Remembering Conshohocken and West Conshohocken

by Jack Coll

  When finished, the new bridge spanned the river, canal, three sets of railroad tracks and two roads. The new bridge was twice as wide as the covered bridge, at fifty feet wide (the covered bridge was twenty-five feet wide). When it was built from 1919 to 1921, materials used to create the span included 25,000 cubic yards of concrete, 672 tons of steel, 5,750 square yards of wood block paving, 2,110 square yards of granite, 1,607 square yards of bithulithic, 31,700 barrels of cement, 16,500 tons of sand and 28,700 tons of gravel.

  When the bridge opened in 1921, the road surface looked like cobblestone but was actually wooden blocks. The blocks were coated with oil and creosote, and when it rained, the blocks became very slippery like ice and were very dangerous. Within six months, the blocks were removed and a hard surface was installed.

  Minnie Harrison, an East Fourth Avenue resident, penned a poem that ran in the Conshohocken Recorder in November 1921 pertaining to the opening of the bridge:

  Across the Schuylkill’s rippling tide

  A mighty bridge is flung

  And it is long and high and wide

  And open to the sun.

  It welds the East unto the West

  With strong and fervent tie

  And just beneath on either side

  The many factories lie.

  And on the West are glorious hills

  With trees and foliage fair

  And water from the coldest spring

  Azure skies and pure fresh air.

  And in the vale are many homes

  And honest hearts and true

  If you’re a stranger in the town

  We’ll gladly welcome you.

  And there’s no fairer valley

  Within the land of Penn

  Than by the river Schuylkill

  With its loyal maids and men.

  The concrete bridge built in 1921 may have been the finest bridge in the nation at that time, but by the 1970s it was in deplorable condition. Major holes started showing up in the sidewalks and the roadbed, and then the railing started to deteriorate. The writing was on the wall. Conshohocken was about to embark on a federal urban renewal project that would take the town from rags to riches, but a new bridge was needed.

  A mighty explosion in the spring of 1986 brought the 1921 structure down, and work began on the new $12 million bridge. If you’re keeping score, the covered bridge coast nearly $12,000, the 1921 bridge cost a cool $638,500 and in 1987, the fifty-two-foot-wide span cost $12 million; that equates to nearly $1 million for every hundred feet of the bridge. John Capozzi, who was the president of the Conshohocken Chamber of Commerce in 1987, said it best as he spoke from the bridge deck during the grand opening on November 27, 1987: “To us, this is the most important 1,380 feet of road surface in the state of Pennsylvania.”

  Over the years, two efforts have been made to change the name of the bridge. The first was in 1987, when the Conshohocken Chamber of Commerce suggested that the name be changed to the Conshohocken Bridge. The second attempt came at a West Conshohocken Council meeting in 2000, when veteran John DiRusso proposed changing the name of the bridge to Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge. While both name changes were taken very seriously, after nearly three centuries, the name remains Matsonford Bridge.

  Part Three

  Industry

  IT ALL STARTED WITH A SHOVEL HEAD

  Iron furnaces and forges began operating in this area in the early days of Pennsylvania. Ore was dug out of the ground from a number of locations throughout the area. Thomas Rutter started his forge on Manatawny Creek, at the present Montgomery-Berks County line. He built his forge in 1716, and it became Pennsylvania’s first iron industry.

  In 1832, James Wood and his son Alan began making steel in a one-room building alongside the Schuylkill Canal in Conshohocken. Nearly a century later, in 1920, the Alan Wood Steel Company employed more than five thousand local residents and produced more than 8 percent of the nation’s output of steel.

  It all started when James Wood established a “smithy” near Hickorytown (formerly known as Pigeontown) more than ninety years after Rutter started his forge. Wood became known as a “black and white” smith because in addition to the ordinary work of the blacksmith, he also made kitchen or domestic wares.

  James Wood was the grandson of a Dublin Quaker immigrant named James who fled to America in 1725 and settled in Gwynedd. James, the grandson, was born on October 23, 1771, on a farm in Montgomery County, near Narcissa or Five Points. Wood recalled that General George Washington was a guest at the Wood home in 1777, when seven-year-old James sat on the knee of General Washington, who was on his way to Valley Forge.

