A Boot Collector Feature
Carl McDowell Boot Shop
A master bootmaker who started as a handyman at the legendary Teitzel-Jones plant in 1933, rose to run its bottoming room, and opened his own Wichita shop in 1946.
The Story
Carl McDowell got his start in 1933 as a handyman at Teitzel-Jones, the Wichita company that was then one of the country’s leading makers of cavalry officers’ boots and fine cowboy boots. He learned the trade there over the next thirteen years, and by the time he left in 1946 he was the foreman of the bottoming room, where soles and heels are built and attached. That year he opened his own shop in Wichita, the Carl McDowell Boot Shop.
He was a master bootmaker who loved what he did, and he kept at it for decades. Carl McDowell died in May 2005, at 93.
Identifying His Boots
McDowell marked his boots with an ink stamp inside the shaft reading “Carl McDowell Boot Shop,” with an address on East 21st Street in Wichita, Kansas, and a five-digit ZIP code. ZIP codes came into use in 1963, so a stamp like the one below dates from then or later; earlier pairs from his first years in business may be marked differently.
Labels & Markings
A marking from a pair in the TW Collection. Select a photo to see it full size.
A Teitzel-Jones-trained master, working on his own in Wichita for decades.
Pairs from smaller, custom, or long-closed makers rarely come up for sale, so this search may not find anything. It’s worth checking back now and then.