The History of Judson Iron Works
Judson Iron Works was founded by Egbert Judson in 1882. Born in Syracuse. New York on August 9. 1812. Judson was educated as a civil engineer. He came to San Francisco in 1852 via the gold fields. and founded the San Francisco Chemical Works in 1867. Inspired by Alfred Nobel. he manufactured dynamite and later founded the Giant Powder Co. at Kenvil, New Jersey.
Both Giant and Judson manufactured his patented Giant Powder #2. a blasting powder consisting of 40 parts Nitroglycerine, 40 parts sodium nitrate, 6 parts sulfur and 6 parts rosin. Three years later. Judson patented another explosive. called “Judson’s Railroad Powder,” a material used to move rocks and dirt in the process of railroad construction. He sold his interest in Giant Powder when the firm stopped buying acid from Judson Chemical. one of his other interests. and then founded the Judson Dynamite and Powder Co. to compete with Giant.
In 1882, he founded the Judson Iron Works, an outgrowth of a tack and horseshoe nail manufacturing plant. Judson’s business associates included Anthony Chabot, water baron and father of hydraulic mining, who had also come to the coast via the Mother Lode. The original ironworks occupied a nine-acre site ideally. situated between the railroad tracks and the Bay. In its cluster of brick buildings. Victor mowers and shipping crates were made. in addition to tacks and nails.
60 Tons of Tracks
By 1885, the plant consisted of 28 buildings, including a new brick warehouse. a bewildering labyrinth of shops. and some enormous shears for cutting up scrap iron. Judson’s annual payroll was $180,000. and 500 workers were employed. In 1887. an eyewitness account of the factory noted:
“The company was originally established for the manufacture of bar iron, foundry castings, agricultural implements, spikes, bolts, rivets, nuts, tacks, and lathing machines. Now the departments are as follows: a tack factory, second in capacity and size to none in the United States; a file factory. a wood shop, five engine halls. a machine shop, a mowing machine and agricultural implement section, pattern shops, a foundry for spikes and bolts, a rolling mill which turns out blazing circular bars from 18 to 40 feet in length, and which alone keeps 175 men constantly employed: a boiler room. a forge, and other minor activities connected with the vast industry.
Seventy live tack machines produce 60 tons of tacks a month when the demand requires it. Passing on to the file factory we come in contact with a number of busy artisans, who convert 1,000 dozen pieces of smooth steel into the best manufactured files every month. Ten thousand tons of iron scrap are rolled yearly, and it is proposed to increase this amount at once. To see the iron rolled, of all lengths, breadths, and thicknesses, is a study of itself.
The chief part of the scrap iron comes from Europe and is brought here as ballast for ships seeking wheat cargoes. The iron is transferred from ship to car at the end of the pier, and from car to the yard by a power device at the rolling mills. The scrap is reduced to convenient sizes by means of Brobdingnagian shears, which could cut an elephant into mincemeat. Four heating furnaces are employed, each of which is capable of receiving 4,000 pounds at a heating. From five to six heatings are a day’s work. The iron is weighed as it goes into the furnaces and again as it comes out. This is a necessity arising from the fact that the furnacemen and the rollingmen are paid by the ton, and for the purpose of determining the waste of material.
The rolling plant consists of a 10-inch and a 16-inch mill or set of rollers, and a tack plate mill. Each mill is provided with contrivances for producing every variety of merchantable, round, square, and flat bar and band iron. It is a curious and most interesting sight to watch the deft manner in which red-hot iron is manipulated from the time it is taken on wheeled carriers from the furnace mouth, conveyed to the first set of rollers and passed from one to the other. gradually changing its form in length. shape, and thickness, until it is hauled off with long handled tongs to the coolers where it remains until it can be safely handled. The rough bars are then taken to huge shears. cut up into short lengths, again heated and passed through the rollers a second time. By this second heating and rolling the iron is thoroughly welded. Iron from the best quality of wrought iron scrap, properly worked, is better than the same article produced from puddled iron. The rolling and tack mills are driven by a 250 H.P. vertical cut-off engine. The blast for the furnace is from a Sturtevant blower-the one generally used for such purposes.
