“KARL J. BEIJ, Manufacturer and Dealer in Marble and Granite Statues, Tablets, Curbings, Posts and Markers. Office and Works, 1 FORD ST., HARTFORD, CONN.”
Company History
Beij, Williams & Zito, Inc., founded as The Stephen Maslen Company in 1870, was located at 47 High Street, then 350-352 Asylum Street and later at 40 High Street in Hartford, Connecticut.
Karl Beij Monuments, a competitor founded in 1901, was located at One Ford Street in Hartford. Mr. Beij purchased The Stephen Maslen Company in 1911. In 1913, Beij sold the business to his foreman, William Williams and the operation, then called Beij & Williams, moved to 201 New Britain Avenue in Hartford.
In 1915, John Zito Monuments, Inc. was founded by John Zito at 197 Blue Hills Avenue in Bloomfield, 3.5 miles to the north. John T. Zito, his nephew, worked in the business until 1943 when he purchased the then well established memorial firm in Hartford, Beij & Williams Incorporated.
Both the Bloomfield and Hartford locations were run by the Zito family until 1976 when John Zito Incorporated was dissolved and the Bloomfield office was closed. Now named Beij, Williams & Zito, Inc., the company was operated at the New Britain Avenue address by John T. Zito, his son John T. Zito, Jr. and eventually his grandson, John T. Zito III, a fourth generation stone carver, who runs the company today.
Company offerings include retail and wholesale private and civic memorial work, stone cleaning, garden boulders, benches, statuary, 19th century masonry building facade restoration, architectural signage, plaques, handcarved & sand-engraved lettering and ancient gravestone restoration.
Today, Beij, Williams & Zito boasts a spectacular repetiore with many recognizable pieces readily identifiable in pen and ink hand drawn profiles logged in the original ledger books dating back to Stephen Maslen’s first sales in 1870.
A large body of our work resides in Hartford, CT. Spring Grove Cemetery, Old North Cemetery and especially Cedar Hill Cemetery, designed by renown landscape architect, Jacob Weidenmann, is both a horticultural and botonical wonder as well as a meticulously maintained collection of many impressive 19th and 20th century sculptures and masonry structures memorializing the great families of Hartford from the 1860s to the 1920s where one finds the magnificent memorials of Samuel Colt, J.P. Morgan, Goodwin, Beach, Day, Stedman, Gideon Welles, Hooker, Beecher, Gallaudet, Wells, Bulkeley and others.
Fine Art Sculpture, Memorials & Restorations in Stone & Bronze in Connecticut since 1870
Beij, Williams & Zito, Inc.
PO Box 270409
West Hartford, CT 06127
860-983-1036
John@FineArtStone.com
“S. MASLEN & CO., 47 High Street near Asylum Street, Hartford, Ct., keep constantly on hand, MONUMENTS, GRAVE STONES, MANTLES, GRATES AND SOAPSTONE; Also, every kind of MARBLE AND GRANITE WORK, DONE PROMPTLY, AND AT LOW PRICES.”
Beij, Williams & Zito, Incorporated 