MADE IN HAMILTON
20TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

SITE 32
WESTINGHOUSE MANUFACTURING
COMPANY, 1898
SIEMENS-WESTINGHOUSE

The opening of the Westinghouse Company's small air brake factory on this site in 1898 marked the beginning of a new industrial era for the city. It became the first American branch plant to grow into a major Hamilton industry. It was also the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company's first manufacturing operation outside the United States. In this plant, approximately 80 workers produced about 9000 sets of air brakes a year for Canada's railway industry.

A vastly expanded plant opened on this site in 1905, making long-distance electrical transmission equipment, induction motors, switch gear, circuit-breakers, watt-meters, gas and water meters, generators and a host of other electrical products. By 1915, over 3,000 men and women were employed in this thoroughly modern factory. Workers at this plant were among the first to organize in the industrial unionism drive of the 1930s. Today Siemens-Westinghouse prides itself on the use of state-of-the-art production processes.

The former Westinghouse office building was designed by the architectural firm of Prack and Perrine. It still stands near the foot of Sanford Avenue, just south of the plant.

"I remember coming out of work from the air-conditioned Sanford Avenue office building shortly after I started working at Westinghouse in the early 1960s. Some of the shop workers, fresh off their shift, were trying to cool of from their work on this hot, sticky day. Some of them had been running the huge boring mills and lathes. Other had been making copper coils for the massive power generators. Still cool from the office, it was then I realized that the only reason I had this job was thanks to these guys' ability to turn drawings into first class products that we could sell. Those guys really knew their jobs-and they produced. "
Retired Westinghouse Manager

Workers at this plant were organized as the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 504. This local is now part of the Canadian Auto Workers.