Evergleams

A small group of ardent collectors has transformed our town of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, into a dazzling winter wonderland. These amazing people collect trees… hundreds and hundreds of trees from all over America. Then they spend countless hours restoring the trees, branch by branch, needle by needle. The trees are made of aluminum and were a huge fad in the 1950s and 1960s, the Space Age.

Manitowoc was the epicenter of aluminum tree manufacturing. The now defunct Aluminum Specialty Company churned out thousands of these sparkly trees called Evergleams from 1959 to 1971. Sizes ranged from baby trees, a foot tall, to towering 14 foot giants.

Customers could choose from a wide variety of styles and colors. Silver was the most popular color, but green, blue, gold and pink were also offered. Styles were known as Peacock, Frosty Fountain, Pompom, True Taper and Slim Line. All the trees could be made more dazzling by the use of a color wheel.

Our collectors are striving to bring all the survivors home. Then they are restoring, assembling, displaying and lighting them in as many downtown windows as possible. It’s a month of aluminum tree paradise.

Creating this spectacle is a gargantuan task. Each tree comes in a compact box with the individual branches in protective sleeves. In some styles, every branch is the same length. But some styles are tapered with varying branch lengths, a true nightmare if the branches have been jumbled up in the box.

In addition to a spectacular window display, our local library recently hosted a fundraiser for the Evergleam collectors. Their dream is to someday have an Evergleam Museum in our town. To that end, several trees were auctioned off and the largest sold for a whomping $900.

Here’s a video we’ve made of some of this year’s window displays. It’s truly an enchanted forest, and it’s all homegrown.

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