History4

If you're like me then I'm sure you probably wonder who started the NAPCO legacy? After learning how to trace my own family roots, curiosity kicked in. I would do almost anything to know more historical facts about the founder of the NAPCO. If you already read our earlier history pages then you learned NAPCO stands for Northwestern Auto Parts Company. However, have you ever wondered who coined the 'NAPCO' acronym? Who started it all for us back in 1918? Well, I'm happy to say a few of these questions have been answered now due to a major breakthrough in our top notch high tech NAPCO Owners Group historical research department (just me Ha, Ha!!) However, before I begin I must say thank those of you who have helped me piece this together! So, Thank you.

Special Thanks

Sources for the following information include:

Mr. Bell, Admirer of and frequent visitor to our NAPCO4X4.ORG website, without his help it would have been impossible to piece this together segment of history together. He is also an honorary member of the NAPCO Owners Group.
Mead & Hunt, “North Minneapolis Historic Resources Inventory: Bryn Mawr and Near
North Neighborhoods (South Area),” Reconnaissance Survey Files, Planning Division, Community Planning and Economic Development Department, Minneapolis, MN.

Shira Joy Rappaport, directed The Life and Legacy of Edward Rappaport, St. Paul: IFP Minnesota Center for Media Arts

Minneapolis City Directory"Junk’ Hits Million Dollar Bracket,” Minneapolis Star, May 16, 1948

Minnesota Historical Society They've been collecting, preserving, and telling Minnesota stories for 150 years. Go Here

Minneapolis Star 1916-1917, 1919, 1923, 1924; “Edward Rappaport, 74”,10
IFP Minnesota Center for Media Arts September 1955, 3; “Current Fiscally Sponsored Projects.

NAPCO International LLC Northwestern Auto Parts Company is alive today! History Page

Access NewspaperARCHIVE access.newspaperarchive.com

The founder of Northwestern Auto Parts Company was a fascinating immigrant and a hard fought successful Romanian Jew that settled in Minnesota in the early 1900s that started a backyard automobile salvage operation that grew into one of the largest international auto parts distributor in the world known to us as our beloved NAPCO.

Edward Rappaport the founder of NAPCO - was born in 1881 in Romania. His father died when Edward was only three years old. His mother, Eva Rappaport, remarried a man named Moritz Schwartz, who would only accept one of her children from her previous marriage. Edward’s baby sister, Jenny, remained with their mother while Edward became an orphan. At roughly age eighteen, Edward immigrated to the United States. The ship’s passage to North America took an unusually long time, and food supplies ran out. Even when aided by a passing ship, provisions remained scarce enough to evoke abhorrent behavior. Edward Rappaport observed a man steal a food ration from a woman and her child. Rappaport chased and confronted the man. A scuffle ensued and Edward lost. Rather than simply leaving with the food, the thief took the time to carve a crucifix into Edward's chest with a blade. Edward was let off the ship in Canada to receive treatment for his wounds at a Catholic hospital.

Edward Rappaport

Founder of NAPCO

(1881-1955)

From Canada, Edward made his way to New York, where he was reunited with his mother and where he met his seven new siblings. Edward was taken in by an aunt but did not get along well with her. Hearing there were a lot of Romanian Jews in Detroit, Edward headed west, allegedly on foot. Detroit met his expectations. When inquiring about a room and work with Romanian Jew there, the man asked about the ship Rappaport emigrated upon, and, subsequently, about the young man who was carved with a knife. Edward indicated that he was that man, and found the stranger insisted upon sharing his home with the newcomer. While residing there, Edward became smitten with the man’s daughter. Although she was engaged to be married at the time, Gusty Schwartz fell in love with Edward. Ignoring Victorian morels, the couple eloped in Windsor, Ontario.

Rappaport Siblings

(1935)

Following their marriage, Edward found work in Cleveland, and it was there that their first child, James, was born in 1906. Edward had learned tinsmithing in Romania. The 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco provided an opportunity for home building and repair work. This young family packed up and headed west via train, only to stop in Salt Lake City when Gusty experienced labor pains. Their second son, Max, was born there in 1908.

By then, Gusty’s family lived in Minneapolis, and it was there that the Rappaports settled and had three more children: Claire, Mary, and Fred. In an age when Jews experienced substantial discrimination, success for a young Jewish man generally meant working for another Jew or self-employment. Edward initially found work through others, allegedly working upon the copper of the Basilica of St. Mary.

