IX. Planning the Town of Moxham
Like many companies during that period, the Johnson Company coordinated the development of its manufacturing plant with the planning of a contiguous residential community. As early as 1887, Tom Johnson and his brother Albert began the formal planning of an integrated community for the employees and management of the mill. It was not to be a company town in the traditional sense, but rather a gridwork of private residential properties and recreational parks, connected to the downtown areas of Johnstown by a system of rapid transit.
Surveyed by professional planners in New York in 1888 and revised several times after the Great Flood, the community represented a significant land investment for Johnson and his brother. But given the remoteness of the mill from the established communities two miles down the Stony Creek, Johnson was confident that the residential lots would be bought up by mill employees who wanted to build houses within walking distance of work. Management personnel of the mill were also encouraged to build their own homes in the new community, and most did.
The community was laid out on the east side of Central Avenue, extending up the gradual sloping land into the surrounding hills. By early 1889, the shape of the community was becoming clearer. In the center of the residential properties, running perpendicular to Central Avenue along the south side of what would become known as Ohio Street, was a large recreational park occupying over three city blocks and containing a community dancing and dining hall. The park was named the Von Lunen Grove, after the original owner of the farm land the Johnsons had purchased.
Directly across Ohio Street from the dining hall was built the new Moxham estate, a large brick residence and carriage house situated on the front of a 20-lot wooded block bounded by Grove and Cypress Avenues. Commissioned in the summer of 1888, the residence was built by B.F. Horner between August 1888 and March 1889, and the Moxham family moved into the home, thereafter known as the Grove, on March 22, 1889. Nine weeks later, the Great Flood swept away the old Rosensteel house in Woodvale which they had occupied for the previous two years. With Moxham away on a short trip abroad in early 1889, the Johnsons chartered the community and named it Moxham after their partner. A very private man, Moxham apparently found this element of notoriety quite discomforting for many years.
Nevertheless, Moxham involved himself directly in the development of up-to-date public services for the community. He was the moving force behind the incorporation in September 1888 of the Somerset Water Company, designed to develop water supplies from the Von Lunen spring for the anticipated community population of 10,000. By mid-1889, he had arranged for supply routes from the west to pipe in natural gas for both domestic use and street lighting. And in February of 1890, he chartered the Moxham Steam Fire Engine and Hose Company, which constructed an engine house and stable on Central Avenue south of the General Office by August of that year. The engine house was a 25x28 foot brick structure opening directly onto Central Avenue, and housed both a hose cart and a steam engine from the Button Works of Waterford, New York. A small wood-frame stable constructed at the rear of the engine house accommodated seven horses.
The major hurdle was the need for a rapid transit line. Isolated and over two miles upstream from the established communities in the Johnstown area, the Johnson Company plant site and the town of Moxham were accessible only by horse or foot via the Valley Pike. If workers residing in the established neighborhoods of Johnstown were to be drawn to the employ of the Johnson Company, a more efficient mode of transit had to be provided. And if the town of Moxham were to be an attractive residential area for plant workers or other town folk, access to the commercial sections of the Johnstown area was equally important.
The easiest means of achieving these ends would have been to purchase outright the locally-owned Johnstown Passenger Railway Company, the horse-drawn street railway that had been built by Cambria Iron Company interests to serve their own mill communities of Cambria City, Millville, Johnstown, Woodvale, Conemaugh and Franklin. The railway could then be extended from the Grubbtown terminus south along the Valley Pike and across the Stony Creek to the town of Moxham. But as local owners resisted several purchase offers by Tom Johnson and balked at extending routes to the south, Moxham opted to construct his own rapid transit system along the route of his own railroad spur, the Johnstown and Stony Creek Railroad.
The track bed was surveyed in late October 1887 at the same time the Johnson Company was initiating foundation work for the rail mill. Moxham started laying track in November 1887 and the three-mile route was completed by the spring of the next year. Formally chartered on January 19, 1888, the Johnstown and Stony Creek Railroad Company initiated regular passenger service on June 10th. The rapid transit service took seven minutes, running from a platform at the Johnson mill along Central Avenue to a passenger station built at 400 Bedford Street. At that point, passengers could disembark and catch the eastern line of the horse-drawn street railway to all other commercial and residential parts of the Johnstown area.
The Johnstown and Stony Creek ran south from Bedford Street along the tracks of the B&O Railroad for about a mile, then split off where the B&O crossed the Stony Creek and instead followed the eastern bank of the river into the town of Moxham where it formed a loop in front of the plant entrance where the Company had built a platform and a short time later constructed a long wooden car shed. The service, three Brill passenger cars pulled by a steam locomotive, ran every half hour from each terminus at a single fare of ten cents. As ridership increased, service ran every fifteen minutes and the fare reduced to five cents each way (three cents for company employees).
