Building Monongahela
Walter Seal discusses his tool collection with Cathy Glad at the Building Monongahela Architectural Heritage Fair at Monongahela Area Library.
Among those who spoke at the Building Monongahela Architectural Heritage Fair are, from left, George Ashcraft, Troy Simmons, Terry Necciai and Robert Irey.
MONONGAHELA – Nearly 50 people participated in the Building Monongahela Architectural Heritage Fair at Monongahela Area Library, which was sponsored by the Monongahela Main Street Program and the library.
There were six table displays and three computer stations manned by volunteers who were prepared to help those who attended do online research. There also was a walking tour, and a roundtable discussion moderated by Erin Hammerstedt of Preservation Pennsylvania.
Among the speakers were:
• George Ashcraft, who gave an illustrated presentation on Ashcraft Construction, originally Ashcraft Brothers. The company was started in 1913 by Ashcraft’s father, Harry J. Ashcraft.
The photos showed the transition from a team of horses in 1908 to trucks pulling amazingly large and heavy objects, including industrial machinery, bridge girders and pontoons for flood control, as well as huge tanks. They showed these items being hauled up and down local roads and even through fields.
The company also moved houses, and it installed about half of the sidewalks in Monongahela
•Robert Irey, who gave the history of the construction company that his father, Frank Irey Jr., formed after working briefly for Patterson Supply.
Frank Irey came up with the concept for the Monongahela Aquatorium, and he pushed forward on the project, finding volunteers and donors to get it built in time for the Monongahela bicentennial of 1969. He also was an active proponent of the Mon Valley Expressway through his involvement at the Mon Valley Progress Council.
Robert Irey showed images of buildings his father built or refurbished during the Monongahela Redevelopment Project of 1978-80, as well as the stadium he built in Huntington, W.Va., and facilities the company built for the Disney Corp. in Florida in the 1990s.
• Terry Necciai, a grandson of Harry Ashcraft, who gave a brief review of how Monongahela’s 18th-century boatyards evolved into planing mills by the 1860s, and how 20th-century companies could trace their origin to them. He also moderated the discussion.
• Troy Simmons, who about McPherson, Simmons and Son, a construction company that grew from Joseph Henry Simmons’ involvement at Valley Mills, a planing mill and construction company that later built entire towns for the coal industry.
In the 1930s, MPSB was the only company to advertise as a full-service homebuilder in Monongahela. The company relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Simmons brought some tools and drawings used to build Monongahela buildings that have been in Washington, D.C., since that time. MPSB constructed the concrete elements in Chess Park, although H.J. Ashcraft did the excavation work to prepare for the project.