Former Tod, United buildings have unique place in industial history

I was saddened to see that now all of the former United Engineering plant is scheduled to be demolished to make way for a parking lot. Those buildings have been largely vacant for decades, but at one time they could legitimately have claimed to be the heart of industrial America.

That location has been in use as an industrial site since 1856 when Homer Hamilton started a small foundry and machine shop there. About 20 years later William Tod, son of former Ohio Gov. David Tod, partnered with Mr. Hamilton and formed the William Tod Company. Tod got into the business of building large stationary steam engines for the iron and steel industry, and until 1916 went on to build hundreds of the largest steam engines in the world. The company also built water pumping engines such as the one that once stood in the City Water Works building on West Avenue. Only one of the giant Tod Engines still exists and is now preserved on Hubbard Road by the Youngstown Steel Heritage Foundation.

Not very many people know this, but in 1892 Tod constructed the world’s first ferris wheel, which was erected at the 1893 Columbian Exhibition. In 1908 the Tod plant built three of the most powerful rolling mill engines ever built to drive a wide flange beam mill at Bethlehem Steel. This rolling mill made the large I beams and columns that Bethlehem Steel claimed held up two thirds of the skyscrapers in New York City. In 1914 Tod manufactured the operating mechanisms for the gates of the Panama Canal which are still in operation today. The blooming mills at all of the Youngstown steel plants were built by Tod. Youngstown as a steelmaking center would not have been possible without the machinery that came out of those buildings.

In 1916 the William Tod Company sold out to the United Engineering and Foundry Company, and United began using the facility as their heavy machine shop. For another 60 years, the machinery that made much of America’s steel was built at the foot of Phelps Street. During World War II, United constructed a large addition to the plant and increased its capacity to produce even larger pieces of machinery needed for the war effort and the subsequent Marshall Plan rebuilding of Europe. Rolling mills, forging presses and other machinery found their way into just about every steel mill in North America and abroad. One of those forging presses, a 35,000 ton unit installed at Alcoa in Cleveland, still makes the high- strength components that are used in every U.S. fighter jet.

The Tod/Wean United buildings, which have been there since before any of us were alive, are not an “eyesore.” Those buildings are responsible for the creation of machinery that have created an immense impact upon not only this area but upon the world. So perhaps before the torches are lit and another parking lot is built, let us take a moment to reflect and pay our respects to men and women of the last century who toiled within those walls.

At the very least a photographic recording of the buildings should be undertaken to document the structures with the resultant photos submitted to the Historic American Engineering Record at the Library of Congress.

Rick Rowlands, Youngstown

The writer is president of the Youngstown Steel Heritage Foundation.