MADE IN HAMILTON
19TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

SITE 12
A. M. FORSTER BRASS FOUNDRY, 1873

Hamilton is widely known as an iron and steel town. But brass foundries have also been an important part of the local metals industry. A.M. Forster set up one of the city's first brass shops on this site in 1873. It was a small shop, employing only five or six hands.

The company was renamed the Hamilton Brass Manufacturing Company after it was purchased by a group of local investors in 1885. They launched an ambitious expansion programme. Over 140 brass workers were employed here by the turn of the 20th century. The cash registers, office, bank and church fittings they produced were sold across Canada and internationally.

The building that housed the brass foundry has undergone a number of transformations. What is now the central portion of the building was erected in 1873 to house the Forster foundry. In 1888, the building was bought by W.A. Freeman, a local coal and building supplies dealer. He added two four-storey corner towers topped with pinnacles and pyramidal roofs in 1891. Much of these ornate additions were lost after a fire in 1903. The large round-arched windows of the north corner, the terra cotta panels and medallions and carriage way on the building's north side, survive from the 1891 re-design.