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Northwood Company History

Northwood Glass Company, Martin?s Ferry, Ohio (1888-1892) and Ellwood City, Pennsylvania (1892-1896)
Northwood Company, Indiana, Pennsylvania (1896-1899)
H. Northwood Company, Wheeling, West Virginia (1902-1925).

The story of the Northwood glass companies is really the story of Harry Northwood. The son of a well-known English glass worker, Harry immigrated to America in the early 1880s. He worked for several glass companies in the U.S. before he and S. C. Dunlevy, a salesman from the La Belle Glass Company where Harry was manager, opened the Northwood Glass Company in 1888. Their factory was the old Union Flint Glass Works in Martin?s Ferry, Ohio and initial wares included vases, jugs, straw jars, water sets, and blown tableware. In 1892 the company moved to larger quarters in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania; however, it did not prosper in its new location and was deeply in debt by January of 1896 when Harry suddenly left the firm to start a new enterprise in Indiana, Pennsylvania. At that time the Ellwood City plant was closed. The new venture was called the Northwood Company and concentrated on the manufacture of pressed rather than blown glass. After a slow start this became one of Harry?s most successful endeavors. In September of 1899 the plant joined the National Glass Company and shortly thereafter Harry Northwood severed his connection with the company and moved to England. He returned to America in 1901 and by April of 1902 had opened the H. Northwood Company on the site of what had been the U. S. Glass Company?s Factory H (the old Hobbs, Brockunier plant) in Wheeling, West Virginia. The plant operated successfully until Northwood?s death in 1919, but was only sporadically profitable thereafter and was forced into receivership in September 1925. The furnaces were extinguished for the last time in December of the same year.

? From The Glass Candlestick Book, volume 3, by Tom Felt, Rich & Elaine Stoer (reprinted with permission)

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Date:	28.04.2007 22:06
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Added by:	Tom Felt