Above, the New York Air Brake factory on Starbuck Ave., shown with its iconic smokestacks, ca. 1969. The smokestacks were torn down in the late 1990s.
The New York Air Brake Corp., 748 Starbuck Ave., Watertown, remains today what it was when it was founded as Eames Vacuum Brake Co. in 1876: One of Watertown?s largest, most prominent manufacturers and businesses.
Eames Vacuum Brake Co. began with an iron foundry on Beebe Island and a brass foundry nearby. The company made a new kind of pneumatic brake for north country railroads, and in 1890 became New York Air Brake Co.
By 1920, New York Air Brake had moved to Starbuck Avenue. The foundry moved around 1910 and was replaced by a new building closer to Pearl Street in 1924.
By 1919, Air Brake boasted 7,000 employees, when it produced horse-drawn cannons. In 1945, the company employed? 3,000, making tanks and other military hardware for World War II.
Its next peak employment was around 1958 with 2,589 employees.
In 1967, General Signal Corp. bought Air Brake with its foundry, Dynapower and Stratopower divisions, for $66 million in stock. In 1969, Air Brake had 1,820 employees working in Watertown.
By 1980, that number reached about 2,200 before dropping below 1,200 workers after 1985.
More Business History
The roots of Dynapower and Stratopower went back to World War II, when Air Brake developed a hydraulic pump used in Lockhead P-38 fighter planes.
Stratopower?s name came from pumps developed for aircraft, including the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. Dynapower came from a hydrostatic transmission system developed from the Stratopower pump. While Stratopower built parts for aerospace and defense contracts, Dynapower made components for heavy machinery and farm equipment.
Munich, Germany-based Knorr-Bremse Corp. bought the railroad-brake-making division of Air Brake in 1990, which left the former New York Air Brake Co. divided into three companies: New York Air Brake Corp., a division of Knorr; G.S. Castings, the foundry, a division of General Signal; and Dynapower/Stratopower, another division of General Signal.
The foundry had as many as 536 union employees in the 1960s. The number of employees at the foundry dropped to about 150 in the 1970s and 1980s.
Freight-car brake orders fell dramatically in the 1980s as railroads lost customers to over-the-road trucking companies, and the foundry cut back to three-day work weeks.
From 1983 to 1985, the company spent $16 million on foundry improvements, including $6.5 million from a state grant, with the goal of developing product lines in addition to the brake castings.
The New York Air Brake Co.
In the 1980s, the foundry poured radiator cores for Utica Boiler and compressor blocks for Carrier Corp. It had the capacity to pour 60 million pounds per year, but never approached that level.
Layoffs cut the foundry?s work force to less than 100 employees by 1991, when General Signal closed it. High fixed costs, including an electric bill of nearly $2 million a year, made it unprofitable to operate without large volumes.
By 1992, Knorr?s Air Brake had about 700 employees in Watertown and Kingston, Ontario; General Signal?s Dynapower/Stratopower had about 300 employees and an estimated payroll of $9 million. General Signal moved Dynapower/Stratopower to North Charleston, S.C., in 1992, and the division closed in 1996.
In 1994, Knorr-Bremse Corp. moved the mass-transit division of New York Air Brake from Watertown to its Westminster, Md., plant. That left freight-car brakes, the main business for Air Brake in Watertown, and locomotive brakes.
In the early 1980s, the mass transit division bailed out the company?s ailing freight-car brake sales, with more than $100 million in contracts for brakes for New York City subway cars.
Before the mass transit division moved, New York Air Brake had 518 employees in Watertown; after the move Air Brake had about 400 jobs.
The company benefited from a booming market for new freight cars that started in 1994. Air Brake employment dipped to 360 with a payroll of $16.5 million in 1999, but this year increased to 398 with payroll that tops $18 million.
Knorr-Bremse Corp.,? has invested more than $29 million in New York Air Brake since its purchase, culminating with consolidation of operations into a remodeled 237,000-square-foot building, 748 Starbuck Ave., in 1995. Before that, Air Brake was spread throughout 450,000 square feet of building space on Starbuck Avenue and Pearl Street.
Business history is a monthly feature from the archives of the Watertown Daily Times. Visit www.watertowndailytimes.com to access digital archives since 1988, or stop by the Times, 260 Washington St., Watertown to research materials in our library that date back to the 1800s.
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