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Historical Society of the Phoenixville Area

204 Church St, Phoenixville, PA 19460

Phoenix Bridge Company
 

The insurance records of The Phoenix Bridge Company (known as Kellogg, Clarke and Company from 1868 to 1870 and Clarke, Reeves and Company from 1871 to 1884) reveal ongoing death and injury to workmen on erection sites--not surprising given the nature of the work.  More interesting is the extent to which major calamities began to punctuate the litany of lesser accidents.

In 1884, the owners of Phoenix Iron Co. took advantage of  a new trend, the catalogue bridge business.  It was a logical new business because firms like Phoenix Iron Co. could now produce and store standard structural steel parts.   Potential customers could look at a catalog of component bridge parts and purchase the items necessary for their specific bridge.

All of this was somewhat misleading.   Every bridge to some degree was a custom order.  Custom tailoring was most effectively carried out by consulting engineers mediating between the needs of the customer and the resources of the bridge company, a process that became a common practice.   In brief, the fabricating bridge companies were not exactly producing the turnkey products they liked to think they were producing.  Despite this caveat prefabricated bridge companies were entering a new era.

Phoenix Bridge functioned as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Phoenix Iron and Steel Company and each year purchased roughly 20 to 40 percent of the parent firm's output.  Both companies maintained offices in center city Philadelphia and had production facilities 28 miles to the northwest along the French Creek in the quiet Borough of Phoenixville, a community served initially by the Pickering Valley Railroad and the Reading Railroad.  The coziness of the relationship between parent and subsidiary generated grumbling among competitors; but that was commonplace and quite similar to the relationship between Carnegie Steel and the Keystone Bridge Company.

Phoenix Bridge did a lot of business in an overcrowded industry in the last decades of the Nineteenth Century, fabricating and erecting hundreds of railway bridges and viaducts and an occasional highway span, primarily in the United States,  Canada, and Latin America.  Many of these spans were relatively modest in length and used Phoenix columns and truss designs. The products appeared in the firm's trade catalogues and had been reproduced many times.  Phoenix Bridge had a very comfortable market niche fabricating unspectacular but readily available and reliable products.

In 1888, a Phoenix bridge under construction in Cincinnati lost all of its falsework or temporary supporting framework. In 1893, a Phoenix bridge under construction at Louisville collapsed resulting in extensive loss of life. In 1898, a Phoenix bridge almost completed in Rockbridge County, Virginia, gave way--again with loss of life. In 1907, a Phoenix bridge under construction  in Quebec collapsed into the St. Lawrence River killing 75 workmen in one of the most famous bridge disasters in history.  Major challenges seemed to lead to major calamities.

Phoenix Bridge lost both money and prestige as a result of these accidents, but they also were hurt by competition with American Bridge Company that was formed in 1900 as a subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation.   American Bridge Co. eventually had from 50 to 90 percent of the bridge market.

From a historian's perspective, it's hard to believe that Phoenix Bridge's best years were not behind them by 1907 given the competition with American Bridge Co. and the debacle in Quebec.  In 1907, Phoenix Bridge still had some fascinating projects on the drawing board, including the Manhattan Bridge in New York City that was completed in 1909.

Little more than a decade later, company business records reveal a trend in the direction of smaller projects and often nondescript work.  Admittedly, America needed only so many steel bridges, and perhaps a saturation point had been reached.  A revolution in reinforced concrete had started to redefine bridge construction, and Phoenix Bridge hardly seemed to be a position to capitalize on that revolution.  Phoenix Bridge had always been viewed by its owners as an outlet for the finished product of Phoenix Iron and Steel.  Both World Wars provided business for a firm experienced in working with structural steel, much of this related to shipbuilding, but beyond World War I business prospects were generally grim.

A major effort was made in the late 1940s to sell the firm without success.  Phoenix Bridge Co. continued until it went out of business in 1962.  

Phoenix Iron columns were used to build almost 1,400 bridges around the world. The last heat of steel at Phoenix Steel Co. was on November 18, 1976.  

The source for most of this article is from from Without Fitting, Filing, or Chipping, by Thomas R. Winpenny, published by Canal History and Technology Press in 1996.

Phoenix Iron & Steel Documents:   The Society has close ties with the Chester County Historical Society in West Chester and The Hagley Library in Greenville, Delaware, which houses papers of the Phoenix Iron & Steel Company and the Phoenix Bridge Company.

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