Gusty & Ed after eloping to Canada (1902)

Edward then parlayed his experience into a business working as a junk peddler, buying and selling his wares via horse and wagon beginning in 1918. The advent of the automobile led this metal smith to purchase autos damaged in wrecks, break them into parts in his backyard at 620 Girard Avenue North (does not exist today) and resell the parts. By 1923, the Minneapolis City Directory listed Rappaport as running an auto supply business at 310 Plymouth Avenue and by 1924 the directory listed his business by name: Northwestern Auto Parts Company with a motto, “For that hard to get part,” the Northwestern Auto Parts Company served the retail market for the burgeoning automobile industry in Minneapolis.

Junk pedding via

horse and wagon

At that point in 1929 Northwestern Auto Parts Company had begun to thrive, Rappaport’s business was successful enough to enable the family to move into a new home, where they remained for nearly twenty-five years. By the time after World War II, the company had begun manufacturing its own parts and rebuilding vehicles like the M8 Tank, employing seventy-five people.

Family and work went hand in hand for Edward Rappaport. A major motivation for Edward’s self-run enterprise was ensuring that his children never had to knock on a door asking for work. As time progressed, Edward Rappaport brought his three sons into the business to manage various aspects of the growing operation. His wife, Gusty, served as the bookkeeper for the firm.

In 1926 Rappaport constructed what was to be the first of many building’s in Northwestern’s complex at 7th Street and Lyndale Avenue North.9 The company grew at a remarkable rate. From its construction in 1926 until 1963 the company’s headquarters expanded seventeen times.

In 1933 the company’s stock was listed on the Midwest Exchange. In 1958 it began to be listed on the American Stock Exchange. By 1948 Northwestern had twenty seven thousand square feet of office and shop space along with over one hundred fifty thousand square feet of yard space at its headquarters at 834 7th Street North. In 1955 NAPCO added to it’s mushrooming complex by purchasing an adjacent one hundred eleven thousand square foot manufacturing facility at 5th Street and 10th Avenue North.

1936 - Corner of 7th & Lyndale Ave

1938 - Taking inventory of parted out trucks at 7th St

4x4 trucks waiting for installation of snowplows 1943

The success of this family business is especially significant in the context of Minneapolis’ immigrant and economic history. Throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century, Jews, especially recent immigrants, found employment in Minneapolis difficult. Anti-Semitism prevented entry into numerous occupations, driving many workers like Rappaport to form businesses of their own and to employ their children. Yet by the 1930s Minneapolis’ 20,000 Jews had, like the Rappaports, pulled themselves up from poverty to middle-class respectability, typically through self-employment. Like the Rappaports, most Jews settled in North Minneapolis, where housing discrimination concentrated the city’s Jewish population. Family ties and social necessity kept Jewish families tight knit. In the Rappaport’s case, their adult children lived at home until their marriage. The family remained there until 1948. By then all of their sons had married and moved into places of their own. Edward and his wife Gusty followed suit, moving to 1300 Washburn Ave North then to St. Louis Park.

The grandson of Edward Rappaport said his father, Max, along with uncles, James, and Fred are the ones who coined the 'NAPCO' acronym and were the driving force (pun intended) in launching the company globally in the late 40’s. Together with their father’s blessing, they transformed the company from a local salvage reseller to a global military contractor, parts and machinery manufacturer, and, as you now know, producer of the "PowrPak" Four-Wheel Drive system. After merging with Federal Trucks Company of Detroit Northwestern Auto Parts Company changed their name to Napco Industries, Inc. accourding to this newspaper clip dated March 2, 1955.

On September 10, 1955, Edward Rappaport passed away at the age of seventy four. A very short obituary in the Minneapolis Star reflected upon the man’s family, business, and Jewish heritage: three highly intertwined, defining characteristics of this man. The Rappaport home reflects the history of Jewish immigrants and entrepreneurs in Minneapolis in the first half of the twentieth century.

Edward's daughters, a grandson & a neighbor

Rappaport house today in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Edward's son Max with his wife Beatrice (1935)

There is more to be added so keep checking back. Until then, long live NAPCO!!

"NAPCO's FOREVER!"

Gusty and Edward Rappaport on the steps of their home

NAPCO supplied parts for M8 Tanks the U.S. Army which are still going strong today