The Story Behind This Famous Wood Flooring Photo

Oct 25, 2023

It is perhaps the most famous photo in the wood flooring industry, showing a crew of floor scrapers posted for the photographer. A dive into the WFB archives reveals its origins in a letter dated September 1, 1989, from a wood floor pro named Neil Schneiderman of Howell, N.J.-based Schneiderman Enterprises. He wrote:

"It was taken in 1921 and just happened to be taken the day my father, Louis Schneiderman (far right in the picture) started at his first floor scraping job. Can you imagine doing floors that way? I wonder what they'll say seventy years from now looking back at how we do them today."

By 1930, Louis Schneiderman started his own company, Louis Floor Services, which operated in Cleveland for 50 years. Neil Schneiderman told the magazine that he started working for his father "pushing a broom when I was 8 years old."

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