  Workers at the Alan Wood Steel plant can be seen working during the company’s heyday in the 1920s. In 1920, Alan Wood Steel was producing more than 8 percent of the nation’s output of steel. The Alan Wood Company opened in Conshohocken in 1832 and closed in 1977.

  An agreement between James and Alan effective on January 1, 1832, resulted in the erection of a water mill for rolling iron at Conshohocken. Wood’s iron mill was located along the canal owned by the Schuylkill Navigation Company. The location included a ground rent of twenty-five cents per running foot yearly. The Schuylkill Navigation Company also contracted to supply “900 square inches of water at an annual rent of $1,000.”

  When production began on May 5, 1832, steel was processed to make shovel plates. Wood developed an early patent on steel shovel heads. In 1835, the Woods expanded their operation by building a three-story shovel factory at the west end of the mill.

  The company remained strong during the country’s Great Depression and worked in the war effort for the government during the 1940s. Following the war, a recapitalization plan was introduced in 1948 and was the company’s first step in modernizing in nearly three decades. This resulted in major improvements in 1953 and ’54, when multimillion-dollar improvements were made and new equipment was installed. By 1956, more than $56 million had been spent to upgrade the plant. In the early 1960s, the most sophisticated oxygen furnace was installed at a cost of $37 million. The company was forced to spend millions more in the early 1970s for improvements and pollution control programs.

  The money spent during the company’s final thirty years was a tremendous burden. The Wood company was unable to regain its hold on the steel industry as the large contracts were being purchased from overseas competitors at cheaper prices. Despite recording record sales of $98 million in 1969, the company filed for bankruptcy on June 10, 1977.

  After more than 145 years, the steel mill fell silent. More than 2,500 employees found themselves unemployed. The company was paying out more than $1 million annually to Conshohocken and Plymouth Township in taxes, so the closure of the plant crippled the borough of Conshohocken. In later years, Lukens’s Steel would occupy a small part of the Alan Wood Steel Company site, but it was never to be returned to the 5,000 employees who once gutted out a living making steel.

  An old Philadelphia Inquirer writer named Edgar Williams would sometimes remind his readers of the Alan Wood Steel Company with small anecdotes in his column like, “Just once more let people in the Conshohocken area see the ‘Connaughttown’ (pronounced Cunneytown) Moon, the glow that lit up the night sky whenever slag was dumped at night at the old Alan Wood Steel Company plant.”

  JOHN ELWOOD LEE, WHAT A MAN

  John Elwood Lee was born in Conshohocken on November 15, 1860, to Bradford Adams Lee and Sarah A. Raysor. John’s father worked more than thirty-five years for the Schuylkill Iron Works and the J. Wood & Brothers rolling mill. Before John Elwood turned forty years old, he would be a multimillionaire, with his products known throughout the world, and one of the most respected businessmen in the country.

  Upon Lee’s graduation from Conshohocken High School in 1879, Charles Heber Clark landed him a job with William Snowden and Company. Snowden’s company manufactured surgical instruments in Philadelphia. On April 12, 1882, young Lee married Jennie W. Cleaver (together they would have four children)
, and a year later, he decided to leave the Snowden Company and strike out on his own.

  At the age of twenty-three, he decided to start his own business with a cash capital of $28.35. Lee was very savvy, and in the attic of his parents’ house on Seventh Avenue, with his mother’s sewing machine, he started what would become the second leading manufacturer of surgical supplies in the country.

  Lee adapted the sewing machine for the purpose of rolling of bandages and reeling surgeons’ silk. His purpose in the beginning was to produce a standard ligature material for surgeons. In just a few months, his growing business required larger quarters. Lee constructed a two-story building in his parents’ backyard, and with the extra working space, he added more products.

