Made In Wheeling

Since the early 1800s, Wheeling has played a crucial role in bringing people and products to and from West Virginia. The convergence of the Ohio River, National Road and the B&O Railroad made Wheeling a natural setting for growth and development.

In the late 19th century, Wheeling was completely self-sufficient, manufacturing all goods and services and growing all foods within its borders. This era marked the city’s most intensive industrial period; the wealth generated by this industry and commerce produced much of the city’s Victorian architectural legacy.

Products like the ones below weren’t just made in Wheeling – they also helped make Wheeling what it is today.

Bayer Aspirin

While much of Wheeling was busy inventing and manufacturing products, Wheeling-based Sterling Products was in the process of introducing one of the most revolutionary pain relieving drugs to the United States – the aspirin. The genius of the company was not in its innovative research but in its brilliant and prescient marketing of up-and-coming pharmaceutical products, particularly patent products that thrived in rural areas. Started in 1901 by a drugstore clerk, William Erhard Weiss, and his high school friend, Albert H. Diebold, Sterling began as the Neuralgyline Company. The company aggressively marketed its patented pain reliever, Neuralgine. With $10,000 in sales in the first year alone, the two men invested in advertising campaigns in the Pittsburg market for their product. They had amassed so much money by 1907 that the two purchased the Sterling Remedy Company and changed the name to Sterling Products later changed to Sterling Drug, Inc. in 1942).

When the U.S. government seized the German-owned Friedrich Bayer Company’s American holdings after World War I, the Alien Property Custodian auctioned the American Bayer Company. Sterling Products of Wheeling put forth an astounding $5.3 million to acquire the company’s U.S. holdings. In the process, it became the owner to the patent of one particular scientific breakthrough – aspirin. It consisted of synthesized salicylates, which naturally occur in the bark of willows and other plants. In 1921, after a U.S. judge allowed the use of “aspirin” as a generic term, Sterling attached the name “Bayer” onto its products. Ironically, after months of domination of the worldwide market for aspirin, Sterling eventually ran into stiff competition in the 1920s from its German counterpart, I.G. Farben, Bayer’s new parent company. In what became a major transformation for Sterling, the two parties agreed to exchange holdings. Sterling would give Farben half of its stock in its laboratory subsidiary, Winthrop Industries, in exchange for Farben’s manufacturing and patent data for future discoveries. The profit potential for Sterling was huge, which management placed at upwards of $100 million.

The effect of this allowed Germany to “colonize” markets. Sterling came close to violating the U.S. government’s sanctions of German products during World War II when it exported some of its products to other countries’ markets, which were derivatives of its earlier patent sharing with Farben. However, through savvy public relations, Sterling executives managed to avoid any antitrust litigation by the government.

While Wheeling was an ideal market for patent-based medicines that benefited greatly from marketing, by mid0century the company would eventually leave Wheeling for New York City in order to expand its research efforts that a small market could not afford. By the 1970s, sales of Bayer Aspirin reached over $50 million a year. Sterling would go on to purchase over 100 companies and maintain well over 50 plants throughout the world.

Hazel-Atlas Jars

The Hazel-Atlas Glass Corporation was a major player in the evolution of glass jars, which were found in every single household in the nation. The company was driven by its goal of making “glass containers cheaper than tin cans.” Although most people are familiar with its home canning jars with the recognizable “HA” on the jar, it manufactured a whole array of glass containers that transformed both the grocery store and kitchen.

The Wheeling-based company was a conglomeration of a variety of glass and metal companies. Its persistence in exploring glass jar technologies led to a whole litany of inventions and items first to market. Wheeling resident Joan Weiskircher is the leading historian and an aficionado of Hazel-Atlas Glass. In her article, “Hazel-Atlas: A Home Grown Corporation,” she summarizes the impact the company had on the glass jar industry. The company was the first to produce opal ointment, mayonnaise, pickle, and baby food jars. It also produced the first glass press machine, the Marry-Go-Round press. However, the most important first for the company was a patent that owner Charles Brady helped to establish – the Blue Machine. In the late nineteenth century, Brady invested in Wheeling Mold and Foundry Company, and together with that company’s owner, Charles blue, invented a machine that could produce glass jars mechanically. This was revolutionary. It “moved production out of the hand blown era,” according to Weiskircher, and began the era of mass-produced glass jars.

Although the company was headquartered in Wheeling, production occurred elsewhere in its plants located in nine states all over the country. In 1956, the Continental Can Company purchased the Wheeling company.

“Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco – Treat Yourself to the Best” Signs

The ubiquitous Mail Pouch Tobacco sign is one of the most notable and successful large-scale outdoor advertising initiatives in the country. Long before the highway billboard of today existed, Wheeling’s Bloch Brothers started a campaign in 1890 offering farmers to regularly paint their barns with the company’s iconic “Treat Yourself to the Best” sign. It carries the distinction of being the oldest continuous outdoor advertising campaign launched in America. The sign advertised the company’s Mail Pouch chewing tobacco, which was brought to market in 1879. It was made from leftover stogie clippings that were flavored and packaged in a paper bag. For the farmer, it was free barn maintenance. For the Bloch Brothers, however, it proved to be indispensable.

Mail Pouch signs not only appeared on barns, but also on the sides of buildings all over the United States, and particularly around the Ohio River Valley. The signs became both effective advertising and sentimental folk art. “There will be a time when they will be hanging in a craft museums on the wall next to patchwork quilts so that we can understand their beauty as a craft,” noted American architect Robert Venturi in a 1999 The New York Times interview. Even the likes of ABC’s Ted Koppel has had his own barn painted with the famous sign.

The bold, simple motif of the sign made the Bloch Brothers immortal. The last of the sign painters, Belmont, Ohio-resident Harvey Warrick, worked on over 20,000 barns in his lifetime. In addition to pay, he received a carton of Mail Pouch from the company. The creation of Mail Pouch signs gradually came to an end in the latter half of the twentieth century after federal regulations prohibited outdoor advertising of tobacco. Many barns today still carry fading remnants of the country’s premier outdoor advertising campaign.

Cut Nails

Though LaBelle Iron Works was not the first producer of cut nails in Wheeling, its nails have stood for 158 years as a testament to the everlasting spirit of industrial Wheeling.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Wheeling was the only manufacturer of cut nails west of Pittsburgh. The city served as a busy port on the Ohio River, as well as a stop on the B&O Railroad and National Road. Those factors, combined with an abundant supply of natural fuels, made the city a perfect spot for a manufacturing company. Twenty-two men split from Belmont Nail Works (a local nail factory) in 1852, to create Baily, Woodward, and Company, later known as LaBelle Iron Works.

With the production of dimensional lumber and advancements in transportation, LaBelle’s nails were shipped farther than ever before. A setback occurred for the cut nail industry in the 1870s when the wire nail was invented, diminishing the need for LaBelle’s traditional cut nails. But LaBelle rallied and remained an industry leader until the 1890s, employing 3,500 workmen and at one time creating approximately 40 percent of the nation’s cut nails.

But 1914, LaBelle was the only nail manufacturer remaining of the many that had made Wheeling known as “Nail City.” Until the company closed in 2010, the company still manufactured cut nails using the same machinery dating from 1852.

Stogies

The broad, slender and inexpensive cigar that is known worldwide for its unique flavor and traditional “crude” but mild style was made famous in Wheeling. In 1840, Miflin M. Marsh, a Quaker, founded Marsh Wheeling. It produced a distinctive, thin cigar that was sold to pioneers passing through on steamboats and Conestoga wagons. The name “stogie” was derived from the name of the wagons. Marsh Wheeling was the first company to use the term “stogie” in its packaging. In the beginning, Marsh made these cigars in his home, but as the product peaked in popularity, it was made in dozens of factories around town. Operations were eventually consolidated and moved to 9^th and Main streets. Many residents can still remember the thick stench of tobacco that filled the streets of downtown Wheeling as late as the 1990s.

Until it closed its doors in 2001, Marsh Wheeling was the oldest continuously operational cigar manufacturer in the United States and the oldest manufacturing facility in Wheeling.

Notables such as Daniel Webster, P.T. Barnum, and Annie Oakley were all smokers of Marsh Wheeling Stogies. In 1886, when Wheeling tobacco producers had made over 30 million cigars per year, a local author commented on the fame of the Marsh Wheeling Stogie, particularly how it had conquered even the deep South, where the pipe was the smoke of choice. “There is an indispensable charm about it – a grace of proportion, a sturdy honesty, a readiness to come up to its work at all times – which has enabled it to surmount even this obstacle, and now thousands upon thousands go to ‘the land of the cypress and pine,’ the cotton field, the rice and the sugar plantation.”

The success of Marsh Wheeling, according to experts in the industry, made Wheeling the center of the cigar industry for some time. At one point, the stogie was so common a sight at bars and taverns that it was considered “Free as air,” and place d n the bar top to be taken like pretzels or toothpicks.

The cult status of the Marsh Wheeling Stogie lived on through its iconic cigar box. Empty stogie boxes were reused by families across the country for anything from holding drill bits in the tool room to children’s pencils at the school desk.

Wheeling Steamboats

Boat production began in Wheeling in the early 1800s. As an industry, it created a number of boat yards, lumber mills and machine companies that attracted people interested in river craft to the area. Barges, keelboats, flatboats, bateau (a flat-bottomed skiff), pirogues, deep-bellied schooners, stern-wheels, and steamboats were constructed at different points along this section of the Ohio River. It would be steamboat construction in Wheeling that contributed to the Ohio River’s “Steamboat Age” unlike any other city at the time. It began when a man named Henry Shreve arrived in Wheeling with a new idea for a steamboat design and the itch to build.

Only a few years before Shreve came to Wheeling, he had manned the steamboat Enterprise on its maiden voyage from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. When he brought it back to Pittsburgh, it became the first boat to navigate upstream under its own power. Through a successful run, Shreve was unhappy with the design and had changes in mind for his next build.

Shreve then came to Wheeling in 1815 and constructed the Washington on the north bank of Wheeling Creek. The boat was only the eighth steamboat built on western rivers and the first in Wheeling. Named in honor of President George Washington, the boat was completed in 1816 and launched later that year. Some reports describe the boat as being constructed from timbers salvaged from the old Fort Henry.

According to local steamboat historian John Bowman, Shreve’s design of the Washington was revolutionary for the industry and served as a prototype for all steamboats built from then on.

Pressed Metal Ceilings

Upon entering any turn-of-the-century storefront in Wheeling, one’s eyes are inevitably drawn to the beautiful designs of a metal ceiling hanging overhead.

Contrary to the name, they were never made of tin nor known by the name “tin ceilings” until the recent past. Believed to be fireproof, these ceilings were made of either iron or steel and had a higher heat threshold than other traditional ceiling products when exposed to flame. They became popular for Americans who wanted to evoke the more expensive ornate plaster ceilings found in European homes at the time.

The Wheeling Corrugating Company began producing ornamental steel ceiling plates in 1989. Only eight years after the company opened, it quickly distinguished itself with quality product production. Aided by 15 strategically placed warehouses located from Main to Minnesota, and a catalog with a variety of products, they were able to distribute orders with speed and efficiency. Not only were pressed steel ceilings produced, but also a range of products which included steel roofing, steel siding, corrugated iron, eave trough and conductor pipe, to name a few.

A 1930 Wheeling Corrugating Company catalog explains why their steel ceilings were unique when compared to others: “More important than any other improvement in the steel ceiling industry has been the perfection of re-pressed bead joints and die-cut nail boles.” It was these features that allowed for easier and more precise installation as well as more close fitting joints.

Metal grew scarce during the war years, and metal ceiling production all but disappeared after World War II. Wheeling Corrugating merged with Wheeling Steel in 1940, and by the 1950s metal ceilings had disappeared from the market.

Wheeling Ambulance

From 1809 until mid-century and the advent of the Civil War, the U.S. Army had been using a two-wheeled cart to transport the battlefield’s injured to field hospitals.

As the Civil War casualties demanded more effective transport, two new ambulance wagons proved inadequate. One was a two-wheeled wagon which soldiers christened the “avalanche,” because it was so unstable. The other, a heavyweight, four-wheeled wagon, was too cumbersome.

West Virginia’s medical director, Major Jonathan Letterman, also became medical director for General McClennan’s Army of the Potomac. He established field hospitals, improved medical supply distribution and the effectiveness of the ambulance service. Now known as the “Father of Battlefield Medicine,” Letterman’s work saved thousands of lives.

Since 1832, Wheeling’s Busbey, Little & Co. had been one of Virginia’s most successful builders of wagons, buggies, carts, and carriages. The wheelwright made large, heavy-wheeled wagons for hauling timber and lighter wagons for hauling cotton and tobacco. After merging with another local maker of fine carriages, E. Hays and Co., their combined reputations grew.

At the first battle of Bull Run in 1861, the Union Army suffered 681 casualties and 1,011 wounded that overwhelmed the Army’s ambulance wagon capacity, and it sought help from the industry leader, Busbey, Little, Hays & Company. Using a new design by a General Rosecrans, they built a medium weight, four-wheeled ambulance wagon, which was pulled by two horses and could carry 12 wounded, 10 sitting and 2 reclining. In December 1861, Busbey, Little and Hays received its first order for 100 of what the U.S. Army called “Wheeling Ambulances.” One year later, at the Battle of Gettysburg, 1,000 ambulance wagons evacuated 14,163 Union casualties and 6,802 Confederate casualties, leaving no casualties on the battlefield.

The Wheeling (also known as Rosecrans) Ambulance became the most prominent ambulance used from the time of the Civil War until it was finally replaced at the start of the twentieth century with an ambulance that could carry tiered stretchers. These ambulances eventually became motorized, thanks to the early development work of Ford and GMC.

Wheeling Tile

At the turn of the twentieth century, technical invention revolutionized ceramic tile production. While the peak of the “tile boom” occurred during the Victorian era, ceramic tiles were an answer to public health concerns in a time when viruses, bacteria, and infection were still killing people at an alarming rate. Tile was considered easy to clean and more sanitary than other options.

Wheeling had its own well-known manufacturer, the Wheeling Tile Company. Located on several blocks between 31st and 33rd streets in South Wheeling, the company was created when two existing pottery and tile companies, Riverside Pottery and Wheeling Pottery, merged in 1912. Those two companies became larger and stronger when united under the Wheeling Tile Company name.

The company produced both ornamental and wall tile. By 1934, there were three separate plants at the South Wheeling location. Their tile was sent far and wide and marketed across the country. They filled orders from warehouses in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas. Wheeling Tile closed in 1962 after declaring bankruptcy. Part of the factory still remains at 31st and Eoff streets, and you can still make out the faded script of “Wheeling Tile” on the only surviving building of the complex.

Glass

Glassblowing is said to be America’s first industry, dating to 1608. Two major ingredients required for making glass, silica sand and soda ash, were plentiful on the coast, as was the fuel necessary to keep ovens burning 24/7. However, after the country declared and won its independence from the British, more and more immigrants began to arrive and move inland. At first, their need for glass was simple – window glass for their homes and glass bottles for daily living.

By the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Wheeling’s location on the Ohio River made it both a shipping port and a major manufacturing location for glass, pottery, steel, coal and natural gas. Not only were sand and soda ash plentiful, but so were the coal and natural gas needed to heat the ovens.

According to Holly McCluskey, curator of glass at the Oglebay Institute’s Glass Museum, there once were 100 plants along the Wheeling to Pittsburgh corridor, all engaged in various types of glass manufacturing. “By the turn of the twentieth century, this area accounted for 50 percent of America’s pressed glass tableware, and one in every ten people worked in the glass industry,” said McCluskey.

Invented in 1676 in England, lead crystal was an expensive, decorative glass most prized and collected by the wealthy. Lead made the glass more malleable, and the skilled labor required to work with it made it more expensive. In 1863, a new formula developed in Wheeling revolutionized the industry. An employee of Hobbs Brockunier Company, William Leighton, added bicarbonate of soda to the glass batch which made it easier to shape in a mold than traditional lead crystal and thus less labor intensive. Still in use today, this formula allowed Hobbs Brockunier to mass-produce exquisite pieces of decorative glass for millions of Americans, at far less cost.

Another Hobbs Brockunier employee, Mike Owens, invented a machine that rotated continuously while sucking glass directly from a tank by vacuum and placing it in a blank mold for finishing. Consistent in weight and quality, the revolutionary Owens machine greatly improved production. Libbey Glass funded the research and did well licensing the process to other glass companies, the most notable being the Wheeling-based industry giant, Hazel-Atlas Glass.

This content provided by INWheeling Magazine.