impact of the energy crisis on construction will be a positive one. That’s just another way of saying that, as in most other areas, construction is a solution to our national problems to a far greater degree than it is a part of those problems.” 

In a creatively titled piece published in the April issue of that year, “‘Nation of Moles’ Not an Answer to the Energy Crisis,” the NGDA’s General Counsel Steven John Fellman recounts the opinion of industry executive  Donald C. Hegnes, manager of architectural and construction services for PPG Industries’ Glass Division, on how to weather the energy crisis. Instead of reducing window area on buildings, as was suggested by some in the architectural community, Hegnes recommends using more high-performance materials, including double glazing. 

This did seem to come to pass—in June of that year, the magazine recounts Hegnes’ remarks from their annual meeting, where he celebrated the fact that “sales of insulating glass have grown until it now dominates the commercial construction market.” Perhaps buoyed by the success in adopting this glazing material, Hegnes goes on to wonder, “Why not triple-glazed units, or quadruple?”—a question that echoes current debates about providing energy-efficient glazing systems.

Throughout the 1970s, magazine content helped change the conversation on architectural glass, framing glass as a building solution, as Queatham said, and not a problem. 

Glass gets complex | December 1985

Moving into the 1980s, plenty was happening in glass, according to Glass Magazine’s editorial pages. Companies were learning how to computerize some processes, including estimating. And demand for glass was up, just as glass itself was becoming more complex.

Much of that complexity was still due to the energy crisis of the 1970s, which incentivized the use of glass in insulating glass units and in solar panels. Natural disasters like Hurricane Alicia in 1983 would also cause those in the industry to seriously consider how to strengthen glass systems so they could better withstand windborne debris.

In the last issue of 1985, R. C. Cunningham, executive vice president of AFG Industries (later acquired by AGC Flat Glass America), takes stock of where glass is as a building technology, in a comprehensive market forecast, “New Technologies Bring Changes & Opportunities.”

Echoing the optimism of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Cunningham opens by saying, “The past quarter century has been the most dynamic in the history of man,” referencing major technological advances like the polio vaccine and NASA’s mission to the moon.
Greater technological advances had touched glass as well, he points out. “The retail glass shop, and a glazier’s life, was simpler 20 to 50 years ago, too. Almost any glass requirement could be cut from stock sizes, and the customer could select from any glass color he wanted as long as it was clear,” he playfully observes. 

That level of simplicity, Cunningham argues, was over in 1985, and it was “a whole new ball game in the glass business.” Some of that “new ball game” included a rise in the adoption of tempered glass. Driven by safety glazing laws, tempered glass increased in use by a dramatic 91% between 1975 and 1985, according to AFG’s calculations. A continued interest in energy efficiency was also spurring the adoption of low-emissivity coatings and an increased demand for insulating glass units.

Added to this was a demand for more thicknesses and colors, says Cunningham, which meant more inventory to manage on the part of the individual glass business. Beyond the organization of their shop, glass business owners were also having to become more fluent in the technological advances of their product. “The competent glass professional must be able to discuss intelligently technical properties of these new glasses, recommend shading coefficients, discuss relative heat gain and explain to a customer theories of the emissivity of heat transfer,” Cunningham says.

Essentially, not only was glass being asked to do more, but so were the people who sold it, cut it and installed it. And so was Glass Magazine, which was growing in size and breadth of features, and providing a place for critical analysis like Cunningham’s to help guide the industry forward.

The glass industry goes global | May 1991

Going into the last decade of the century, the glass industry market became even more nuanced as globalization connected North America to the worldwide glass industry. By 1988, Glass Magazine had started to feature an “International Marketplace” section, where international companies could find local distributors for products in the North American market. As part of this increasingly global perspective, the magazine also began to regularly cover international glass shows like glasstec and Vitrum.

In the August 1990 issue, then-NGA president Bob Dyer advised the North American glass industry to be proactive about getting involved in the international marketplace, as a business and as an industry. “We cannot ignore these new world markets, or hide behind our protective oceans anymore,” he says. “We must be involved in world economic affairs because they will carve the future destiny of our country. We must be involved, or the decisions will be made, and the directions set, without us.”

The first years of the 1990s also saw the Gulf War, including Operation Desert Shield, which concluded in 1991. In May of 1991, Glass Magazine ran a striking cover of a 14-year-old Kuwaiti boy clearing wreckage from his home after the occupation had ended.

The cover story, “Making the Kuwaiti Connection,” worked to facilitate U.S. construction companies’ involvement in the rebuilding efforts in Kuwait, which was estimated to amount to “billions of dollars’ worth of materials and labor” over several years, according to the article.

Glass Magazine’s feature is educational, walking the reader through what to expect in this new market, providing everything from a list of people and institutions to contact, to guidance on cultural differences from a subcontractor already active in Kuwait. “The personal approach counts in Kuwait, and so does previous experience,” recommends subcontractor Joe Patterson of Worldwide Glass products. 

According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which awarded many of the contracts, much of the recovery work went to U.S. firms and allowed Kuwait to reopen 145 schools and 1,000 public buildings in a short span of time. 

New connectivity offers new opportunities | January 2000

While globalization connected businesses across the world, as the glass industry approached the new millennium, a new type of connectivity was growing: the internet and e-commerce. 

