The Dravo Wellman Company was a pioneer manufacturer of steel plant equipment with an international reputation for engineering some of the largest material-handling projects ever built. The firm started in 1896 as the Wellman-Seaver Engineering Company, founded by the inventor of the first open-hearth furnace in the United States, Samuel T. Wellman, his brother, Chas. H. Wellman, and John W. Seaver, to engineer and design steel mills and industrial plant equipment. In 1901 it constructed a plant at Central Avenue and East 71st Street in Cleveland, Ohio. After Thomas R. Morgan joined the firm, it was incorporated as the Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Company in 1903. That enabled it to acquire the Webster, Camp & Lane Company of Akron, manufacturer of mining machinery and iron- and coal-handling equipment. As Wellman-Seaver-Morgan contracted business from all over the world, it concentrated on expanding its material-handling equipment.
One of the company's executives, George H. Hulett, had invented the Hulett unloader, which revolutionized the Great Lakes ore industry In 1931 excavating buckets were added to its production line when the firm acquired the G. H. Williams Company of Erie, Pennsylvania. A year earlier, the corporate name had been changed to the Wellman Engineering Company. In 1954 the Cleveland-based McDowell, Inc., an international construction and engineering firm, acquired Wellman to fulfill McDowell's goal of erecting turnkey plants for basic industries. In 1963 there was an official merger of these 2 companies, producing the McDowell-Wellman Engineering Company, with its headquarters in the Vulcan Building at 113 St. Clair Avenue. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, McDowell-Wellman built coal docks and port loading facilities. The Massachusetts firm Helix Technology Corp. purchased McDowell-Wellman in 1978 and sold its bulk material-handling unit and research center to Pittsburgh's Dravo Corporation. In 1980 Dravo reorganized the Cleveland units as the Dravo Wellman Company, which was sold off to Blyden-Alice and left Cleveland in 1988. In 1993 a division of the Swedish firm Svedala Industries, Dravo Wellman retained only a single maintenance engineer in Cleveland.
click here to view the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History entry for the Dravo Wellman Company
The Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Company, Cleveland, Ohio, Photographs, 1900-1910 and undated, consist of one album, loose photographs, and a blueprint of ship and railroad unloading machinery manufactured by the Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Included are views taken in Great Lakes ports and include many views of Great lakes freighters. The blueprint is of a railroad car dumper. The album measures 8 x 12.75 inches and contains 42 black and white photographs measuring 9 x 7 inches.
This collection will be useful to researchers studying the history of business, industry, and shipping in Cleveland, Ohio, particularly the manufacturing and operation of ship and railroad unloading machinery in the early twentieth century.
The collection has been retained in original order.
None.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] PG 18 Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Company, Cleveland, Ohio, Photographs, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Provenance unknown.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.