MADE IN HAMILTON
20TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

SITE 27
BROWN-BOGGS COMPANY LTD., 1890

Brown Boggs is this region's oldest surviving machine tool builder. The company was founded in 1890 by John Mootry Brown and Nathaniel Glass Boggs, where Copps Coliseum stands today at the south-east corner of York Boulevard and Bay Street. Both men had learned the trade as apprentices in the Hamilton shop of Samuel J. Moore, Canada's first manufacturer of tinsmith's tools. In 1893, the partners bought out their former employer and moved into his larger shop at the corner of Victoria Avenue and King William Street.

In 1913, the partners built a new foundry and pattern and machine shops on this 8-acre site in the east end "manufacturers' annex". The company closed its Victoria Avenue plant in 1954, and consolidated all its operations at this site. Workers here built power presses, shears, sheet metal equipment and other machinery for the metal industry. In the late 1990s, the firm moved to a new plant in Ancaster.

Workers at this plant were organized as United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 520. They are now members of CAW Local 504.