In her Editor’s Notes of the January 2000 issue, then-editor Nicole Harris, who went on to become publisher and then NGA president and CEO, foregrounds the new online world. “The futurists tell us the obvious when they say more of us will be living in a dot-com world, researching and shopping for everything from books to mortgages,” she says, citing the statistic that 200 million people were on the internet worldwide at the time. 

Harris considers how the rise of online shopping is likely to affect business more broadly, observing that e-commerce “represents a shift of power to consumers who will have access to and use an ever-widening variety of information sources to make decisions about every purchase that they make. And everyone, it seems, is on a need-to-know-right-this-very-nanosecond basis. Speed and convenience, to say the least, are of the essence.”

Harris goes on to demonstrate how greater connectivity will also allow the NGA and Glass Magazine to respond more quickly to industry demands and needs; as a case in point, the association had just polled the industry directly, through its new GlassFacts.com website, about what kind of information the site should house. Harris says that poll respondents asked for “glass production statistics and trends, links and updates to codes, building and materials data, and a Q&A section.” 

The magazine appears to respond to that interest in “glass production statistics and trends” within the same issue, including a feature that spells out the results of their “Millennium Survey,” which polled the industry on the current state of the market. The comprehensive report includes industry-specific statistics based on survey responses from over 200 glass industry members on topics ranging from their feelings about the market, to the challenges they faced going into the new century. 

And the feelings were good, according to the feature. “What is the overall mood at the new millennium? Decidedly optimistic,” the author declares, as 67% of responding companies described the industry as in “good shape,” though labor was already a leading challenge for many businesses.

More than capturing turn-of-the-century market conditions, the survey, and the issue of the magazine more broadly, shows how Glass Magazine was using available tools to respond to industry needs.

Looking back at the Great Recession | August 2013

The hopes of the Millennium Survey were expressed in a gradual increase in nonresidential construction in the early part of the 2000s. And then came the Great Recession.

Even in January of 2008, the magazine was still predicting moderate growth for the year, as nonresidential construction continued to grow, culminating in a trend that had begun in 2004. But experts were already predicting a decline in the market, the scope of which became much clearer in 2009. 

As during other times of economic downturn, the editorial staff and industry contributors writing in the magazine encouraged companies to diversify their business, including expanding into light commercial work and mirror fabrication. They also highlighted new markets, such as the energy-efficient building incentivized by the Obama administration.

Even so, in a state of the industry poll published in the January 2010 issue of the magazine, 71% of respondents said they had seen a profit decrease. In 2011’s Top 50 Glazier report, published in July, 57% of companies said they saw sales drop more than 30% from the previous year. And in the April issue of 2012, Glass Magazine reported on the shocking closure of Trainor Glass, previously one of the country’s top 10 glazing firms by sales volume.

Glass Magazine reported on the dismal statistics and downward trends throughout this period, but perhaps as importantly, focused on how companies were surviving. In a 2013 feature, “The New Normal,” written by Katy Devlin, then-editor of Glass

Magazine, full-service glass company Santa Barbara Glass was profiled to understand how they had survived the economic turbulence and what could be learned from their experience. The company’s president, Dan Hope, explained how leadership worked hard to cut costs, done some pro bono work for general contractors and tried to give customers the best value for their money, even when that money was very scarce. 

Ultimately, Hope’s recommendation to the industry was to stay lean, in addition to being very proactive. “Not only will we survive this economic downturn, but we have learned some very valuable lessons that we would otherwise have not. It’s impressive to look back and see some of the waste we used to think was normal. We are now operating about as lean as possible, and as sales improve, this will only help our bottom line.”

The in-depth profile served as a kind of post-mortem of one of the most difficult periods for construction in recent history, diving deep into the crisis, but also sourcing wisdom directly from industry members about what could be learned from it.

Showcasing aspirational design | August 2024

The Great Recession was by no means the last time Glass Magazine responded to an industry-wide emergency. The publication put out “Now and Next” in May of 2020, a special edition of the magazine that provided industry-specific advice for helping glass businesses weather the pandemic while keeping their employees safe. 

But I’d like to close this look back at the publication by focusing on the Glass Magazine Awards, which have, personally, been one of my favorite issues of any year during my tenure. And it seems appropriate to end this history of the magazine with a feature that showcases the future of glazing, as the Awards issue always does.

For decades now, the awards have showcased the best in glass, glazing and fenestration, and have offered the opportunity to celebrate the achievements of a building material that is still often overlooked. 

Categories have shifted over the years—the increasing technical complexity of glazing spurred the editorial staff to add a “Best Specialty Glass” category in last year’s edition. This year’s feature includes the new category of “Best Retrospective Project” in honor of the magazine’s 75th anniversary, as well as a new category, “Best Internal Training Program,” highlighting NGA and Glass Magazine’s commitment to facilitating workforce development. 

As an editor, I can say that I’m impressed year after year by the nominations, and in the projects and products that showcase all that glass can do. The awards underline the forward-facing optimism the magazine has always embodied, looking to the horizon of what is possible in glass. “I feel that nothing speaks to the state of design more than the use of glass in architecture,” said Glass Magazine Awards Judge John R. Stephenson, AIA, senior architect, BRPH, about the 2022 Glass Magazine Award winners. “It provides a versatile and evocative material where the possibilities are just beginning.”