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23 lut 2016 · Mount Vernon Ohio, approximately 50 miles north east of Columbus, was once a thriving center of manufacturing, including the Pittsburgh Plate Glass plant, a commercially successful factory that opened in 1907 and occupied 70 acres in the center of town.
A selection of 50 photographs from the PPG Industries Records have been digitized and placed online. These photographs were selected to reflect the collection’s documentation of the company’s place in the industries of glass, paint, and chemical production.
A “river” made from glass left behind during the site’s manufacturing days cuts through the earth on one side of the park, frozen in time. The park is an homage to Pittsburgh Plate Glass, whose company once dominated the small city.
Though its construction cost $300,000, the Coxey Building was sold for $60,717 and renamed Mambourg Window Glass Company. Raising the standard for glass production, the company eventually invented the Pennvernon process, named after its ties to the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company and creation in Mount Vernon.
Finally, by 1908 the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (PPG) officially owned the land and ran a successful glassmaking company until 1976. The factory was known as the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company Works No. 11 (PPG).
Instead, after Coxey’s brief and failed attempt at steel casting, the building became the home of the Mount Vernon branch of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. At its peak, the PPG factory was one of the area’s major employers, with entire families, including many Belgian immigrants, working to shape and cut glass together.
In the early 1960s PPG produced materials for the building, transportation, appliance, container, boating, textile, paper, television, and chemical industries. In 1963 PPG became the first U.S. company to manufacture float glass, used in place of plate glass by architects.
