Remembering Conshohocken and West Conshohocken by Jack Coll Read Free Book Online Page A

keeping up with production, as it began work on buildings such as the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., the Equitable Assurance Building in New York, the Inquirer Building in Philadelphia, the H.J. Reynolds Tobacco Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, several buildings on Wall Street and dozens more. In later years, Walker installations included heavy power cables vital to space satellite launchings at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and an under-floor wiring system in the White House Oval Office, transmitting reports of nuclear events to the president of the United States of America.
    By the mid-1920s, Walker Brothers realized that it needed a suburban location that would provide space for continued expansion. Hervey pointed out an old abandoned terra cotta pottery factory site in the Spring Mill section of Montgomery County. Newton was unimpressed with the property, but Hervey pointed out the rich history of the area, not to mention two railroads—the Pennsylvania and Reading lines—running right past the property, the river and canal behind the property and finished roadways for overland shipping and transportation. Newton also pointed out the successful businesses just across the tracks, including the Lee Tire and Rubber Company and, just up the Schuylkill River, Alan Wood Steel Company, operating at that point for nearly a century.
    On June 5, 1926, Walker Brothers officially purchased the property from George N. Witherspoon and his wife, Jean, of Hendersonville, North Carolina. The riverfront property that had been known as the old Moreland Clay Works was purchased for a total price of $16, 715.88, with an adjoining fifty-foot lot bought for $1,621.00.
    Years later, when Walker Brothers of Conshohocken Company became the biggest manufacturer of underground electric cables in the country, Hervey turned his attention to civic-minded projects. In March 1945, the Walkers founded the Conshohocken Business Association with 62 charter members. Newton spearheaded the purchase of Leeland, the former home of John Elwood Lee, located on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Fayette Street, and turned the property into a centrally located meeting place. By the early 1950s, more than 150 local business executives and industrial men would meet at Leeland, set up as a luncheonette to discuss routine problems pertaining to production, sales, labor and current economic situations and outlooks.
    In 1953, after more than three years of Newton raising money for the Conshohocken Community Chest for the purpose of building a youth center called the Fellowship House (a name given by Newton Walker), the community center opened its door with Newton presiding. The Fellowship House opened at Christmastime in 1953 at a grand building cost of $225,000, most of it donated by Walker Brothers or fundraising undertaken by Newton.
    In 1958, following a fire at the Harry Street School, the borough was in financial straits and unable to rebuild the school. It was Hervey to the rescue—he drafted the plans and laid out a good portion of the funds to rebuild a modern school, renamed Hervey S. Walker Elementary School. In 1957, a group of businessmen founded the Leeland Foundation, with Albert A. Garthwaite Sr. as president and Hervey S. Walker as one of the founders. The Leeland Foundation still gives out grants and supports Conshohocken today.
    Hervey S. Walker never lived in Conshohocken; in fact, he lived six miles from the town in Haverford. He passed away in September 1958 in Atlantic City. Many people never knew what the “S.” stood for in his name; it was Stricker, Hervey Stricker Walker.
T HE Q UAKER C HEMICAL S TORY
    Quaker Chemical had very humble beginnings when Emil Niessen, a German-born chemist who had been a salesman for a chemical company, began his business on December 13, 1918. Niessen started his business on the second floor of an old factory that was located on the berm bank between the canal and the