THE
VALLEY OF HEART's DELIGHT
santaclararesearch.net
JOSHUA
HENDY IRON WORKS
Surnames: BEHNEMAN,
LEVITT, GARDNER, REXWORTHY
—Few people, no doubt, have any adequate idea of the
importance and magnitude of the Joshua Hendy Iron Works at Sunnyvale, a
wonderful monument to its founder, the late Joshua Hendy of San
Francisco, and also the late John Hendy, its
former president and
general superintendent, whose widow is one of the most highly-esteemed
residents of Sunnyvale. The present company was incorporated in 1903;
it started to build its great plant at Sunnyvale in 1906, and in
February of the following year, it commenced to operate. Following the
death of their uncle, the said Joshua Hendy, his two nephews, John and
Samuel Hendy, operated the works. On the death of his brother, Samuel
J. Hendy, John H. Hendy became president and, on May 8, 1920, he was
stricken with apoplexy and passed away at the family home a few days
later.
The
city organization is located in San Francisco, and that branch takes
care of all sales, contracts, etc., the organization at Sunnyvale
turning out the products desired. The officers are: president and
general manager, F. J. Behneman of San Francisco; vice-president and
assistant manager, Morris Levitt, also of San Francisco; secretary and
treasurer, C. C. Gardner of Alameda, and the general superintendent, H.
S. Rexworthy of Sunnyvale. During the World War, the Hendy Iron Works
did its duty in contributing a huge share of what Uncle Sam needed for
his success at arms, but it was able to accomplish this only by running
shifts of men—500 during the day, and 400 during the night. It helped
out the Government by putting out a vast deal of heavy work. Thus at
this plant it built ten sets of triple-expansion marine engines
weighing 124 tons each and having 2,800 horsepower each. It made one
single casting which weighed fifteen and one-half tons. This was only a
small part of the work done at Sunnyvale.
The
works occupy twenty-nine acres facing on Sunnyvale Avenue in Sunnyvale,
and the main building was carefully designed with reference to the
proper heating, ventilation, lighting and water supply. This building
is one-eighth of a mile long, and it is supplied with three traveling
cranes of fifteen, twenty and thirty tons capacity. The company owns
forty acres of additional ground near to the plot upon which the works
are located, and it has put in a 700-foot well in which the water rises
300 feet, and is then pumped by means of a large centrifugal pump,
driven by electricity into a water tank or tower eighty feet high. This
supplies water in sufficient quantities for the use of the works, and
also for irrigating the lawns in front of the main building and
adjacent lands; the lawns are well-kept and beautiful, and so are the
spare lands on which are planted orchards and gardens. Tracks of the
Southern Pacific Railroad Company enter the premises, where the company
has installed a weigh-box with railway weighing scales which gives the
weight of every car as it enters and leaves the works. Electrical power
from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company furnishes the motive force,
and gigantic transformers provide the quality of power needed for the
various mechanical operations, while three great air-compressors
provide compressed air for operating, riveting machinery, trip-hammers,
clippers, etc. The eastern quarter of the main building is the
assembling room; but at times the job is so big that the assembling has
to be done outside, especially in the building of the massive
head-gates for irrigation purposes. The main buildings contain hundreds
of thousands, if not millions of dollars worth of up-to-date, heavy
steel and iron-working machinery.
To
the rear of the main building are the foundry, (the largest on the
Pacific Coast), the carpenter shop and lumber yards, the pattern shop,
the pattern store, the yard crane, the general store room, the car
shop, which contains a number of forges, and blacksmith and plate shop,
where is being manufactured at the present a large number of
construction cars for use on the Dom Pedro Dam, at the head of the
Modesto and Turlock irrigation projects, and hydroelectric works. Here
is manufactured structural steel for mining companies. There is also
the building containing the two great electrical transformers and the
three great air compressors. The foundry is a marvel of efficiency and
magnitude, and among its striking architectural features are the three
gigantic cupolas, for melting the iron, and three vast pits where the
moulds are made and metal is poured for massive castings. The main
building contains the offices of the works, including the
administration and engineering offices and the general superintendent's
offices, and also the commodious and well-arranged draftsmen's rooms,
and the storehouses; and among the massive, truly wonderful machines
installed in the main building may be mentioned a great gear-cutter
that can cut gears with exactness in solid steel up to twelve feet in
diameter, and up to a seventeen-inch face. There is also a sixteen-foot
vertical boring mill, and a Putnam lathe of eighty-eight-inch centers
with a thirty-six-foot bed, which is capable of turning out fifteen-ton
crank shafts and other big work; a horizontal boring mill forty tons in
weight, designed and built and set up in these works. The plant as a
whole is very well lighted and ventilated, with all sanitary
conveniences and first aid for the injured. The expanse of windows may
be judged somewhat form the fact that it costs about $500.00 for a
single window cleaning.
Among
the products of these famous works are heavy mining machinery
comprising stamp mills, rock or ore crushers, ball mills, and machinery
of all description pertaining to mining, irrigation, hydroelectric
works, etc., etc. Machinery manufactured at Sunnyvale have been set up
in the most remote parts of the earth,—as when two Hendy mills were
installed at Nome, Alaska, in 1912. There are two-stamp and three-stamp
mills, and each is a model in design and workmanship. The iron works
also manufacture ore and rock cars, for which they are famous, and
these include Hendy's Ideal Car, steel double side dump "v"-shaped body
cars, gable bottom cars, and cradle or U-shaped body side dump cars,
and the Matteson side and end dump cars. Original and leaders in their
own path-breaking movements, the Joshua Hendy Iron Works keep pointing
the way for others to follow, and they leave no stone unturned to send
out only perfectly-finished goods, howsoever bulky and common in
general style they may happen to be. Both Sunnyvale, Santa Clara
County, and San Francisco are to be congratulated on having such a
product of the Twentieth Century as the Joshua Hendy Iron Works of
Sunnyvale and the Bay City, the former boasting of the factory whose
efficiency is largely due to the exceptional superintendence of the
genial director, Mr. H. S. Rexworthy.