Author Archives: Colby

In 1999, John Whitacre Jr took a spill while riding his horse. While recuperating he recorded Whitacre Greer’s history. This continues his story.

JJ had three children, Kate, born in 1889; JB, born in 1891; and DD, born in 1899. About 1907, JJ build a large house south of Waynesburg, which became known as the Whitacre mansion. In 1910, JJ was elected to the U. S. Congress as a Democratic representative for the 16th District in Ohio. In the spring of 1912, JJ returned home from Congress and announced in his opinion, Woodrow Wilson was the best qualified Democrat to run for president in the election of 1912. This announcement upset the Ohio Democrats as then-Governor Harmon of Ohio was one of the favorites for the Democratic nomination, but shows that JJ was one to form his own opinions. Wilson was elected President in the fall of 1912. My father reports that before the 1920 presidential election, candidates James Cox, Democrat and Warren Harding, Republican, were JJ’s guests at the mansion.

Henry Ford had founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 and by 1912, many people could afford his Model T automobile, not just the very rich. The same year (1903), the Wright brothers flew their airplane in North Carolina and Einstein published his theory of relativity with the famous equation e=mc2, which 40 years later triggered the release of atomic energy. In engineering and science, the 20th century was in motion.

In 1914, JJ declined to run for a third term as 16th District congressman. He made his position clear on term limits, explaining that four years in Washington was enough if one wanted to continue to live with honesty and integrity.

Folklore has it that some Whitacre genes contributed to arguments and being stubborn. Old-timers told me that when JJ and his brothers held discussions at either end of the factory property, they could be heard at the office in the center of the plant.
After incorporating, the company build a factory in Waynesburg to produce fireproofing tile. The local clay was mined, mixed with water, extruded into hollow tile shapes such as 4 x 12 inches and the extruded column was cut by wire to 12-inch lengths, producing a 4 x 12 x 12 tile unit. The tiles were placed by hand on small rail cars and transported through a dryer. After drying, the tiles were placed by hand in 30-foot diameter round down draft kilns, which were fired by cool.
Waynesburg was primarily a village of retired farmers, certainly unable to supply the labor needed for a factory. JJ build about 100 houses (called Newtown) in the area, each on an acre of ground. He then recruited extensively among the Italian immigrants in Pennsylvania and African-Americans from the south. Jobs and a house with land and a reasonable purchase price were the incentive and the manpower required was soon in Waynesburg. The fireproofing business was under way. Many Italians coming to this country did not speak English. interesting, most joined the Mafia, whose main function was to look after the immigrants. For a modest $1-per-month fee, the Mafia found Italians jobs in the factories and served as an agent to help them receive fair treatment from their employers in the days before trade unions performed that function.
During the second half of the century, we will see that second- and third-generation descendants from these roots provided a wealth of talent for hourly and managerial work, which was invaluable to the company.

In 1902, J.J. Whitacre, a 42-year old lawyer, founded the Whitacre Fireproofing Company.
Born in 1860, J.J. attended Hiram College in Ohio three years and then the University of Michigan Law School for two years. Although J.J. was the controlling stockholder, his brother R.E. Whitacre was the first president of the company. This arrangement may have been to comply with a non-compete agreement J.J. had with the National Fireproofing Company
when in the late 1890s, they purchased a fireproofing plant J.J. had started in 1892 on the west side of Route 542, south of Magnolia. Another brother, C.C. Whitacre, also invested in the company. A quote attributed to J.J. was, ‘It is all right to put your eggs all in one basket if you carry the basket.

John Whitacre Jr.’s story continues:

Four of the foundations for the Whitacre Fireproofing Company were in place long before the company was incorporated in 1902. First, the origins of the coal, clay and shale formations in Stark and Carroll counties of Ohio occurred geological ages ago. These formations that featured 2 to 3 feet of coal underlain by 6 to 8 feet of fire clay and overlaid by 50 feet of shale were laminated horizontally and become known locally as the Nos. 3, 4, 5 and 6, etc., seams of coal and associated clay and shale.

Second, after the ice age, the glaciers moved south, scaling the earth flat until they stopped near Canton, Ohio. The glaciers then melted, with the resulting flood waters running toward the Ohio River and cutting valleys in the earth’s surface, which exposed the coal and clay seams along the valley hillsides. Millions of years later, men had easy access to the coal and clay when these minerals were needed.

