Conshohocken Borough

The incorporation of the borough marks the beginning of the second major phase of historical development, which covers the next quarter century. All aspects of society blossomed with frontier-town abandon in the years of the early industrial boom, from 1850 until approximately 1875. In 1850, at the time of incorporation, there were 727 inhabitants of Conshohocken, with 125 houses and 8 farms. By 1860, census records show a population of 1689, more than double that of ten years earlier. The 1860 census listed 323 families and 324 houses. The 1860 Lake and Beers map of Philadelphia and vicinity clearly shows the building development to be concentrated between Fayette and Maple, Marble and Second Avenue. The remaining landscape included a few scattered farms, the lone house of Isaac Jones, Jr. near the corner of Spring Mill and what is now Eighth Avenue, and the Harry homestead at Hector and Apple Streets. The population continued to increase rapidly, nearly doubling again by 1870, to 3071 people, and by half as much again in the next decade to a population of 4561 in 1880.

Between 1850 and 1875 two developments changed the character of the Conshohocken industrial economy. The first was the establishment of a local textile industry. Although it never reached the proportions of iron manufacturing, it changed the dynamics of the labor force. The Conshohocken Cotton and Woolen Mill were founded in 1856 by Horace Jones with Stanley Lees, the Schuylkill Woolen Mill in 1858 by James and Lawrence Ogden, and the Albion Print Works in 1864. In 1865 the old Cresson saw mill was converted into a silk mill, and the old Freedley mill into a warp and cotton mill. The expanded work force required by the textile industry allowed greater employment opportunities for women and children.

The second major change was the decline of smelting and the coinciding rise in rolling mill iron production. Between 1850 and 1890, iron remained the major item of production of the local economy.  Smelting, which had been the most important phase of operation, declined after Civil War and became obsolete in the late 1870s.

The local iron industry and town continued to grow, however, because of the prosperity of the rolling mills which more than made up for the decline in smelting furnaces.

Conshohocken industry as a whole was operating at a steady rate of production in the mid-nineteenth century.  Two boiler factories, though modest, added to industry in the area. The J. Wood Company opened a boiler fabricating division and in 1865, William T. Bate and Sons opened a factory for the manufacture of high pressure coal-fired steam boilers at Elm and Harry Streets.  Many of the earlier established iron companies were expanding and updating. James Wood's rolling mill, begun as James Wood and Sons, became John Wood and Brothers. It was rebuilt and enlarged in 1845, again in 1867 and again in 1883. Both Stephen Colwell, proprietor of the Plymouth Furnaces and Rolling Mill, and John Wood had expanded with second furnaces in 1864. The 1871 business directory lists 68 businesses. The Radcliff Township and Business Map of Montgomery County from 1873 shows the majority of businesses located in the lower end of town, from Fayette to Maple on the west side and from Wells to Jones on the east side, the sole exceptions being two brickyards owned by Tracy and O'Brien between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.

The successful businessmen had established themselves comfortably by this time in grand houses along Fayette Street and Fourth and Fifth Avenues. In contrast to the elite families who had nurtured the town and its industry, the owners of iron smelting businesses were less involved in community affairs. Stephen Colwell, the founder of the Plymouth Iron Works, never lived in Conshohocken. His successors Samsel Fulton and Theodore Trewendt resided in Conshohocken but devoted their time and energy to managing their operations (although Trewendt did donate land at Fayette Street and Second Avenue for a public school). As the furnaces declined, and their facilities shut down, they left Conshohocken. The house remains from Trewendt's vast estate at Forrest Street and Second Avenue, a monument to a disappearing industrial era.

Conshohocken's iron industry was characterized by an open market system in contrast with the paternalistic iron plantation of the charcoal era. According to Richard Wooten in his 1974 dissertation, Conshohocken differed from the company towns of the earlier iron industry where the ironmaster was responsible for the food, housing, and general well-being of his workforce. Occupations not directly related to iron processing but under the control of the ironmaster under the old system included storekeepers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and other service-oriented businesses. Located in secluded rural areas, the older company towns by necessity had to provide services and housing for imported laborers. By contrast, the industry in Conshohocken was freed of the responsibility to provide these services.

