Recordpub.com - PORTAGE PATHWAYS: Seneca Chain fire put Kent to the test

By Roger J. Di Paolo

Record-Courier Editor

Kent residents woke to devastating news two weeks before Christmas 1909.

Seneca Chain Co., the massive industrial concern on the western outskirts of town, had burned to the ground, putting 250 men and boys out of work and depriving Kent of its second-largest employer.

“The loss is one of the heaviest blows that has ever come to Kent,” the Kent Courier reported in its Dec. 10, 1909 edition, which went to press two hours after the blaze was reported.

Seneca Chain, located on Main Street west of the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad, was one of Kent’s success stories.

The firm, which opened in 1900, manufactured a variety of chain products for business, industry and the military. At peak capacity, it employed 400 workers; only the Erie Railroad had more men at work. Its $150,000 annual payroll was a mainstay of Kent’s economy. That’s about $3.5 million in today’s dollars.

On the morning of Dec. 10, 1909, however, not much remained of it.

“In place of the great structure extending over 500 feet from Stow Street to West Main Street there is nothing but a waste of ashes and ruins,” the Ravenna Republican reported.

The fire had been discovered at about 3:45 a.m. by John Trainor, the night watchman, who noticed flames near the “dolly shop” at the south end of the plant.

The fire may have started in coke fires that had been banked for the night. It burned rapidly, fueled in part by a strong wind that whipped the flames through the complex and threatened the nearby Wheeling & Lake Erie station.

The fire lit up the skies and was seen for miles from Kent. The wind blew debris as far away as Pippin Lake in Franklin Township, nearly 10 miles from the site of the blaze.

“In an hour’s time the destruction was complete,” the Republican reported. The building was virtually a total loss. Damage estimates ranged from $50,000 to $150,000.

Volunteer firefighters were joined at the site by townspeople, including Postmaster W.W. Reed, a civic dynamo, who rushed into the offices of the burning building to retrieve records and other items.

Reed was “almost suffocated by the smoke,” the Courier reported, but evidently recovered quickly enough. Hours later, as the ruins of Seneca Chain continued to smolder, he rallied the town’s movers and shakers to discuss ways of ensuring that the firm remained in Kent.

There was no guarantee that Seneca Chain would rebuild. The firm also operated a plant in Mansfield, where other sites were available for it to expand. Alliance also made a pitch for it to relocate there.

Seneca Chain, the Courier reported a week after the fire, was an industry “Kent cannot afford to lose.” And, the newspaper warned, “We are not going to have it unless we act promptly.”

The meeting Reed convened named a five-member committee to confer with Seneca Chain officials, pledging community support for the firm. The panel included William Stewart Kent, E.E. France, outgoing Mayor H.C. Eckert and councilmen I.R. Marsh and J.G. Getz.

Days after the fire, the firm opened an office in the Kent National Bank building to resume business operations. Plans were made for workers from the Kent plant to operate a night shift at the Mansfield plant.

Seneca Chain directors met in early January 1910 and made the announcement Kent hoped for: The firm would, indeed, rebuild at the West Main Street site.

The “thoroughly modern” replacement facility would cost nearly $75,000. To finance the facility as well as expanded production once the new plant was completed, Seneca Chain proposed to sell $100,000 in preferred stock.

Residents of Kent were asked to subscribe for about half of that amount. “To the people of Kent, we say, ‘Get busy,’ for we cannot afford to lose this ... industry,” the Courier reported in a story headlined “Chain People Will Issue Stock. How Much Do You Want?”

By late January 1910, about $10,000 in stock had been sold. By May, the $50,000 goal had been surpassed. Kent had saved Seneca Chain.

The fire that destroyed Seneca Chain also had other consequences — positive ones — for Kent. The community effort to keep the firm in business led to the formation of the Kent Board of Trade, forerunner of the Kent Area Chamber of Commerce.

The Board of Trade, in turn, was instrumental in persuading state officials to choose Kent as the site of the teachers’ training college that became Kent State University.

It isn’t a stretch to say that without the determination of the Kent citizens who rallied in the face of adversity 100 years ago this week and set off a chain reaction of events in the process, Kent State University might not have existed.

It took nearly a year to rebuild Seneca Chain, which resumed operations on April 17,1911, in what was said to be the largest chain-manufacturing facility in the nation.

“It’s a beauty, the big chain plant. Go over and see it,” the Courier urged readers. “And when it’s in full operation, it will be one of the busiest places this section ever knew.”

The Courier’s boosterism, in this instance, proved to be at odds with reality. Short of working capital, Seneca Chain closed a short time after reopening.

Another chain firm leased part of the plant in 1916 and operated with a sharply reduced work force before it, too, closed. The plant changed hands again in 1919, and Thomart Motor Co., a truck manufacturing firm, operated there briefly before it also went under. Fageol Coach Co. moved there in 1924.

The sprawling industrial site has housed several firms within memory, including Twin Coach Co., also owned by the Fageols, and Forest City Enterprises, which was in operation there from 1964 to 1987. It remains a landmark on Kent’s west side 100 years after the fire that helped to change the city’s history.