One final reminder: I will be signing copies of Laury's Island: The Lehigh Valley's Forgotten Park at the Laurys Station Volunteer Fire Company's annual Community Day this coming Saturday, September 21st. The event runs from noon to 8 p.m. and will include a ton of activities for kids, plus food vendors, crafters, local non-profits, live music, and more. If you're within driving distance of the Lehigh Valley and this sounds like it might interest you, check out this Facebook page for more information, including the address of the fire station.
As I said on my own Facebook, I will be there until I run out of books. Please help me run out of books. ;)
Speaking of running out, I am genuinely starting to run out of markers! I haven't been able to take too many road trips this summer for various reasons, so I haven't had a lot of opportunities to add to my stash. I do still have a few from prior trips, but I need more. I have a visit planned with a friend next week in Chester County, so that will help. In the meantime, I'm going to start occasionally updating Confessions of a Wandering History Nerd on Wednesdays instead of MQ, just to help my content stretch a bit farther, so look for a new post over there next week. (It'll be about a cemetery, for those of you who like that sort of thing.)
My hometown of Catasauqua put up a new marker last year when I wasn't looking, so for this week's regularly scheduled nonsense, let's go visit my former neighbors and see what we can learn.
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| The marker sits in front of 324 Race Street |
Daniel Davies and William Thomas were the original Davies and Thomas in question, and in 1865 they were operating a gray iron foundry and machine shop inside of an old mill on Race Street in Catasauqua. This was later changed to Daniel Davies and Son, because William decided to go back to his native Wales. The son was George Davies, and after his father's death in 1876, he recruited his childhood friend James Thomas to become his new partner. They weren't just lifelong friends, but also brothers-in-law, since James was married to George's sister Mary Ann. They were also comrades-in-arms, having served together in the Civil War; James had been the captain of Company F of the 34th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Emergency Volunteers, and George had been his first sergeant. They helped to win the day at Gettysburg before being honorably discharged.
Now working under the name Davies & Thomas Company, the partners continued the work of the original Davies and Thomas and expanded the enterprise. This continued until George's death in 1894, after which James joined forces with George's heirs and renamed themselves the Davies, Thomas Company. I'm unclear why a comma was better than an ampersand, to be honest. What I do know, however, is that the company was situated at the bottom of what we always called the Race Street hill (I grew up near the top) and grew to consist of roughly five acres spanning the Catasauqua Creek. One of the buildings literally was built across the creek, with a tunnel in the middle to allow the water to continue to flow; you can see it in this picture, dated 1914. This building survives even now, and as a little kid I was oddly delighted by the way the creek runs through it.
(I 'borrowed' the picture from The Hopkin Thomas Project, which you can visit in my sources. I hope they don't mind.)
An odd sidebar here, but there was an article in the Allentown Leader newspaper in 1897 about the ongoing success of Davies & Thomas. First, they refer to the company as being "situated in Springdale Park," which is a name I never heard in my life despite growing up in Catasauqua. They also, and this is the weirder part, had this to say: "The best point about the Davies & Thomas Company is that they never employed a Hungarian since their inception." Not sure why the newspaper had a problem with Hungarians, or what that had to do with much of anything, unless it's somehow related to the build-up for World War I. If anyone can shed light on this peculiar bit of xenophobia, I'd be very interested to understand it better.
James continued to help operate the company until his own death in 1906. By that time, he had become so successful that he was acquainted with many important people of the day, including Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie, and was generally perceived as being involved with any effort to make Catasauqua an even better place for its residents. He was a pillar of the community at Grace Methodist Episcopal Church (today the Grace United Methodist Church), which he helped to build, and one of the founders of the borough's electric light plant, which converted Catasauqua from gas lamps to electric lighting. He also helped to establish the Wahnetah Silk Mill, which was rather successful; the building burned down several years later, but it used to stand where there is now a small park in front of the George Taylor Home. Following his passing, his son Hopkin carried on the work at Davies, Thomas, and then over the next several years they went through a number of ownership changes.
Starting in 1905, the company went into its most famously successful line of work, pioneering the production of tube segments used for tunnels underneath rivers. You can't see their work, not really, but if you've ever gone to New York City, there's an excellent chance you've been in a vehicle which has driven through it. Davies and Thomas products were used in building the Holland, Lincoln, Queens Mid-town, and Battery to Brooklyn tunnels. They also produced segments for railroad tunnels, including the Harlem River and MacAdoo tunnels used by the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the underground electric railway in Washington, D.C., among many other major projects. Davies, Thomas was one of the world's foremost manufacturers of these tunnel elements.
The foundry ceased operations and dissolved in 1947, although it appeared in the news again two years later. In May of that year, a truck was hauling toxic and flammable chemicals in the Holland Tunnel when the chemicals exploded; but thanks to the exceptional quality of the Davies & Thomas segments, the tunnel, though weakened, did not crack and no leaks were found. The grounds of the foundry later came into the ownership of the First National Bank of Catasauqua, which also no longer exists. (The building does, though. It's beautiful.)
In 1960, the company's former chemistry lab was demolished by the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company (today known as PPL, our local electric company), who built a transformer on the site. Other parts of the complex were sold to various businesses and property owners. Finally, in 1965, the then-owner Woodrow Frantz razed the company office and blacksmith shop in order to make room for storage space for his own company, Clearspan, Inc.
Today, the surviving building is partially occupied by an auto repair center. But the addition of the historical marker finally explained, for me and probably for several others too young to remember Davies and Thomas, what once went on in the building with the creek running through its middle.
Sources and Further Reading:
Heckenberger, Claire. "Century-Old Foundry Razed in Catasauqua." Originally printed in the Bethlehem Globe-Times, April 5, 1965; reproduced for The Hopkin Thomas Project.
Fox, Martha Capwell. Images of America: Catasauqua and North Catasauqua. Arcadia Publishing, 2002. (The cover image is of a tunnel segment made by Davies & Thomas for the New York City tunnel projects.)
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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