This is a piece of one of the old stone buildings that housed Shantz Foundry, at Fountain St. & Shantz Hill Rd. in Preston, Ontario Canada. In 1883, the frame buildings of the Preston Agricultural Works were destroyed by fire. P.E. Shantz bought out Abram Detweiler and continued to operate as P.E. Shantz Preston Agricultural Works. New stone buildings were built to house the business. The name Preston Agricultural Works was discontinued, probably by the mid-1890s and the business carried on under the name P.E. Shantz Manufacturer.
By 1909, P.E. Shantz letterhead claimed "Our Specialty is Trucks". P.E. Shantz catalogues featured a variety of trucks (heavy duty warehouse wagons) manufactured for the factory and other commercial trade. Around 1913, P.E. Shantz further diversified into the manufacture of the Howard warm air furnace, company letterhead now stating "Our Specialty is Trucks [and] Warm Air Furnaces. The Howard furnace was another American product for which P.E. Shantz had Canadian manufacturing rights. The company continued to manufacture warm air furnaces for many years. The last dated piece in the P.E. Shantz fonds regarding the Howard furnace is 1941. In addition to trucks and furnaces, P.E. Shantz also made children's hand sleighs, garden benches, garden vases and lawn swings in the years after 1900. These were probably made from waste by-products of agricultural machinery construction. A price list issued by the Shantz Foundry in 1966 gave prices for its line of industrial and commercial trucks, by which time the only product line left.
In the twentieth century, the company name evolved to P.E. Shantz Foundry and finally to Shantz Foundry Ltd. In 1969 Shantz Foundry Ltd. went out of business. The property was purchased by a developer, with plans to build a large apartment unit on the site. The stone buildings were demolished, but the developer's plans did not materialize and in 2002 the site is an overgrown empty lot.
(Information comes courtesy of Robin Shantz, grandson of P.E. Shantz, via Waterloo Regional Museum)
This site is five minutes from my home. I used to wonder what it was when I would avoid all the slag down a hill coming out of a local ravine. Last night, I scoured the internet for the answer. Now that I have it, and I've seen historical photos, I wonder how the "end" of our ravine became so pitched when in the Foundry's day, it was flat.
Nothing as intriguing as local history.
4 comments:
My grand father was Samuel Preston Shantz. He owned the foundry after his father. He came back to Preston from Toronto where he lived and worked as a bookkeeper for The Toronto Star. This would have been about 1940 as my mother told me they moved to Preston (now part of Cambridge) when she was 12 years old and she was born in 1928.
When I was born in 1960 my uncle Robin Spatz ran the foundry and my father Desmond Singleton worked there. I vaguely remember going in the foundry as a child and to tell you the truth I don’t even know what they made although furnaces does sound correct. My brother has one of the old carts they made in about the early 1900’s. We were told the carts were used at railway stations and production stopped when travel by train declined in popularity.
Earlier in the history of Waterloo County my ancestors settled on a farm up near the Pioneer Tower behind were The Brick is on highway 8. The Shantz family came to the area as Empire Loyalist from Pennsylvania. they were part of the Mennonite community that left the U.S. to avoid fighting in the war.
Sorry. Previous post reading Robin Spatz should have been Robin Shantz.
Interesting to hear. I made some patterns for Des Singleton in the 80's for Date foundry in Ayr so I guess that was after things closed in Preston. Real nice to hear that name again.
Thanks John Taylor
I have one of the heavy duty wagon with the company name on it and it even has a number on it. It was given to me years ago and had been turned into a coffee table.
Post a Comment