Phoenix Iron Company: Two Centuries of Pennsylvania Steel

The Phoenix Iron Company was established in the late seventeen hundreds, making it one of the oldest ironworks in American history. Incorporated in eighteen fifty-five, it produced nails, rail, and weaponry across nearly every major American conflict: Civil War cannons, and armaments through the twentieth-century wars.

Two of its products became landmarks in American engineering history. The Griffen Gun, developed in eighteen fifty-five, was a distinctive cast-iron cannon used widely during the Civil War. The Phoenix Column, introduced in eighteen sixty-two, was a wrought-iron structural column design that proved so strong and economical it was used to build bridges and buildings across the country, including many of the elevated railways of American cities. Phoenix Iron operated for over two centuries on the Phoenixville site before production there ended in the nineteen eighties, a sweep of American industrial history compressed into one Chester County address.