The works burn every year about 6,000 tons of coal. principally ‘Bulli’ coal from Australia. which is used because it contains no Sulphur. The company supplies the whole of the Pacific Coast with its various products. Among these are the ‘A.B.C.’ fence of five double strands of wire. five rods to a roll; galvanized iron sheeting; the Paul quartz battery of 8-stamp mills and upwards; and the California Victor Mower. Ever active, the company has filled in acres of tide lands with slag, refuse and other material, until there is now a solid wharf, at least 150 feet long.” (1. Hinckel, Oakland 1852-1938, pp. 831-832).
By 1886, the Judson Manufacturing Company was considered to be one of the two leading industries in Alameda County, and its work force formed the nucleus of the growing settlement of Emeryville. Its tack factory was the largest in the United States. and the rolling mill which turned out bars for spikes and bolts-employed 175 men. Six boilers and from 350 to 500 workers were required to keep all the plants operating.
Egbert Judson, a lifelong bachelor, died in 1893.
California Bridge Company
Also on the Judson site was the California Bridge Company. a factory employing up to 250 workers which, according to an 1891 account, could build 30 to 40 bridges a year. These were located mainly on the Pacific coast, with some in Arizona, New Mexico, and Idaho. Noteworthy among the more than one thousand bridges were the iron drawbridge at Lathrop over the San Joaquin River; the 312-foot span over the Feather River at Gridley: five drawbridges over the Sacramento River; and a bridge over the Mad River built with 147-foot chord members sawn from giant redwoods.
In the 1930s, Judson constructed the approach structures and parts of the main spans of both the Golden Gate and San Francisco-Oakland bridges. The firm joined the war effort in the 1940s and built defense plants. It manufactured the steel for the Columbia Steel foundry building at Pittsburg, California. Other steel supply contracts included the plate and foundry shops for Bethlehem Steel in San Francisco: American Forge in Berkeley; Pacific Car and Foundry Company, Seattle: the machine shop structures for Joshua Hendy. Sunnyvale; plate and fabricating shops for Moore Dry Dock, Oakland; the Henry J. Kaiser Co. Richmond: and the Western Pipe and Steel Co., South San Francisco.
Judson also built several hundred electric traveling cranes and produced mechanized landing craft for the Navy. In the 1950s, the firm built girders for reinforcing the Golden Gate Bridge so that it would not suffer the Same fate as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which collapsed in a windstorm in 1940. In 1956, Judson developed an aluminum alloy which it used in constructing the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
Largest Steel Contract in the West
This versatile firm furnished steel for buildings as well. By 1911, Judson had provided structural steel for the new Capwell’s, the Bacon Building, the Oakland Bank of Savings Building, the Central Bank Building, the YMCA Building, Heeseman’s, and the new Oakland City Hall. in its day the largest steel contract made in the West.
Later notable buildings included Grace Cathedral, the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company Building, and many of the buildings in San Francisco’s Civic Center; several campus buildings at V.C. Berkeley and Stanford; and the exhibit buildings and the Tower of the Sun at the 1939 Treasure Island Exposition.
The age of steel in Emeryville lasted about a century. Its early and middle periods were characterized by rapid growth and diversification as the West Coast was developing. In its old age. however, the Judson plant fell victim to a series of ailments, including foreign competition and rising costs of labor and power.
Cheaper Power in Seattle
By August 1986, Judson was owned by Peko-Wallsend, an Australian firm. The plant’s three-year union contract-reached in 1983 after a four-month strike. but resulting in a $1.50/hr. pay cut anyway-was about to expire. Peko-Wallsend planned to cut 200 jobs after the contract’s expiration.
Later, a plan was announced whereby Birmingham Steel would buy the plant for $15 million and then spend several million more upgrading it and beautifying the surroundings. However. Birmingham. founded in 1984 to buy up old plants and tum them around, would not be allowed to stay in Emeryville past 1997 because of the City of Emeryville’s plans for a biotech park which included the 27-acre site.
A non-union employer. Birmingham operated the factory, now called Barbary Coast Steel, for 2 1/2 years, making reinforcing bars from scrap metal. The plan to tum the factory around financially failed because fuel costs rose precipitously, along with taxes. freight, labor, and the cost of scrap metal.
Consequently, in January of 1991, Barbary Coast decided to move its production to Seattle, where the firm had two other plants and cheaper power. One hundred fifty workers planned to move to the Emerald City. In Emeryville, only memories remain of Judson, which once had the biggest payroll in town.
This story originally published in 1996 for the Emeryville Centennial Celebration and compiled into the ‘Early Emeryville Remembered’ historical essays book.
