![]() ![]() ![]() King, whose dynamic business imagination launched the OB industry to whole new levels of vital innovation until it reached a national scale. Reid Carpenter recognized the need for the small company to expand its horizons, so he found a young engineer who could retool the brass foundry to make parts for the hottest transportation industry of the day: electric streetcars. That was when one of the OB board members stepped in and made Mansfield history. The Brass started with ten men, and soon there were twenty of them sweating away at this enterprise and making good headway in business, until 1893 when the famous Panic severely damaged the US economy and yanked the market to a sudden halt. Notable in this 1895 office shot are Frank Black (farthest left), and his father, Moses Black who came to America from Ireland (on the right wearing a black derby.) The Ohio Brass Company was originally located on the west side of North Main Street between Fifth & Sixth Streets. The company’s first huge breakthrough came in 1896 when it was granted a contract to provide all the valves, brass and bronze hardware for two new US Navy battleships: the USS Kentucky and the USS Kearsarge. The foundrymen at OB learned to store their patterns in a separate fire-proof building after a disastrous fire in 1905 wiped out the casting works. The iconic OB maker’s mark originally cast into their buckles is what became their business logo: even after the company went on to rule the electric streetcar market, and eventually lead the way in facilitating high powered electrical systems around the nation.Īt the height of their industrial power, their logo still bore a resemblance to those original brass buckles.Ī typical brass valve fitting can be identified as made in Mansfield by the cast OB brand.Here also is a pattern from the Ohio Brass foundry. All of those pieces are made out of brass, made by the Ohio Brass Company. That’s only what you can see from this angle, and that’s not counting all the studs, brads and rivets, and the spinners, tongues and snaffles. Look closely at these horses and you’ll see all of that leather in each of their harness rigs has at least 30 clips, buckles, rings, terrets and cinches holding it together. Within a couple years they bought out a local plating factory, which added a new line of brass valves and plumbing fixtures to their foundry works. Each of those leather contraptions required a kit full of small brass buckles, hooks, rings and cinches to hold the straps in place, and the Ohio Brass Company made that their business as Mansfield’s harness works. This was 1888 in the horse-drawn era when everyone needed all kinds of harness rigs to hook their horses to carriages, wagons and plows. So he borrowed five thousand dollars from relatives when he was 23, and opened up a brass foundry on North Main Street. Hometown Ventureįrank Black graduated from Mansfield High School and then a New York business college, and then tried a number of jobs around town before he decided he needed to be his own boss. And by the time it was finished a century later, it had seeded the city with all the necessary components of society that make for a vital balanced culture. ![]() The small enterprise begun by sons of an Irish immigrant emerged humbly as a simple bud on the vine, and expanded to see the full flowering of Mansfield’s vitality. The story of the company parallels the tale of Mansfield and embodies in many ways the awakening of a modest Midwestern town to a thriving dynamic city. Ohio Brass is one of those great American success stories that literally built the cities of our nation. It certainly built our city.
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