Edison Cement Plant
"N.J. Plant Cemented in History
by Jane Primerano for The Express-Times
It's called "The House that Ruth Built," but Yankee Stadium is also the
house that Edison built.
Thomas Edison, that is.
The stadium was built with 180,000 bags of Portland Cement from the
Edison Cement Co. in New Village. Cement from the Franklin Township
plant was also used in buildings up and down the East Coast, as well as
in sidewalks and concrete highways. Route 57 in Franklin Township was
one of the first strips of highway constructed from Portland Cement.
Today's Route 57 contains portions of the original cement roadbed, and
another slab is on display at the Edison Museum at Menlo Park in West
Orange, NJ.
Parts of the Edison Cement plant are now used by Victaulic Corp -- on
Edison Road in New Village -- for galvanized plating operation.
Ironically, Carl Brown, the man who found the site for Victaulic, is a
confirmed Edison buff.
Brown, of Palmer Township, was "smokestacking" one day while selling
vending machines. A salesman "smokestacks" when he looks for stacks
towering over the landscape to find a factory that might need his
product.
Brown spotted the Edison plant stacks and found the abandoned factory
site.
When Victaulic was looking for a new site for its galvanized plating
plant, Brown, also a Victaulic employee, recalled the New Village
factory and suggested it to the firm.
It proved to be perfect, and Victaulic has occupied the plant since
1975.
Brown -- who said he's been a fan of the inventor since childhood
-- was pleased to discover the Edison site, which he had read about
years before in a local history account.
Victaulic occupies one of the buildings on the cement plant site; most
of the rest are in ruins. Brown said Vietnamese employees of the factory
once asked him when the plant was bombed -- he admits it looks that way.
When it was built at the turn of the century, however, the Edison Cement
Co. featured state-of-the-art equipment. Edison believed in the best
quality for everything he did, Brown said.
Safe -- but still sorry
He also believed in safety. Despite precautions, the plant was home to
one of the area's largest and deadliest industrial accidents.
At 5:10 p.m. March 2, 1903, it started with a small explosion, followed
10 minutes later by a larger explosion. A spark was believed to have
ignited a supply of pulverized coal dust, which was used as a fuel to
bake the cement.
Six men were killed instantly and many others were injured, according to
the March 3, 1903, edition of The Easton Express. The death toll
eventually rose to 15. Many of the victims died of burns.
The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad dispatched a special train
from Phillipsburg carrying doctors and nurses. The train brought the
injured back to Phillipsburg and then to Easton Hospital, the closest
facility.
At a coroner's inquest, the firm was absolved of negligence. The cost of
the explosion's damages was estimated at anywhere from $60,000 to
$200,000. The plant was promptly rebuilt.
But whatever caused the spark, it probably wasn't a cigarette.
Edison banned smoking in his factories -- long before it was a common
practice -- because of a concern about fires. He often forgot his own
prohibitions, though, and had to be reminded by his employees to
extinguish his cigarettes. Eventually, he took up chewing tobacco.
Cementing a future
Edison got into the cement business after failing at mining ore, Brown
said.
On April 3, 1880, Edison received a patent for a magnetic ore separator.
He put his invention to work at the Ogden Mine (the mine was apparently
named after the inventor's great-grandmother) in Sparta Township, buying
or leasing 19,000 acres of Sparta Mountain, according to research done
by Howard Case of Sussex.
The ore separator worked, but the ore in the Ogden mine was heavily
contaminated with phosphorous, which reduced its value.
When the Edison operation closed in 1902, after high-grade ore had been
discovered in the Mesabi Range in Minnesota, the inventor had lost $4
million on the project.
Brown said Edison started thinking about how to recoup his losses on the
way back to West Orange for the last time. He decided on the cement
business, having constructed some cement houses for his workers.
Edison, interested in geology, helped the U.S. Department of the
Interior with geological surveys, so he and his staff had no difficulty
finding a location for the cement plant.
He settled on the New Village site, on the edge of the cement belt.
Innovative equipment
Edison included many innovations in the plant, Brown said. Edison's
crusher, which could handle 10-ton rocks, made the operation more
efficient. The crusher's capacity ensured that it could handle most
materials that came to the plant -- an important asset, because if rocks
were too large for the crusher, they had to be sent back to the quarry
for reblasting.
The kilns were also larger than those commonly in existence at that
time. Earlier kilns were about 9 feet long and 6 feet in diameter.
Edison believed that with special supports, kilns could be constructed
up to 150 feet long and be only 9 feet in diameter. It turned out that
his theory was correct, and the larger size made the kilns more
efficient.
The Edison works produced cement houses, some of which are still
standing. Many built for Ingersoll-Rand Co. employees in Phillipsburg
still stand behind the current Ingersoll-Dresser Pump Co. plant.
After Edison died in 1931, his son, Charles, took over operation of his
entire business empire. He kept the New Village plant open until 1947.
The property was used by several industries before Victaulic bought the
property."