Conshohocken Borough

Conshohocken entered a new phase in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. A severe recession had hit the mills in 1873, blast furnaces declined into obsolescence and the general rate of economic and population growth declined. Yet the borough was still on solid ground. The torrid pace of the earlier industrial boom leveled off into a more controlled economy. Religious and civic institutions served the needs of a work force which was becoming older and more family-oriented. The rowdy, frontier-town mentality that had promoted taverns throughout the working class district and required a "lock-up" as the first civic building gave way to Victorian civility and the rise to prominence of the church and school. In a word, Conshohocken matured. Diversification of the economy was a product of this maturity.

In 1883, licenses were issued to 18 hotels, 7 restaurants, 3 dry-goods stores, 15 groceries, 3 tobacco shops, 3 pharmacies, 2 butchers, 4 confectionaries, 1 carpet store, 3 boot and shoe stores, 2 clothing stores, 1 lumber yard and 5 coal yards. Rather than boom and bust cycles attributed to a few businesses, the economy was opening up to a greater number of people. The general prosperity of a healthy economy could be shared at more levels of society, although the real wealth of the elite few never trickled down to anyone but their families. However, the lot of the laborers improved as the town matured and the economy prospered. Over a single generation the number of propertied men increased from a bare minimum to a point where nearly one half of the working men owned property.

Unskilled laborers were eager to buy property. In his thesis, Wooten asserts that "at least with a good number of the working class, the accumulation of property appears to have been an all-consuming preoccupation." The reasons for this may be that they had good veterans' benefits, or that good employment provided the economic and psychological impetus necessary to convince an unskilled laborer to buy property. According to local historian William Collins, "an unusually large number of unskilled laborers owned property in Conshohocken. Their religious leaders emphasized the family and home, and opinion frowned on transient laborers. By 1883, 78% of the laborers who owned property in the borough were foreign born." The prudent and thrifty worker may have saved for a lay-off, and when none came, he eventually had money to pay for a house. Laborers were encouraged to buy property, and those who did were considered solid, respectable, law-abiding citizens of the community, unlike transient workers who had little stake in the town welfare.

The 1880s brought building and loan companies to finance the new residential construction. (The first building and loan association in Montgomery County had been founded in Conshohocken on September 29, 1851.) Other services came to supplement and improve the existing infrastructure. James Wood Harry operated the first telephone in his Fayette Street drugstore in 1880. The Pennsylvania Railroad opened up a line in the Schuylkill Valley in 1883 with a station and stop in Conshohocken, standing today, although greatly altered, as the Outbound Station antique shop at the foot of Harry Street. In 1887, the Conshohocken Electric Light and Power Company built the first electric light plant. In 1893, the Conshohocken Street Railway Company built a trolley which connected Norristown, Plymouth Meeting and Conshohocken. Originally carrying passengers only as far as Twelfth Avenue, tracks were soon laid on Fayette Street, carrying people south. In the 1890s, two sports teams brought entertainment and a degree of recognition to Conshohocken. The 1893 "Ironmen" football team was league champions from 1895 to 1901. The basketball team, founded in 1894, was the acknowledged world champion in 1904-05.

By 1900, the population had swelled to 5762, a good percentage of which were immigrants. The Irish, who had earlier come to work in the mills and quarries, remained the largest segment. Their neighborhoods became known as "Whiskey Lane" in the area of West Elm and Colwell Lane, "Cork Row" along Maple Street from Elm to Third, "Irishtown" around Fifth and Wood Streets, and "Connaughtown," along Elm Street west of Plymouth Creek, extending into Plymouth Township. Polish immigrants began arriving in 1895,with the backbone of their new community along East and West Elm Streets. They were followed by the Italians in 1901. The Irish enclave, "Cork Row," was renamed "Little Italy" after the turn of the century.

Conshohocken had become a town with distinct neighborhoods based on class, ethnic and family ties. Occupations, which determined areas of residence, were prescribed by family, class and socio-economic background. As laborers began to buy property, the look of Conshohocken changed. Men built houses close to their work. The west side of town became home to the lower paid laborers in the early iron manufacturing and quarrying industries. The west side became less attractive to potential homeowners as those businesses were superseded by the more successful east side industries. The thriving industries on the east side attracted laborers who were paid more than their counterparts on the west side, and who contributed to an expanding residential working class district. Fayette Street clearly divided the town with a level of hierarchy even among the working class.

The 1891 Smith atlas provides a clear reflection of new construction which, with few exceptions, followed the patterns set forth during the early industrial boom of the mid-century. With the complete subdivision of the Trewendt estate from Second to Fourth Avenues between Fayette and Wood Streets, the west side residential enclaves would soon be solidified. Remaining late nine tenth-century construction on the west side of town was concentrated in the first several blocks west of Fayette.

Fayette Street itself experienced perhaps the greatest boom in construction, with virtually every lot from the Matson's Ford Bridge north to Ninth Avenue filled. From south to north, Fayette Street encompassed the lower commercial district, exemplified by civic buildings (Sons of America at the corner of Second Avenue and Fayette Street); churches, (the Calvary Episcopal Church at 317 Fayette); large corner estates ("Leeland" at the comer of Eighth Avenue and Fayette Street) and several attached houses. A small enclave of doctor's offices arose in the 300block of Fayettte Street (300, 312 Fayette Street). The already parceled east side saw the virtual completion of the Fourth and Fifth Avenue upper-class neighborhood, the expansion of the workers' housing eastward to the borough boundary and beyond, and the infill of new middle-class residences scattered northward to Eighth Avenue.

In the last decades of the 1800s, two businesses achieved a degree of success that would almost single-handedly carry Conshohocken into the twentieth century. Indicative of the changes brought by the stabilizing economic climate in the late 1809s, the two companies differed greatly in their backgrounds and industrial focus. One was the established industry of the Alan Wood Company with roots traceable to James Wood%1832 rolling mill. The other was the fledgling J. Ellwood Lee Company.

By 1901, the Alan Wood Company had attained an annual production of 25,000 tons of iron and steel. It could produce the iron self-sufficiently but the steel required the import of steel billets to heat and roll for steel sheets. The Wood Company needed its own means of steel production and the Alan Wood Iron and Steel Company was incorporated November 21, 1901, to include the Schuylkill Iron Works.

The son of a laborer in the J. Wood and Brothers rolling mill, J. Ellwood Lee began a small surgical supply business in 1883 in the attic of his mother's home at Eighth and Harry Streets. Having learned the business as an apprentice in the Snowden Company of Philadelphia, Lee rapidly parlayed a $400 loan from his Sunday School teacher, Charles Heber Clark, into a thriving business. He incorporated in 1888 with three large new mill buildings, one of which remains on East Eighth Avenue (101 East Eighth Avenue). Winner of five awards at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the Lee Company quickly established its superiority in the field. Following the pattern set by the elite of the early industrial era, Lee built his residence in town (730 Fayette Street) and maintained close ties with the existing upper class. His company's first board of directors included Alan Wood. Jr., Howard Wood, Charles Lukens, and as president, his first beneficiary, Charles Heber Clark. Through expansion and buyouts, the Lee Company grew to become the second largest in the industry by 1905,at which time it merged with Johnson and Johnson. Lee then entered into the new industry of tire manufacturing for which "Lee of Conshohocken" is still nationally known.