William F. Endress, Inc. was a coal and ice supplier at 66 Foote Ave. in Jamestown, New York. The company was founded by Colonel William Fries Endress (1855-1935). In 1897, Endress purchased three existing brickyards owned by M.J. Mecusker & Sons, Jamestown Shale Paving Company, and C.A. Morley, Jr., which he then consolidated into a wholesale and retail establishment selling brick, wood, cement, and tile, but which specialized in the sale of anthracite, bituminous, and lignite coal.

In 1902, Endress expanded into the ice and cold storage business, opening the first freezer storage facility in the city. The five-story building, located on Harrison Street, was used as a rental space, selling cold storage to local farmers and for fur coat storage during summer months. The facility also manufactured ice. Rather than harvesting ice by the traditional local means of procuring it from Lake Chautaqua during the winter, Endress made use of new refrigeration and freezing technologies to manufacture ice by other means, using electricity and a process involving liquid anhydrous ammonia to produce and store ice on site. Over the course of the years 1923 to 1924, Endress enlarged and improved his cold storage facilities considerably, replacing a steam power plant with an electric drive. By 1925, following another expansion, the company had a production capacity of fifty tons of ice per day and had converted its cold storage rental space to ice storage.

Endress was a civil engineer by training, having graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in the field in 1879. After finding little work in the field, Endress began pursuing other careers. Prior to establishing William F. Endress, Inc., Endress operated a soft coal mine located in Hiliards, Pennsylvania in the early 1880s and began investing in the fuel and building supply trades. These endeavors led to his appointment as chairman on the board of the Chautauqua Lake Railroad and a role in the establishment of the Jamestown Electric Light and Power Company. For his work in the latter endeavor, in 1888, he was dispatched to Cuba to represent the interests of the Thompson-Houston Electric Company of Boston, Massachusetts. While there, a board of investors from Havana and New York appointed him president of the Spanish Electric Company, a position he held until 1890, when he returned to Jamestown, New York.

During the Spanish-American War, Endress, a U.S. Military Academy graduate, volunteered for service and was assigned to his personal friend and relative by marriage, General Guy Vernor Henry (1839-1899), as an aide-de-camp stationed in Puerto Rico. As part of this service, Endress was assigned the military rank of colonel by the governor of New York state.

Following the war, Endress returned again to his business interests in Jamestown. From 1904 to 1909, he served as president of the New York and Pennsylvania Retail Coal Association. Among other appointments, he was also elected president of the International Council of Coal Merchants from 1906 to 1907, president of the International Anthracite Dealers' Association in 1905, and president of the New York and Pennsylvania Ice Association from approximately 1910 to 1914.

William Fries Endress was born in Dansville, New York on August 2, 1855. In 1875, he married Dora Elizabeth Willey (1851–1912). The couple had two children, Helen Elizabeth Chew Endress (1895-1987) and William Fitzhugh Endress (1880–1915). William Fries Endress died at his daughter's home in Jamestown on January 28, 1935 at the age of 79.