Natural gas discoveries of the 1880s revealed the giant Trenton Field in Indiana, which extended into Ohio. New pipelines and abundant gas supplies would attract manufacturing industries to the Midwest — where small towns competed with cities to attract new industries. It was an Indiana natural gas boom too good to last. (more…)
The history of Con Edison includes stories of work crews from New York City’s many competing gas companies digging up lines of rivals — and literally battling for customers, giving rise to the term “gas house gangs.”
Competing New York City manufactured gas companies provided lighting beginning in 1823. This 1873 “bird’s eye view” illustrates New York and Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Bridge, under construction from 1870 to 1883, is at right. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Still among the nation’s largest gas utility companies, Consolidated Edison, Inc. — known as “Con Edison” or “Con Ed” — began on November 11, 1884, when six New York City gas-light companies merged (New York, Manhattan, Metropolitan, Municipal, Knickerbocker and Harlem).
But New York’s giant utility can trace its history more than six decades earlier to the New York Gas Light Company, which provided manufactured gas (also called town gas) by distilling coal.
America’s first public street lamp using manufactured gas illuminated Baltimore, Maryland, in 1817, making the Gas Light Company of Baltimore the first U.S. commercial gas lighting company. Its plant distilled tar and wood to create the gas.
In Pennsylvania, employees of the newly formed Philadelphia Gas Works in 1836 ignited 46 “coal gas” lights along the city’s Second Street (learn more in Illuminating Gaslight).
“Before the Brooklyn Bridge spanned the East River, before the Statue of Liberty first graced New York Harbor, and before skyscrapers rose above New York City’s streets, the utility companies that would eventually become Con Edison were already building the energy infrastructure needed to fuel and sustain the city’s growth,” notes a company historian. (more…)
