BUSINESS HISTORY
WATERTOWN DAILY TIMES ARCHIVES
Above, the New York Air Brake factory on Starbuck Ave., shown with its iconic smokestacks, ca. 1969. The smokestacks were torn down in the late 1990s. Opposite page, the present Air Brake facility.
A manufacturing mainstay n Thousands owe careers to brake firm since 1876
T
NNY Business
he New York Air Brake Corp., 748 Starbuck Ave., Watertown, remains today what it was when it was founded as Eames Vacuum Brake Co. in 1876: One of Watertown’s largest, most prominent manufacturers and businesses. Eames Vacuum Brake Co. began with an iron foundry on Beebe Island and a brass foundry nearby. The company made a new kind of pneumatic brake for north country railroads, and in 1890 became New York Air Brake Co. By 1920, New York Air Brake had moved to Starbuck Avenue. The foundry moved around 1910 and was replaced by a new building closer to Pearl Street in 1924. By 1919, Air Brake boasted 7,000 employees, when it produced horse-drawn cannons. In 1945, the company employed 3,000, making tanks and other military hardware for World War II.
60 |
NNY Business | September 2012
Its next peak employment was around 1958 with 2,589 employees. In 1967, General Signal Corp. bought Air Brake with its foundry, Dynapower and Stratopower divisions, for $66 million in stock. In 1969, Air Brake had 1,820 employees working in Watertown. By 1980, that number reached about 2,200 before dropping below 1,200 workers after 1985. The roots of Dynapower and Stratopower went back to World War II, when Air Brake developed a hydraulic pump used in Lockhead P-38 fighter planes. Stratopower’s name came from pumps developed for aircraft, including the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. Dynapower came from a hydrostatic transmission system developed from the Stratopower pump. While Stratopower built parts for aerospace and defense contracts, Dynapower made components for heavy machinery and farm equipment.
Munich, Germany-based Knorr-Bremse Corp. bought the railroad-brake-making division of Air Brake in 1990, which left the former New York Air Brake Co. divided into three companies: New York Air Brake Corp., a division of Knorr; G.S. Castings, the foundry, a division of General Signal; and Dynapower/Stratopower, another division of General Signal. The foundry had as many as 536 union employees in the 1960s. The number of employees at the foundry dropped to about 150 in the 1970s and 1980s. Freight-car brake orders fell dramatically in the 1980s as railroads lost customers to over-the-road trucking companies, and the foundry cut back to three-day work weeks. From 1983 to 1985, the company spent $16 million on foundry improvements, including $6.5 million from a state grant, with the goal of developing product lines in addition to the brake castings. In the 1980s, the foundry poured