Location: Industrial Works, Bay City, MI

The Industrial Works, later known as Industrial Brownhoist, was located on the east side of the Saginaw River in downtown Bay City. The company made large wreck cranes for railroads throughout the United States and the world. It was perhaps Bay City's largest single manufacturing facility.

Photo info: A postcard view of the Works and office building from the early 1900's.

Notes

The company was founded in 1873, and reincorporated in 1904 and 1924. The Company manufactures locomotive cranes for all purposes, railroad pile drivers, clam shell buckets, and spare parts and supplies. Its general products are used by practically every railroad in the United States, and in the manufacturer of railroad wrecking cranes in particular, the Company has stood for years without serious competition.

The plant of the Industrial Works in Bay City fronts the Saginaw River and covers 29 acres with 59 buildings which are, for the most part, of modern steel and glass construction. They have 440,000 squarae feet of covered floor.

E.B. Perry has been President of the company for 35 years and was general manager for 29 years. Mr. W.L. Clements and Mr. C.R. Wells are directors and among the original founders of the company.

The basic policy of the Industrial Works has been to concentrate on one main product - railroad cranes - and to create in that line the best that engineering and manufacturing skill can produce. [DFP-1924-1023]

Greenfield Village, at the Henry Ford, has an Industrial Brownhoist railroad wreck crane which was formally used by the Michigan Central Railroad in the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.

Time Line

1924. A circular for Industrial Works gold bonds notes a list of locomotive cranes purchased by some of the Company's customers: United State Government (346); Pennsylvania Railroad (226); New York Central railroad (120); Bethlehem Steel Corporation (77); Koppers Company (61); Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railway (52); Canadian National railways (50),  Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (37); American Bridge Company (35). [DFP-1924-1023]