  In 1888, the J. Elwood Lee Company was incorporated. The original members of the company included Charles Heber Clark (Lee’s Sunday school teacher) as president of the organization; Charles Lukens, vice-president; J. Elwood Lee, treasurer, secretary and general manager; and Alan Wood Jr., Howard Wood and Conrad B. Lee on the board of directors. Conrad Lee passed away less than ten years later, and Frank R. Jones joined the board of directors. Later that year, in 1888, the company established a factory for the manufacture of woven catheters, the first and only factory in America at that time to produce such a product.

  In November 1893, the Lee Company participated in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and was presented with the exposition’s five highest awards, including;

  For Woven Flexible Catheters

  For Surgeons’ Silk Ligatures

  For Lee’s Metallic Splints

  For Antiseptic Gauze in Glass Containers

  For General Hospital Supplies

  While Lee’s Surgical Works had been for years acknowledged by many leading surgeons, supply houses and hospitals throughout America, the Exposition Awards brought the Lee Company attention from around the world.

  Lee started buying out other small surgical supply companies, starting with Grosvenor & Richards, J.C. De La Cour, John Parker Manufacturing Company and a half dozen others. With all the acquisitions, by 1905 the J. Elwood Lee Company consisted of seventeen buildings located on East Eighth Avenue and Harry Street. (Part of Lee factory still stands today.) The factory covered more than five acres of floor space and employed more than five hundred Conshohocken residents.

  The Lee Company was the second leading manufacturer of surgical supplies in the country, only behind Johnson & Johnson from New Brunswick, New Jersey. Eventually, the two companies merged, and Mr. Lee became the executive vice-president of the Johnson & Johnson Company.

  By 1908, the automobile had surfaced as a rich man’s toy, and Lee was fascinated with the rubber tires. He felt that improvements could be made by utilizing the knowledge he had acquired of rubber and its characteristics in the manufacture of such goods as surgical tubing and rubber gloves. Lee had the wisdom of rubber, the engineers and the resources to make tires.

  By 1909, plans were underway for Lee to construct a tire factory. He purchased twenty-six acres from the Righter family in the Spring Mill section of town on the corner of Hector Street and North Lane, and by 1910, JELCO Tires was up and running. JELCO, a Lee trademark that had appeared on all his pharmaceutical supplies, stood for “John Elwood Lee Company.”

  When Lee discussed supplying Henry Ford tires for his cars rolling off the assembly line in Detroit, Michigan, his friend pointed out to Lee that printing the JELCO trademark on the side of his tires would make the public skeptical of riding on tires that sounded soft, as in “jelly.” It was then that Lee made the decision that would make his tire company famous all over the world with his trademark “Lee of Conshohocken” trademark.

  Lee’s first major breakthrough in the tire factory was his famous “Puncture Proof Tire.” His second would change the course of tire making throughout the world. Charles Goodyear tire factory introduced the vulcanization of rubber, allowing us to shape rubber products for many different uses. In 1912, Lee started to experiment with the possibilities from the use of vanadium in rubber. A year later, in September 1913, vanadium rubber proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lee could produce the cheapest rubber available. Treated with the vanadium process, it was twice as durable as the finest rubber on the market.

  As the tire factory started producing tires at a rate of 2,500 per day, Lee and his wife, Jennie, lived in a modest house located at Eighth Avenue and Fayette Street. In May 1893, Lee awarded a contract to Alexander Martin and Son to erect a handsome pointed stone mansion on the property Lee had purchased. The three-story, twenty-three-room mansion, when completed, was a beautiful building located just one block from his surgical supply business and a block and a half from his parents’ home. The mansion was called Leeland and had a state-of-the-art carriage house, complete with a bowling alley, swimming pool and gym. (Lee was an avid sportsman.) Lee also built a golf course behind the mansion on property he owned, located between Seventh and Twelfth Avenues from Forrest Street down to Wood Street.

  John Elwood Lee passed away on the evening of April 8, 1914. He was fifty-four years old. His wife, Jennie, lived until 1945.

