Transportation - The Cambridge Historical Commission Blog

The Ashton Valve Company

Posted on April 7, 2020May 13, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Today’s post was written by guest author Rick Ashton and tells the story of the Ashton Valve Company, formerly located at 161 First Street, East Cambridge.

The sound of a steam train whistle in the distance can stir your imagination. The Ashton Valve Company offered locomotive whistles in sizes up to 48″ tall. The beautiful brass gauges in the cab of a locomotive and the safety valves on the engine also could have been manufactured by Ashton Valve. For over 100 years the company was one of the leading manufacturers of railroad-related items.

ashton_lock_valve_patent_1872-1024x1522 — Courtesy Rick Ashton, https://newsm.org/manufacturers/ashton-valve-co/

One Ashton item was an innovation that saved lives. How? If the engine’s boiler happened to build up too much pressure, the Ashton “Pop” Safety Valve would activate or “pop” and let the excess steam blow off, preventing a possible boiler explosion. We have Henry G. Ashton to thank for that life-saving invention.

Henry G. Ashton was born in Norfolk, England in 1846 (Editor’s note: Henry G. Ashton is the great-great-grandfather of this post’s guest author, Rick Ashton). He attended public schools and took courses in mechanical engineering. In 1869 he arrived in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife Emma and infant son, Albert. He was first employed by the Hinkley Locomotive Works. In 1871 he invented his Lock-up “Pop” Safety Valve. It was the first effective safety valve to actually work and was an immediate success. He formed the Ashton’s Lock Safety Valve Company (Ashton Valve Company) and set up shop on Pearl Street in Boston with three other employees. In 1872 the company secured a contract with the United States Navy for safety valves, a contract they held for 76 years.

Ashton_Valves_Adverts_001-300 — Henry G. Ashton. Courtesy Rick Ashton.

The Great Boston Fire of 1872 destroyed the Pearl Street building, but the company persevered and by 1879 they relocated to 271 Franklin Street, a building they would occupy for 27 years. The building was four stories tall and business was so strong that in 1900 a fifth floor was added to keep up with the demand. In 1892 they purchased the Boston Steam Gauge company and began manufacturing steam gauges, a perfect compliment to the various steam related valves they were producing. The gauges were manufactured with the same assurance of quality as the valves were.

ashton_valvegauge_ad

After 24 years of managing the company, Henry Ashton, the company founder, died in 1895. His son Albert, who had attended engineering classes at MIT, took over many of the management responsibilities and ran the company for the next 27 years.

Ashton Valve outgrew the Franklin Street building and in 1907 they built a new facility at 161 First Street in East Cambridge. The building was 45,000 square feet and was built at a cost of $67,000. That’s $1,797,000 in 2018 dollars. A completely modern building, it had electricity on all floors and modern bathroom facilities. The building still stands today with the Ashton Valve name carved in granite over the front entrance.

Sentinel19201225-01.2.84-a6-700w — Credit: Cambridge Sentinel, 1921.

1-161First-StreetEXT.

Screenshot 2020-04-06 at 3.38.01 PM — 161 First Street today. Credit: Google Maps.

By 1907 the company had sales offices all over the world. Ashton products were internationally known for their quality. As their advertisements stated, “higher in first cost but cheapest in the end.” The 1920’s and 1930’s were the peak years and the company employed up to 300 people. Their profits often were in the millions (in today’s dollars).

Ashton’s Railroad Division had been the backbone of the company since its inception in 1871 and was run as a separate entity until the 1950’s. They produced separate catalogs for the valves, whistles, and gauges used on trains. Some of the Ashton products produced for the train industry included: locomotive mufflers and open pop safety valves, steam gauges including the Ashton-Lane-Bourdon locomotive gauge, double spring steam locomotive gauges, duplex steam and heat gauges, air brake gauges, protected dial pressure gauges, air brake recording gauges, wheel press recording gauges, locomotive steam whistles and whistle valves.

49033923077_be405083f1_o — Ashton Valve pressure gauge, ca. 1923-1924. CHC Objects Collection. Photographed by John Dalterio.

With the advent of diesel locomotives, electricity, and gas engines, sales started to drop off in the late 1940’s. The peak years were over. In 1948 Ashton merged with the Crosby Valve and Gauge Company, but kept the Ashton name alive until sometime in the early 2000’s. Today one is liable to see the Ashton Valve name on gauges sold on eBay to collectors, and they demand a high price.

The next time you hear a train whistle in the distance, think of the Ashton Valve company – it could be an Ashton whistle!

