Evening Star Newspaper, March 13, 1932, Page 77

- adeiphia. Mr. Cartwright was a contracting gas fitter in Philadelphia, and as the company was controlled by Philadelphia interests, he was sent down as superintendent. He was paid part of his salary in stock of the company, which he and the Cartwright family retained until the last few years. Mr. Cartwright re- mained as superintendent for some time, until one night a disgruntled workman shied a brick through the office window and he promptly resigned. “I knew Mr. Cartwright personally, and he was a very fine, high-toned gentleman, and I heard him relate his experiences here with & good deal of interect. The Cartwright fam- fly became largely identified with the gas busi- mess through their interest in the American Meter Co. of Philadelphia; of the family died a year or two ago. The company finally disposed of this property to the firm of Gray & Noyes, who & for a great many years. The old retort house was used as a machine shop, and the purifier house as an iron foundry by them. uovera'spn:olttsparkqs-t." EFERENCE here to Gray & Noyes brings to the writer's mind that it was this firm that built the old standpipe that for many years stood about in fronmt of the Fremch Em- bassy on Sixteenth street, and which supplied water to the Capitel Hill section. This reser- its side and to the more venturesome who would elimb up the litile irom tached to the cutside, just to get of what was going on within, On an old eertificate of stock gas company the writer found a Maine avenue plant, the second erected city, and the omnly view of an Joseph Leiter, president, 1911-14. have recently been removed, except the one occupied by the Animal Rescue League, which, for many years before and after the Civil War, was conducted by Mary Hall, over whose grave, in Congressional Cemetery, there is a monument surmounted with the of an angel, beneath which the inseri tells the public of the virtues of “Our Sister Mary.” has this to say on the subject: “While the necessary changes were being made in the works in the Tenth street locality, the opposition to the company came to s head in the formation ‘of a new concern which at once began the building of a plant on Msine avenue between Third and Four-and-a-Half EHIE E%figggiéi cian of this city who is often called out in night informs us that, either from the ness of the oil or some other cause, THE SUNDAY ST.-\Rj WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 13, 1932 View of East Station from acress the Anacestia River. Avenue was lighted with oil lamps in 1842 Congress rebelled at the cost, and, after bear- ing the expense for several years, had the lights turned on cnly when it was in session. It was upon ene of these occasions that a lady in crossing the Avenue, in the vicinty of the National Hotel, stepped into a puddle and was finally rescued from 3 feet of mire. After this the macadam on the Avenue was re- placed in the center with gravel and the spaces to the sides paved with cobble stones which served the purpose fairly well until the heavy travel over it during the Civii War, when, at times, it became almost impassable. This eon- dition, and the appearance of the Avemue in 1865, is referred to in The Star of September 19, 1892, which says: “It was supposed to be paved with cobbie- stones, but so great had been the travel over it by Government wagons and teams, batter- les of artillery, etc., that in comparison with it today it was simply miserable. In muddy weather it was at times so cut up as to be almost impassable. Then the sidewalks were almost exclusively of brick and in many places in bad order. The Capitol grounds wete then surrounded by an iron railing set on a wal! and having stone gateways. Some of this railing has since been utilized to form the north boundary of the the Smithsonian and Agri- cultural grounds, and at the National Cemetery at Arlington the gateways have been reset.” . Visualizing these conditions, as they existed on Pennsylvania avenue in the early days of Washington, one can easily see that the Gas Light Company was a gcdsend to the Capital and can claim some share at least in what we find it to be today. THE development of the gas plant was rapid, and, i the annual report of the company for 1852, we find it stated: “The new works have now been thoroughly tested for over one year, and are not only in- viting to the eye, but are believed to b> un- mrpundbyanysimflarvorksmmecomry. The contract for their erection, for laying eight miles of mains, service pipes, meters, etc., was fully ccmpleted early in the year 1852." Further along in the report we are told: “The a consumption as indicated by the station meter for the months of October, November and December last, was respectively, 40,860, 53299 and 66,101. The number of miles ofstreetmnmthmu(houtthedvnd belonging to the compsny (and there are no gas mains in the city that are not the proper- ty of the company) is not less than thirteen, many of them ten, six and four inches in diameter and none less than three inches. The number of meters on the premises of consumers but belonging to the company is 569.” By 1865 the costumers had increased to 4,000 and today there are around 130,000. The cost of gas In 1852 was $4 a thousand cubic feet; it is now one-fourth that amount. offices, premises 514 Elcventh street north- west, and the following year erected the plant at Twenty-sixth and G streets, of which Mr. Mcllhenny has said: which joins the Potomac River at This location was then known tom’ and was nothing more th In 1857 the works were er Philadelphia, John and plant was designed for a capacity cubic feet of coal gas, with am ultimate ca- pacity of 1,000,000 cubic feet. There was one holder erected of about 600,000 cubic feet capacity. This holder was built by Morris Tasker & Co. of Philadelphia, with cast iron columns, as was then the custom. About 1891 the holder was blown down, in a severe the crown of the holder, igniting the gas from a spark and entirely destroying the holder. It was immediately rebuilt and is now in use. HE writer confesses he knows little of the manufacture of gas, which is entirely a scientific preparation, but he has learned that when the plant was located at Tenth street and Louisiana avenue, in 1848, gas was made from rosin. The first coal gas plant, as stated, was erected on Maine avenue. Early in the 70s the company began to enrich the gas with cannel coal, obtained from Scotland with the addition of two kinds of minerals very rich in and the other Richie-Mineral. Later, benzine, or gas naptha, was used to enrich the coal gas NEW:ERA OF IDEALISM Continued from Third Pege and Charles A. Beard have already pointed the way. Everywhere fresh interest is cen- tering In the idea. “It may be only a fear phase, arising out of the depression, like the reconstruction reso- lutions of war days which were so quickly forgotten in peacetime. But at present there hamtmncmmmmmdph- ning, industrial social and national The lais- sezfaire spirit of capitalism has proved a fail- ure, since it gave attention to details and neg- lected to plan on a large scale. by policies of self-preservation, they are readiz- ing the possibilities of a new arder and com- sidering it cautiously. “I do not minimize,” added Dr. Frank B FHLRL it ¢ i 1912 graduated from ve all prepared him for the pro- he disdains, !Ei:lz§=lggggg et i it this was used until a low-water gas plant bullt in 1882, when the first oil gas plant discontinued. A process known as the Wilkerson water gas was also in use for a num- ber of years, and no doubt, other methods were tried out from time to time, with a view to rendering to the public the best possible The first contract for laying gas mains, as e from Mr. Mcllthenny's memoranda, was made with Joseph I. Battin, and was for miles, and all the early cast iron pipe made in England, as none was then man- ufactured in this country. Referring to the digging of the trenches for the gas mains brings to mind the men who many years ago were employed in performing this sirenuous work. They were all Irish laborers, and well can the writer look back on who thought nothing of working 10 day for $1.25. Timmtfwhm:beenthem Washington to use gas commercially goes Brown's Indian Queen Hotel, which nene other than the present Metropolitan, addad to and remodeled. Aside from the public buildings, this also represented the largest in- stallation of gas equipment, the gas company still against Brown's Hotel, George A. G. Wood, present president. 1855. Referring to this, the press at that time “One of the most labor-saving and money- making expedients ever introduced, and espe- valuable for persons of scanty means, is the cooking with gas. What a world of labor ILAS H. HILL, who served from 1851 to 1856, followed Mr. Ward in office. He had