The open market system allowed for the development of independent businesses. By 1858 in Conshohocken there were 4 taverns and 22 stores more than there had been 25 years earlier. Atypically for Conshohocken, some company-owned workers' housing did exist. "Puddlers Row," named for the skill of its occupants, is a group of row houses built by the Alan Wood Company for use in housing skilled puddlers, moulders, and founders. In some ways a throwback to the old ways, company-owned housing was used as an incentive in hiring skilled labor. An intact example of extant company-owned housing is seen in the row of twelve houses at 101-123 East Third Avenue, once owned by the Alan Wood Company.

The Plymouth Iron Furnace also owned company housing and a company store near its furnace. During the 1850s and 1860s the company housed a large portion of its work force between West Elm Street and Washington Street. As furnaces declined in importance during the 1870s, the area did too. Most of the Plymouth Iron Works' housing was demolished to provide the right of way for the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1883.

Conshohocken initially attracted young, unmarried transient men to work in the industries, a large percentage of them immigrants. During this time, a number of civic and religious institutions arose, reflecting the increasing need for discipline in family and private life. Within the space of ten years, four prominent churches were established: the Conshohocken Presbyterian Church was the first in 1847, followed by the St. Matthews Catholic Church in 1851and both the Conshohocken Methodist Episcopal Church and the Calvary Episcopal Church in 1857.

The Conshohocken public school district was established in 1850, with classes held at Stemple's Hall off of Fayette Street. The first school building was completed in 1855 on the land donated by Theodore Trewendt, owner of the Colwell furnace. It was used until 1885 when a school was built at Third Avenue east of Harry Street, on the site of the current school, built around 1950. In 1864 a Catholic grade school was started in the basement of St. Matthew's Church. The first Catholic free parochial high school in America was founded at 218 Hector Street in the grand Palladian edifice built in 1872 by St. Matthew's Church. It exists today as the Criminal Research Building.

The 1870s continued a time of general growth for the borough as a community. The decade saw the beginning of the Recorder, the local newspaper still currently published. In 1872, the wooden covered bridge across the Schuylkill River, which replaced the original bridge in 1852, was replaced with an iron span bridge, and the First National Bank opened on the first floor of the house of George Washington Jacoby at Hector and Fayette Streets. The Washington Hose and Steam Fire Engine Company #1 was chartered in 1874. The first borough hall and lockup was built at Hector and Forrest Streets. Council appointed the first policemen in 1873. The Conshohocken Gas and Light Company built a gas producing plant on Poplar Street in 1875.

The impact of this "boom town" period on Conshohocken's landscape can be seen in a number of buildings that survive today. Residential examples predominate although several industrial and civic buildings remain. Isolated upper-and middle-class houses scattered among neighborhoods of the working class illustrate the development pattern typical in the west side of town. In the 1860s, in addition to the large Wood and Trewendt estates west of Fayette Street, four or five middle-class residences arose on each of the newly parcelled blocks of West Third, Fourth and Fifth Avenues. Representative are the simple three-story stucco Italianate houses at 324 West Third and 312 West Fourth Avenue.

By contrast with the interspersed housing on the west side, the separation of the upper- and lower-class housing of the east side took form during this period. Free-standing and twin residences belonging to the mill owners, managers, and other members of the middle and upper class occupied Fourth and Fifth Avenues on the hill overlooking the dense working-class neighborhood along Hector and Elm Streets. Individual estates of the Harry, Wood and Lukens families stretched along Fayette Street north of the established commercial district, which ended at Front (later First) Avenue. Typical of the industrial buildings interspersed throughout the area is the W.T. Bate and Suns factory at 125East Elm Street, the most intact of the industrial buildings of this era.  Portions of the Albion Print Works, later taken over by the John Wood and Brothers Rolling Mill, remain at the foot of the former Matson's Ford Bridge and Washington Street.

A comparison of the two property atlases dating from the 1870s shows similar patterns of development concentrated in the lower portions of the town, but extending northeasterly by 1877. This signaled the beginning of the breakup of the large farms of earlier times, parceled but not yet developed. The northeast quadrant of the town, labeled the "Estate of Isaac Jones" shows subdivision into lots but no buildings; the northwest quadrant is not yet subdivided.