Sources and Related Reading:

The Ashton Valve Company

https://steampunk-explorer.com/articles/family-history-steam

https://cambridgehistory.org/industry/ashtonvalve.html

https://www.steamlocomotive.com/appliances/safetyvalve.php

Deteriorating Negatives

Posted on June 7, 2019August 17, 2020 by Brittany F.

This blog post was authored by our spring Simmons University archives intern, Brittany Fox.

Sometimes the life-cycles of records must come to an end. Despite unremitting efforts to preserve our holdings, the nature of the material can lead to irreparable damage. Recalling that April 21-27 was Preservation Week, today we are highlighting how sometimes items must be removed from a collection to protect the safety of other records.

Certain negatives from our Cambridge Engineering image collection have deteriorated due to improper chemical processing during their creation. The negatives have seized, buckled, and bubbled, which has compromised their physical integrity. There is no way to stabilize this type of deterioration and the mutation can cause damage to other negatives in physical proximity. When negatives undergo this type of decay, they can give off acetate gas. This anomaly, also known as Vinegar Syndrome due to its vinegar-like smell, can initiate similar decay in nearby negatives. Therefore, we have decided to discard these negatives.

But fret not, we have digitized and saved them as high-resolution images. Although they will no longer be preserved in their original form, we have maintained access to the content through digitization. Print copies have also been created as a backup precaution.

33-35 Pearl St 1971 — Scanned version of negative, 33-35 Pearl Street

Mass Ave at Everett St E-1983 — Mass Ave at Everett St

While the preservation of our negatives is a major priority, it is also important to learn about their context as well. They were part of a collection of over a thousand 5” x 7” negatives dating from the late 1920s through the 1960s that were given to the Commission by Cambridge former City Engineer James Rice in the early 1980s. Between the 1920s and 1940s a member of the City Engineer’s staff functioned as the city’s official photographer, collaborating with the City Solicitor, the Department of Public Works, and the Cambridge Police Department. Whenever a citizen filed a claim or directed attention toward an issue or hazard that arose in the city, such as potholes, dangerous sidewalks, and motor vehicle accidents, the City Engineer send a photographer to the site. These photographs were used when the complaints were taken to the city courts to be rectified.

The negatives were acquired by the CHC along with the City Engineer’s Graflex Speed Graphic camera. In order to make an image the photographer would have inserted a sheet of unexposed film into a film holder in the darkness of a light-proof bag. Once secure so that no light would inadvertently expose the negative, the film holder would be inserted into the camera. A film holder could accommodate two pieces of film, so to make a dozen images the photographer would have to prepare and carry six bulky film holders. This particular type of camera has a focal plane shutter and a removable dark slide. It was meticulous work to get just one photographic negative and we have hundreds in the collection! Executive Director Charles Sullivan took several photos with this camera for publication in the Commission’s 1988 book, East Cambridge. Large format film and photo-processing labs are difficult or impossible to find today, so the camera will probably never be used again.

Some of the damaged negatives pulled from the collection exhibit automobile accidents, buckling sidewalks, and an exposed pipe in a giant hole. While they were intended as evidence for court hearings, the images also have secondary uses. They incorporate everyday snapshots of life in Cambridge between the 1920s-1940s, from the fashion of the passersby to the models of the cars. While these few images do not tell a very broad story, the collection in its entirety has a high future research value.

Belmont Bird St E-9092A — Automobile crash, Belmont and Bird St.

If you are interested in this collection or any of our other resources, please make a research appointment at histcomm@cambridgema.gov. Our research hours are: Monday: 4:00-7:00 pm | Tuesday: 2:00-4:00 pm | Wednesday – Thursday: 9:30-11:30 and 2-4 pm.

Meigs Elevated Railway

Posted on November 16, 2018May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

An unusual and widely unknown transit experiment took place right here in Cambridge, known as the Meigs Elevated Railway. Born in Tennessee in 1840, Josiah Vincent Meigs was an inventor; spending most of his life inventing and patenting devices from furniture to guns. Throughout his life, he was interested in making public transportation better and more efficient and wanted to remove the “clutter” of elevated railways in cities. From this, he came up with his proposal, the Meigs Elevated Railway.

Meigs Elevated_Drawing004

With an emphasis on safety, comfort and convenience, the track structure consisted of two rails, one mounted above the other on a line of supports. The single post system would remove roughly four fifths of the structure that darkened streets under other elevated systems of the time. One pair of wheels were angled at 45 degrees and carried the weight of the train; while the other pair, mounted horizontally inside the locomotive, gripped the upper rail and provided driving power. The cars were designed cylindrical to diminish wind resistance and the interiors lined with fireproof material.