Third, during the 1850s, railroads were build across Ohio, bringing supplies to the state and returning produce to the large cities on the East Coast and Mississippi. Crossing Ohio was a mainline railroad from Philadelphia to Chicago and another mainline from Philadelphia to St. Louis. A connecting branch between these mainlines, known as the Tuscarawas branch, was build from Alliance, Ohio, southwest to Dover, Ohio. This branch went through the villages of Waynesburg and Magnolia.

The confluence of easily mined coal, clay and shale minerals and the railroad, to deliver products to the major cities, spawned the building of about 30 factories producing clay products, such as sewer pipe, paving brick, face brick, refractory brick, flue liners and tile along the Tuscarawas branch.

However, it took a fourth event, the great Chicago fire of the 1880s, to trigger the founding of the Whitacre Fireproofing Company. This fire was so devastating that in the future, walls, roofs and the steel cladding of most major buildings were built with ‘fireproofing,’ which was hollow clay tile made in dimensions such as 4 x 12 x 12. The required raw materials, coal and clay, along with the means of transportation to the cities, the railroad, were available at Waynesburg, Ohio, so the Whitacre Fireproofing Company, as the vision of J.J. Whitacre, was incorporated in 1902.

In 1999 John B. Whitacre Jr., tumbled from his horse Colby breaking his wrist and fracturing his lumbar vertebra. As he recovered, he set out to record the history of Whitacre Greer. This is his story.

‘I was born in 1926. The first half-century, I was not a full-time employee. What I report here comes from what I have been told by family, stockholders, employees, customers or suppliers or what I have read. I worked four hours a day my last two summers in high school (1942 and 1943) and regular eight-hour days in the summer of 1947 and part of the summer of 1948, while attending Case Tech. The other six weeks of the summer of 1948, I took a great trip to California with two friends. The second half of the century, I worked full time at WG except two years (1950 to 1952), which were spent in the Army. The second half-century reports my experience from my viewpoint. The events are probably reported with a degree of self-serving bias you will have to live with.’

John B. Whitacre Jr., 1999

Communities around the country recognize the value of clay brick pavers.  The Cambridge Brickwalk Conservancy, Inc., (CBC) is a non-profit organization formed to preserve, maintain, and extend traditional brick sidewalks in Cambridge.  The organization recently blogged about some of the communities that appreciate brick pavers.  Please read below.

http://www.harvardsquare.com/cambridge-brickwalk-conservancy#sthash.JMnnR7Hl.dpufCambridge Brickwalk Conservancy, Inc.

New Year’s Welcome

Hello Friends of Cambridge Brickwalk Conservancy. We welcome a New Year and look forward to mproving the stewardship of the City’s legacy brick sidewalks which have been treated with antipathy in recent years. A particularly glaring example is the wholesale removal of brick pathways (and replacing them with asphalt) during the recent renovation of the Cambridge Common.

In our last blog we talked about brick sidewalks in Portland, ME, and Salem, MA, and provided a brief section on the cities across the countries that are saving brick streets and sidewalks.
In this blog we will give further detail on the activities those cities have undertaken to preserve and extend legacy brick installations. There may be some ideas Cambridge could use from those examples.

Champaign and Urbana, IL.
Champaign public works staff in 1999 bought 292,800 bricks straight out of the ground of an East St. Louis stockyard. They were looking to the future of the antique roads. Their coveted pile of bricks is still holding out and it is worth 3+ times what they paid for it. Although it costs somewhat more to maintain the brick roads than a typical concrete or asphalt street, the Champaign engineer technician said the old roads typically last much longer. They do not absorb as much moisture as other road materials, and the bricks are tough to crack. The annual maintenance costs are a small price to pay to maintain the integrity of Champaign’s older neighborhood.
In nearby Urbana they have their own stockpile of bricks. The brick streets are about 50 plus years old. Urbana’s public works director claims that their some of their decades old brick streets have had little or no maintenance on them.
One of the policy changes Champaign made to ensure the longevity of their brick stockpile is to require contractors who excavate brick streets to replace the bricks they take out instead of shipping them to a landfill and putting in new bricks from the stockpile. Although there is more work for the contractors, it saves money since disposing of back-hoe damaged bricks at a landfill can get costly. However, the new policy has reduced the loss of bricks during maintenance projects from 80 percent to about 10 percent.
Daniel McCollum who sat on the city council said, “If you think of time, there is a street that has been there 100 years. How many things do you see that we build that survive with minimal maintenance for 100 years?”

Winter Park, FL.
Winter Park’s Park Avenue was a much different area 20 years ago. However, after extensive work to create a brick road to replace the earlier asphalt road, more than 140 shops and restaurants invite the tourists and residents to this beautiful tree-lined street. Many feel the inviting brick street has helped to make this happen.

