The Electrification of Kutztown: New Evidence
By Brendan Strasser
Through some detailed, intrepid sleuthing while researching the historical society’s recent posts of vintage Kutztown barroom photographs on Facebook, local resident Andrew Lenz uncovered a few new discoveries that have occasioned revisions to the accepted history regarding the electrification of the Borough of Kutztown. Andrew has previously assisted the society and the Kutztown Community Partnership in providing valuable historical information about the early years of the Strand Theater, recovered from articles in the digital collection of the Kutztown Patriot hosted on the KU website.
In researching and writing about the borough’s history, as well as in dating vintage photographs, the historical society has relied on the narrative that Kutztown was first electrified on 10 October 1905 when Town Council President Charles W. Snyder flipped the switch at the Borough’s recently completed electric power station on Schley St. (now North Constitution Blvd.) to turn on the newly installed street lights for the first time and that, following this ceremony (complete with the Kutztown Band), the electric service was gradually extended to borough homes and businesses over the next several years so that by 1910 or so, much of the borough was electrified. (Ruth Bonner’s contention that Borough engineer George Helferich flipped the switch appears to be in error, or at least in conflict with the Patriot’s account, written at the time.) Borough electrification, which resulted in rapid and massive change to ordinary living conditions in Kutztown in the decade prior to WWI, was, we thought, etched in stone.
The only exception to the 1905 date for the introduction of electric in the borough was thought to be the overhead catenary that powered the trolleys of the Allentown & Reading Traction Co., supplied by the company’s own engine-house, completed in late 1900 as the first building to grace the A. & R. T. Co. lot on Willow St., preceding even the trolley barn. Trolley service to Kutztown from the east was supplied by the Allentown & Kutztown Traction Co., chartered in 1898 as a subsidiary of the Allentown & Reading (1897). Prior to that, the trolleys had relied on power generated at Griesemersville (later incorporated into the City of Allentown). At about the same time that the A. & R. T. Co.’s power-house was completed, William J. Bear was hired as the company’s chief engineer and master mechanic, and in 1907, he was promoted to superintendent. Shortly before the Kutztown facility was completed, the Kutztown Electric Light, Heat & Power Co. was organized under president Daniel P. Grim and while said to have supplied power as far as Trexlertown to the east and, later, Temple to the west (in both cases following the route of the trolleys), nothing was ever stipulated in the major Kutztown histories of 1915 and 1965 about supplying power to Kutztown itself. The A. & R. T. Co. abandoned its Allentown power-house in 1915, opting instead to purchase electric motive power from the Lehigh Valley Transit Co.,, and in 1924, it sold its Kutztown plant, operating as the Fleetwood & Kutztown Electric Light and Power Co., to the Borough, which supplied electricity through the termination of trolley service from the east in November 1929. (Service from the Reading line continued until June 1930.)
None of this foregoing history is factually in question, but thanks to Andrew’s recent research, the history of electrification in Kutztown has become a bit more complicated. We have been assuming that the electric generated at the A. & R. T. Co.’s power station was used, at least in the borough, exclusively to provide motive power to the trolley cars and that no structure in the borough had electric service until sometime after 10 October 1905. Furthermore, because Kutztown had its own electric utility from the inauguration of service to the borough, we have assumed that no other provider supplied power to Kutztown. Neither of these assumptions, as it turns out, is quite true.
One of Andrew’s revelations was a short article from the 14 January 1899 issue of the Patriot stating that at the manufactory of the recently organized Saucony Shoe Mfg. Co., “The electric light plant of the factory works like a charm. Not only in the factory itself is night turned into day, but also the surroundings have the darkness driven back to a respectful distance.” At this time, Saucony, organized in April 1898 but not yet incorporated, was operating in the Biehl building at 10 East Main St., the three-story, gray-sided structure still standing at the southeast corner of the Main Street bridge. The company incorporated in January 1902 and relocated in February 1906 to its new facility on Peach St., which was likely outfitted with electric service from nearly the day it opened. But in January 1899, almost seven years prior to power being generated by the Borough of Kutztown on Schley St. and nearly two years before power was generated by the A. & R. T. Co. on Willow St., the principals of Saucony Shoe – Walter C. C. Snyder, William A. Donmoyer, Thomas S. Levan, and B. Frank Reider, Sr. – had already established an on-site electrical generating station in the borough.
Andrew further recovered several more articles of interest, one reporting that an ordinance allowing the Keystone Electric Light, Heat and Power Co. to “erect and maintain poles, string wires thereon, and lay conduit pipes on the streets, alleys, and sidewalks of the Borough of Kutztown” was passed by Town Council on 13 January 1902 and signed into law that 31 January. In an article from the 24 January 1903 issue, the aforementioned William A. Donmoyer, having been appointed Vice-President of Saucony Shoe about a year earlier, is also stated to be “one of the wiring men for the Keystone Electric Light, Heat and Power Co.” While stringing a connection from the Kutztown Music Hall, located in the 200 block of Saucony Alley behind the offices of the Kutztown Publishing Co., “across the street into the dwelling of J. T. Fritch,” Donmoyer’s ladder slipped and he fell to the ground, resulting in injuries that, while quite severe at the time, were not thought to cause permanent damage, according to the attending physician, Dr. Henry W. Saul. This same Donmoyer, Andrew discovered, was also the proprietor of an electrical supply store on “lower Main Street” as early as December 1905, notably selling, among other offerings, “the new long distance Hylo Lamps.”
