A Brief History

Clay Street, San Francisco:  On November 1, 1956, in a one-room office at 703 Market Street in San Francisco, Richard Prentice Ettinger, Jr., James F Leisy, and Charles A. Jones began Wadsworth Publishing Company as a West Coast subsidiary of Prentice-Hall, Inc. Richard Ettinger followed a family tradition and named the new company after his wife’s maiden name.
     The first contract was signed on September 7, 1956, seven weeks before they found an office and decided to call themselves Wadsworth. One of the first books published was Words and Ideas.
     Wadsworth’s first move was to the San Francisco produce district, upstairs in a converted fire house at 431 Clay Street. By the end of 1957 Wadsworth had hired four people to find manuscripts and to introduce the soon-to-be published books to college and university professors.

Belmont, California:  Wadsworth Publishing Company moved 25 miles south of San Francisco to Belmont in the fall of 1961.
     The building was designed to emphasize the informal atmosphere which had always been conducive to experimentation and to the generation of new ideas. Wadsworth wanted the working environment to allow creative individuals to use their capacities to the fullest.
     Six years after Wadsworth began, it passed the first million dollars in sales on September 28, 1962, when Fairleigh Dickinson University bookstore purchased 25 copies of Economics in Action, 2nd Edition.
     On January 27, 1964, Wadsworth separated from its parent company and became an independent public corporation.

Terry Francois Boulevard, San Francisco:  Cengage Learning closed its offices in Belmont and moved to San Francisco in early 2014. Cengage Learning hosted an open house on May 1, 2014 to unveil its new office at 500 Terry Francois Boulevard, Second Floor, in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco.