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The technical difficulties of the last few days have encouraged me to write today about construction and repairs. What else would fit such a post better than a metalworking machine.   When I photographed this tool, I was fascinated by its age and by the obscure company name more than anything else.  That fascination has cost me the better part of a Wednesday evening. 

 After hours of research on the internet I can tell you quite a bit about this company.  It turns out that the Detrick & Harvey machine company was at the forefront of the milling and boring market in the late 1800′s.  The company also appeared in every major industrial catalog of the early 20th century.   It would appear that the company moved from being a mere supplier of machinery to a machiner of parts themselves.  This is especially true during World War One and the period just prior, when they machined many parts for the military.  The company became so big that it began subcontracting some work out and, in a very 1910 sort of way, began to look like one of today’s large government contractors.   

One of the founders was a Harvard graduate, and he appears to have been a very good networker in that I’ve read atricles saying that he had ties to the leaders of many of the biggest contractors of the day.  This would  include Bethlehem Steel and Fairbanks Morse.  Toward the end of the war the company was actually purchased by Bethlehem Steel. 

Despite the company’s success, I could find little about their specific location within the city of Baltimore.  They usually listed just their name and “Baltimore MD”  as apparently almost any company could be contacted in those days without the benefit of a street address.   As I learned more about this company, I was frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t find an address.  All I wanted to do was take a picture of the place where this machine was made.  Hours of additional research brought me nowhere.  Then I finally stumbled upon an invoice, or maybe what some would call a requisition, for goods purchased by the college of Notre Dame (of all places to purchase heavy machinery) that listed the address of the suppliers they were using.  The Detrick & Harvey Machinery company was listed at 508 E. Preston St.  

This address puts it close to Greenmount ave, just south of North ave.  Today, that address is held by a few auto supply shops, but I cannot tell if the original buildings still stand.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 12:44 AM and is filed under Baltimore City. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.