Cumberland, MD.
The historic downtown area has beautiful brick streets and sidewalks. In the late 1970s, Baltimore Street was paved with bricks and became a pedestrian mall. The city keeps expanding the use of brick.

Brooksville, FL.
Their website prominently mentions the downtown brick sidewalks. And on the website for the Historic Brooksville Walking Tour there are photos of Augusta pavers which were laid in 1919. Many of their streets have brick.

Punta Gorda, FL.
Punta Gorda is on the west coast of Florida. The city’s historic district is known for its brick streets. They were endangered before a grassroots movement came to their rescue in the 1980s. After the city paved over a block of brick roadway, the citizens objected. Since then citizens have teamed with the city to re-brick 18 blocks following sewer and storm water pipe improvements. The people said they didn’t want to erase part of their history and aesthetics. And they believe the brick streets slow the traffic down. In this instance, Punta Gorda laid asphalt first as Cambridge is doing now. This community appreciates its history and they are proud that their legacy of brick streets lives on.
To get closer to Cambridge, we may want to look at Waltham, MA, which has replaced one of their main streets, Moody Street, with brick. Very attractive and is appropriate for a town with two centuries of history.
There are other cities which also value their historic streets and sidewalks. We hope Cambridge will see the value of preserving its brick sidewalks before current City policy renders them a distant memory..

Happy New Year!

Diane

Seventy-five hardscape projects were entered in the 8th annual awards. Fourteen projects won and seven received honorable mentions.

Winning in the category of Clay Brick – Residential was the ‘Florida Residence’ project installed by Artistic Pavers.  The project featured Whitacre Greer Old World Cobbled Pavers.  OldCastle Coastal Coloroc supplied the pavers.

Award Winner – 8th Annual HNA Hardscapes Awards 2015

October 30, 2015
CHANTILLY, VA. — The Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute (ICPI) with the Brick Industry Association and National Concrete Masonry Association have announced the 8th Annual HNA Hardscape Project Award winners. The HNA Hardscape Project Awards recognize outstanding hardscape projects by contractors building residential walkways, patios, driveways, and commercial plazas, parking lots and streets.
In its eighth year, the awards program received 75 entries. Fourteen winners and seven honorable mentions received recognition at an awards ceremony on Thursday, Oct. 22 at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, Ky. Entries were judged on project intent, design, quality of construction and craftsmanship, compatibility with related construction materials and systems, construction innovation, detailing and overall design excellence.

2015 Hardscape Project winners

Clay Brick – Permeable – Residential/Commercial
“West Entrance – Lincoln Park Zoo”
Chicago, Illinois
Contractor: LPS Pavement Company

Clay Brick – Residential
“Florida Residence”
Palm Harbor, Florida
Contractor: Artistic Pavers

Clay Brick – Commercial
“Converse College Johnson Plaza”
Spartanburg, South Carolina
Contractor: Roebuck Wholesale Nursery and Landscaping

Concrete Paver – Residential – Less than 3,000 sq.ft.
“The Hollywood Driveway”
Los Angeles, California
Contractor: Go Pavers

Concrete Paver – Residential – More than 3,000 sq.ft.
“Country Courtyard”
McCook, Nebraska
Contractor: Grindstone Hardscapes

Concrete Paver – Permeable – Residential
“Firelane Road Residence”
Menasha, Wisconsin
Contractor: Stumpf Creative Landscaping

Concrete Paver – Commercial – Less than 15,000 sq.ft.
“University of Nevada, Reno Wolfpack Logo Baseball Project”
Reno, Nevada
Contractor: Hain Enterprises

Concrete Paver – Commercial – More than 15,000 sq.ft.
“MEGA Snake and Ladder Paver Project”
Abu Dhabi, U.A.E
Contractor: DUCON Industries FZCO

Segmental Retaining Walls – Residential
“Crawford Residence”
Upper Arlington, Ohio
Contractor: Hedge Landscaping

Segmental Retaining Walls – Commercial
“Founders Park”
Johnson City, Tennessee
Contractor: Jackson Jones Construction

Combination of Hardscape Products – Residential – Less than 4,000 sq.ft.
“Italian Villa”
Fort Collins, Colorado
Contractor: Lindgren Landscape

Combination of Hardscape Products – Residential – More than 4,000 sq.ft.
“Taunton Resort”
Minnetrista, Minnesota
Contractor: Moms Landscaping & Design

Combination of Hardscape Products – Commercial – Less than 20,000 sq.ft.
“DeSoto Amphitheater”
Millersburg, Pennsylvania
Contractor: GoldGlo Landscapes LLC

Combination of Hardscape Products – Commercial – More than 20,000 sq.ft.
“Ithaca Commons Streetscape”
Ithaca, New York
Contractor: Syrstone, Inc.