Meigs Elevated_Interior006

In 1881, to encourage capital investment and fulfill terms of an earlier charter (which had over 64,000 signatures), Meigs and his friends headquartered at 225 Bridge Street (now Monsignor O’Brien Hwy) and raised $200,000 to build an experimental track. A 227’ line of elevated track was built parallel to Bridge Street with varied elevation changes and curves to test the new system. In 1886, engineers deemed the elevated system “practical and safe”.

Meigs Elevated_Rail Detail and House005

Sadly, it was neither capital nor legislation which finally sank the Meigs Elevated, it was the coming of electricity. While the Meigs system could be fitted to run on electrical power, Josiah believed that electric-powered trains were too expensive and could not provide the speed the system needed. Further setbacks occurred when vandalism and the West End Elevated Railway became direct competition and the Meigs took its final run in 1894. Meigs later sold his charter rights in 1896 and his dreams for were disbanded. In failing health from his Civil War injuries, Josiah Vincent Meigs died from a stroke on November 14, 1907 in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

Meigs Elevated_Philly City Council003

Much more information and photographs are in our collections!

A Whaleback Barge in the Charles River

Posted on October 30, 2018May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Today’s post was written by CHC Executive Director Charles M. Sullivan.

In 1894 the Union Switch & Signal Company installed signals that prevented trains on the Boston & Maine and Fitchburg railroads from proceeding in or out of North Station when the Charles River drawbridges were in the raised position.

barge_Charles_Riv — Whaleback barge in the Charles River, ca. 1895. Photographer unknown.

The company publicized the project by distributing this photo of three empty coal barges passing through the drawbridges. The three-masted barge in the foreground was probably built as a schooner, but it retains only vestiges of its original rig. A similar vessel leads the procession.

9-5 — Figure 9.5 from *Building Old Cambridge: Architecture and* Development. Wharves near Harvard Square, ca. 1862. Sargent’s Wharf (foreground) is piled with lumber; four two-masted schooners are tied up beyond the College Wharf.

The second vessel was a steel whaleback barge, a rarity on the East Coast. This type of vessel was developed to carry bulk cargoes on the Great Lakes. The first, Barge 101, was launched at Duluth, Minnesota in 1888.

LOC_1 — “Whaleback Str. A.D. Thompson [sic],” ca. 1905 by Detroit Publishing Co. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The design was a mixed success, but over the next eight years the American Steel Barge Co. built about 40 more whaleback barges and steamships. The company also had two vessels, Barge 201 and Barge 202, built in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1890 for saltwater service.

LOC_2 — “Loading the Great Whaleback Ship at the Famous Grain Elevators, Chicago, U.S.A.,” ca. 1895. Photographed by George Barker, published by Strohmeyer & Wyman. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Charles River photo shows the 190-foot-long Barge 202 returning to Boston Harbor after delivering coal to a wharf upstream on the Charles River. On June 18, 1892 the Cambridge Tribune noted that the whaleback then discharging 1,400 tons of coal at Richardson & Bacon’s wharf near Harvard Square was “the largest boat that ever came through the Craigie Bridge.”

Even in the late 19^th century the Charles remained an important avenue of commerce; in 1893 sixty-four sailing vessels and sixty-one barges called at wharves in Old Cambridge (Harvard Square) and Watertown.

9-11 — Figure 9.11 from *Building Old Cambridge: Architecture and Development.* The industrial waterfront of Old Cambridge, seen from the chimney of the Boston Elevated Railway’s power plant in 1897. Richardson & Bacon’s coal shed is in the foreground. A schooner is unloading bulk cargo at Sargent’s Wharf. The Cambridge Park Commission has moved the Cambridge Casino from the foot of Hawthorn Street to the flats near DeWolfe Street, where it was burned by arsonists. Harvard moved its boathouses downstream below Winthrop’s Wharf in the 1870s to escape the city’s sewer outfall at the foot of Dunster Street.

This photo was taken in 1897, soon after Barges 201 and 202 brought cargoes of coal from Edgewater, N.J. A year later both vessels were sent to the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence River and the Welland Canal. The last whaleback on the Great Lakes was taken out of service in 1969 and is preserved at Superior, Wisconsin.

Sources:

C. Roger. Pellett, Whaleback Ships and the American Steel Barge Company (Wayne State
University Press, 2018)

Susan E. Maycock and Charles M. Sullivan, Building Old Cambridge: Architecture and
Development (MIT Press, 2016)

Boston Globe, Boston Post, Cambridge Chronicle, and Cambridge Tribune