Prompted by these revelations, I began my own research using the Patriot archive, and before long discovered that as Kutztown first contemplated getting into the electric business, editor Jacob B. Esser solicited public opinion on the matter. (It must be remembered that Esser had a vested interest in the Keystone Electric Light, Heat and Power Company insofar as, according to a 6 Oct. 1900 Patriot article, he had been elected its Secretary.) An opinion piece in the 14 January 1905 issue headlined “Views on $15,000 Loan for an Electric Light Plant” questions the efficacy of taking out a loan, and thus raising taxes on borough residents, to facilitate the Borough’s planned electric plant, citing the example of Emmaus, which had already abandoned its own plant and was being supplied with power by the City of Allentown. The anonymous author, signed simply as “Tenant” and worried about increased rents for downtown businesses, urges Town Council to “meet the Keystone Electric Heat, Light and Power Company half way, that we could get all the light needed for street lighting purposes at about half what the borough could possibly furnish it by building a plant of its own.”
Following this piece, another response, by a writer calling himself “Progress,” provides additional perspective in noting that “the present electric light company” (by which he can be referring only to Keystone, as the Borough’s utility did not yet exist) had already “wired free of charge about 45 houses and small shops, four hotels, 30 stores, a lodge hall and Music Hall, which wires must all be bought or replaced by parties taking another current. There are at present about 13 houses, seven stores, one hotel, one saloon, one lodge hall, one factory and four churches that own their wiring, and are using the current at present.” This author also notes that Keystone had at the time no competition and thus no incentive to reduce prices (which were already, he avers, as cheap as possible) and that its expenses were not restricted to the borough but rather spread over a larger service area that included the outskirts, Lyons, and Fleetwood.
Yet another perspective, courtesy of the inexplicably-named Niets Norys, concludes this lengthy front-page feature, urging that Town Council hire an impartial expert in electric service to determine a number of unknown variables, including “how many patrons of electric light would take the borough’s light if it were offered at the same rates as the Allentown & Reading Traction Company would offer it.”
From these excerpts, we can confirm that Keystone was a subsidiary of the traction company that was generating enough electric power to not only operate trolley service to Allentown and Reading but enough excess to supply a substantial and increasing number of borough residences and businesses.
Further research also revealed that, as reported in the 20 October 1900 issue of the Patriot, chronicling the trolley line’s approach to town – the graders were then up to Kemp’s Hotel and undecided as to whether to plan the route over or around Kemp’s Hill (where the Weis is now located) – the Keystone Electric Light, Heat and Power Co. had been granted a charter by the Commonwealth as plans to build the power station intensified. (According to the next week’s issue’s classified ads, the charter notice had been filed on 16 October 1900.)
Prior mentions of the A. & R. T. Co. power plant may have mentioned that excess power was sold back to the Borough but did not specify that this occurred prior to the establishment of the Borough’s own electric utility and certainly did not indicate the extent of the spread of electric service prior to October 1905. Taking a longer view, it becomes clear that the arguments fomenting tension in the Borough of Kutztown in the early 2000s concerning the introduction of fiber optics to the community, and more specifically the debate over whether such services are best provided by the municipality (Hometown Utilicom) or private enterprise (Service Electric), were already being aired literally 100 years earlier with regard to that era’s leading technological innovation. In this case, Town Council approved the aforementioned $15,000 loan in February 1905 and spent $14,600 of it to construct its Schley St. electric plant that August and September, and one has to wonder whether, on some level, that development was an attempt to forestall competition with regard to electric service. Such “socialist” initiatives – local government pre-empting the free enterprise system – were, after all, already in the air in Berks County, or soon would be: in 1927, nearby Reading became the second city in the United States to elect a Socialist administration, which remained in office through 1936. (Milwaukee, WI had elected its first Socialist administration in 1916 and retained it in one form or another until 1960, and in 1933, Bridgeport, CT would elect its own, which remained in power until 1957.) And in 1906 Kutztown, Keystone, like Service Electric would a century later, responded to municipal co-optation by lowering its rates: the 20 January 1906 edition of the Patriot reported that Keystone was reducing its rate from 10 cents to 7 cents per 1,000 watts, with a further reduction expected the following month.
This revised history underscores the significance of the trolley coming to Kutztown and also calls further attention to the specific contributions (even risking life and limb) of William Donmoyer in the borough’s electrification. It also requires us to revisit some entrenched techniques that we have used to date vintage photographs. In using the October 1905 date as the earliest establishment of municipal electricity, we have assumed that the presence of electric lights, switches, connections, and wires in photographs indicates that they were taken after that date (unless contradicted by other visual clues), but in fact, significant portions of the borough had been wired by the end of 1904 and perhaps one to several years earlier. And while it is clear that Saucony Shoe was in the minority, if not unique, in generating its own electricity in 1899, we must also allow the possibility that other manufactories were doing so, meaning that evidence of electrification may turn up even in photographs taken before 1900.
The society would like to thank Andrew for his diligence in researching these questions and thus assisting in overturning certain long-held assumptions about Kutztown history. His efforts are a gentle reminder that history is never “finished,” only endlessly rewritten as new facts come to light – and compelling evidence that you never know where a random post on Facebook may lead!