2015 Hardscape Project Honorable Mention

Clay Brick – Permeable – Residential/Commercial
“St Sebastian School Parking Lot”
Akron, Ohio
Contractor: United Hardscapes, LLC.

Clay Brick – Commercial
“TH-7/Louisiana Avenue Project”
St. Louis Park, Minnesota
Contractor: Structures Hardscapes

Concrete Paver – Residential – Less than 3,000 sq.ft.
“Spa Oasis”
Enola, Pennsylvania
Contractor: GoldGlo Landscapes LLC

Concrete Paver – Commercial – Less than 15,000 sq.ft.
“Lake Forest Country Club”
Hudson, Ohio
Contractor: Rock Bottom Lawn & Landscaping

Concrete Paver – Commercial – More than 15,000 sq.ft.
“Westlake Shopping Center”
Peoria, Illinois
Contractor: Joos Lawnscapes Inc.

Combination of Hardscape Products – Residential – Less than 4,000 sq.ft.
“Hassel Residence”
Omaha, Nebraska
Contractor: Paver Designs LLC

Combination of Hardscape Products – Residential – Less than 4,000 sq.ft.
“Woodland Retreat”
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Contractor: GoldGlo Landscapes LLC

The HNA Hardscape Project Awards are produced by the Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute and supported by the National Concrete Masonry Association and the Brick Industry Association. This year, Belgard, Pavestone Company and Ewing Hardscapes sponsored the program.

Learn more about the outstanding hardscape projects recognized as HNA Hardscape Project Award winners by viewing the award winning project descriptions and photos here or by contacting Meredith Hoydilla at mhoydilla@icpi.org or call 703-657-6900.

The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) has announced that nine Ohio employers are semi-finalists in the annual Safety Innovations Competition, which recognizes employers that implement innovative solutions to reduce the risk of workplace injuries and illnesses. The competition helps foster innovation in occupational injury/illness prevention and encourages employers to share their creative solutions to reducing the risk of injury for their employees.

A panel of safety, ergonomics and industrial hygiene specialists from the BWC Division of Safety and Hygiene selected the nine semi-finalists after reviewing applications from employers across Ohio. They scored the applications on the following criteria, risk reduction, innovativeness, cost savings and potential impact.

The finalists include:

Ashland, Inc. , Dublin (Franklin County) for its ergonomics Kaizen process.
AWP, Inc., Kent (Portage County) for its contractor grade bedslide.
City of Cuyahoga Falls, Cuyahoga Falls (Summit County) for its underground cable puller.
Cooper Farms Feed & Animal, Fort Recovery (Mercer County) for its hog loader.
Midmark Corp., Versailles (Darke County) for its automatic guided carts.
Northcoast Recycling Specialists, Wickliffe (Lake County) for its hydraulic core stripper
Nucor Steel Marion, Inc., Marion (Marion County) for its r-factor rolling process.
Tri America Contractors, Inc., Wheelersburg (Scioto County) for its pipe fabrication transporter.
Whitacre Greer Co., Alliance (Stark County) for its bin area material feed air cannons.

BWC specialists will visit the semi-finalists to further evaluate the innovations and five finalists will be selected to attend the BWC Safety Congress and Expo (OSC16) on March 9 and 10, 2016, where they will present their innovations to a panel of independent judges.

Cash prizes ranging from $1,000 to $6,000 will be awarded to five finalists based on the judges’ scoring. Conference attendees determine the recipient of the $1,000 People’s Choice award.

Visit with the Whitacre Greer sales group at the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Annual Meeting and Expo in Chicago November 6-9.  Mic McAfee, Andy Karas, Michael Tyson, Rob Rollins and William Sundquist will be on hand to answer your questions about Whitacre Greer pavers, installation techniques and trends in segmental paving.  Learn about new products and new products on the horizon from Whitacre Greer.

The Whitacre Greer Company is a leading producer of genuine fired-clay paving brick in North America.  It is the only producer of dry-pressed clay pavers.  The dry-pressed manufacturing process produces tight dimensional tolerances, crisp edges and clean lines. It offers flexibility of size and color.

Whitacre Greer personnel regularly blend (mingle) two or more colors together on a single pallet per a design professional’s specification.  Blending at the plant in a controlled environment reduces install time and cost.

Ask Mic, Andy, Mike, Rob or William how we can help on your next project!

Click here to register for the show now!