  Lee Tires of Conshohocken would go on making tires for the next half century until a bitter strike by the union employees kept the doors closed for two years, from 1963 to 1965. When the plant reopened in 1965, Goodyear exercised its right to purchase the company. All of Lee’s assets, trade names, patents, tires and tubes were now property of Goodyear.

  The Hector Street factory continued to make tires under Goodyear ownership, and in 1974, a milestone was reached at the Lee plant when the twenty-five millionth tire was produced. Three years later, the plant surpassed thirty-six million tires. In the late 1970s, Goodyear executives decided the tire factory was outdated, and in 1979, the decision was made to close the plant for good. On February 10, 1980, the last tires were made at the Spring Mill plant. The closing was due largely to the declining market for bias ply tires, caused primarily by the increased popularity of radial tires, many of which were produced overseas.

  NEWTON AND HERVEY, THE WALKER BROTHERS

  When you say the name Walker Brothers, one might think of an American pop group formed in 1964 that sang songs like “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” or “Make It Easy on Yourself.” But in Conshohocken, if you say “Walker Brothers,” most old-timers would tell you about a couple of brothers who formed the Walker Brothers of Conshohocken and became the leading manufactures of under-floor electric distribution systems in the country.

  The Walker brothers, Hervey and Newton, founded the company in 1912 and, by 1958, employed more than 650 production workers and more than 200 administrative employees, most of whom were Conshohocken residents. The company operated on eighteen acres of prime riverfront property, much of it later purchased by Quaker Chemical.

  Early contracts for Walker Brothers included the designing and installation of switchboards for the United States naval vessels, notably the USS Wyoming. The Wyoming was a battleship weighing twenty-seven thousand tons and was built at the William Cramp and Sons Shipyard in Philadelphia and commissioned in 1912 at League Island Navy Yard. It was for a time the flagship of the Atlantic Fleet’s commander-in-chief, Rear Admiral Charles J. Badger. Badger served with the fleet during World War I and was present at the surrender of the German Grand Fleet off May Island on November 20, 1918.

  By the early 1920s, Walker Brothers had begun making and installing under-floor electrical distribution systems and, in 1923, landed its first installation at the Jefferson Standard Building of Greensboro, North Carolina. Once Walker installed the system in that first building, the company had trouble keeping up with production, as it began work on buildings such as the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., the Equitable Assurance Building in New York, the Inquirer Building in Philadelphia, the H.J. Reynolds Tobacco Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, several buildings on Wall Street and dozens more. In later years, Walker installations included heavy power cables
vital to space satellite launchings at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and an under-floor wiring system in the White House Oval Office, transmitting reports of nuclear events to the president of the United States of America.

  By the mid-1920s, Walker Brothers realized that it needed a suburban location that would provide space for continued expansion. Hervey pointed out an old abandoned terra cotta pottery factory site in the Spring Mill section of Montgomery County. Newton was unimpressed with the property, but Hervey pointed out the rich history of the area, not to mention two railroads—the Pennsylvania and Reading lines—running right past the property, the river and canal behind the property and finished roadways for overland shipping and transportation. Newton also pointed out the successful businesses just across the tracks, including the Lee Tire and Rubber Company and, just up the Schuylkill River, Alan Wood Steel Company, operating at that point for nearly a century.

  On June 5, 1926, Walker Brothers officially purchased the property from George N. Witherspoon and his wife, Jean, of Hendersonville, North Carolina. The riverfront property that had been known as the old Moreland Clay Works was purchased for a total price of $16, 715.88, with an adjoining fifty-foot lot bought for $1,621.00.

  Years later, when Walker Brothers of Conshohocken Company became the biggest manufacturer of underground electric cables in the country, Hervey turned his attention to civic-minded projects. In March 1945, the Walkers founded the Conshohocken Business Association with 62 charter members. Newton spearheaded the purchase of Leeland, the former home of John Elwood Lee, located on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Fayette Street, and turned the property into a centrally located meeting place. By the early 1950s, more than 150 local business executives and industrial men would meet at Leeland, set up as a luncheonette to discuss routine problems pertaining to production, sales, labor and current economic situations and outlooks.