Following the river bed as closely as it did, the Johnstown and Stony Creek lost much of its track in the backwash of the Great Flood of 1889, but restored service within three weeks. During the flood recovery, no fare was charged in either direction for the remainder of the year. With the dramatic expansion of the Johnson mill in the year following the flood, particularly around the new General Office Building, the platform near the top of the loop was moved farther north to the base of Ohio Street.
Within a year and a half, an electrified street railway had been constructed from the town of Moxham into the downtown area, with connecting lines to most suburban communities. With its limited scale, infrequent departures, and high fares, the Johnstown and Stony Creek simply could not compete as a rapid transit service. By May 1891, the railroad had reduced its passenger service to only two runs a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Half-hour passenger service was restored briefly when the street railway car barns on Central Avenue were destroyed by fire in early 1893, but the service was suspended altogether by 1894. The railroad then reverted to its original purpose of hauling materials in and out of the plant.
The demise of the Johnstown and Stony Creek as a passenger service was inevitable, not because of flood damage to the track bed (which had been restored quickly), but because the flood forced the owners of the Johnstown Passenger Railway Company to seriously consider Tom Johnson's standing offer to purchase the street railway. Originally constructed in 1882-83 to link the four company towns of Cambria City, Millville, Conemaugh, and Woodvale, the horse-drawn railway proved so popular that the company paid off its capital indebtedness within the first year of operation. It had extended lines into Morrellville, Kernville, Hornerstown, and Franklin, and constructed car barns and stables on both sides of Maple Avenue at Ninth Street in Woodvale.
The Great Flood of 1889 literally erased the entire railway system from the map. Most of the railway's track bed was washed away, particularly along the flood path (Franklin, Woodvale and Conemaugh) and in the downtown areas (Johnstown, Kernville, Hornerstown and Millville). Destroyed without a trace were the large car barns and stables in Woodvale, including 15 horse-cars, 76 horses, and 2,000 bales of hay. Basically all that remained of Johnstown's street railway system were the rights-of-way franchises secured from the small communities along the routes.
To an experienced street railway owner and operator like Tom Johnson, those franchises were the most valuable asset of the Johnstown Passenger Railway Company and he renewed his offer to purchase the line. After considering the dismal prospects of recapitalizing the system from scratch, the Directors of the street railway accepted Johnson's offer in September 1889. The transfer of existing stock was completed by the end of the year.
Given his managerial experience in the street railway business and the Johnson Company's sophisticated engineering capacity, Johnson was in a unique position to reconstruct the street railway line after the Flood. He moved quickly to secure the necessary changes in municipal ordinances to allow electrification of service in those communities in which he already held franchises, and pressed the newly-consolidated (on November 5, 1889) City of Johnstown to construct permanent iron bridges to accommodate streetcar lines. The track system was completely redesigned by the Johnson Company engineering staff and constructed with Johnson girder rail and Johnson specialty track work (curves, crossings, frogs, switches, and turnouts) along previous routes.
The biggest change in the railway system was the relocation of its main car barns from the original Woodvale site at Maple Avenue and 9th Street to its new site in Moxham between the Engine House of the Moxham Fire Company and the Johnson Company's General Office on Central Avenue. A large wooden structure, the new car barns fronted over 100 feet along Central Avenue and formed a horseshoe-shaped loop almost 18 feet wide that extended over 100 feet east into the plant itself. The loop covered over 250 feet from the northern entrance to southern exit, and reportedly held up to forty cars, as many as three at a time in its repair shop. A small 15x15 foot free-standing railway office was located between the car barns and the General Office.
A second major structure, coal-burning electric power generating plant, was constructed back against the hillside on Baumer Street near the Bedford Street intersection. The 40x60 foot structure was completed by early October 1890, and was connected to local mine shafts in the adjoining hillside. With the completion of the power plant, ten motor cars and ten trailers were readied and regular runs of the new electrified street railway commenced on November 9, 1890. Less than ten years later, service expansion required the railway company to build a second, enlarged power plant on the same site. Constructed of brick along the same style as the car barns, the new Baumer Street power plant was operational by late 1900.
By 1891, Tom Johnson had restored and electrified railway service from the Central Avenue car barns along the old Valley Pike route through Kernville to a downtown loop and from there out to the communities near the Cambria Iron Company steel works (Millville, Cambria City and Morrellville). By 1893, railway service to the devastated communities of Conemaugh and Woodvale was restored. In that same year however, on March 10, 1893, the Central Avenue car barns (with most of the rolling stock inside) were completely destroyed by an early morning fire.
Johnson immediately purchased two blocks of residential properties across Central Avenue for the construction of new facilities, this time elaborate brick structures including two huge car barns, a separate repair shop, and a large office-conductor's house. These structures, centered around Bond Street on the southern end of Central Avenue, would become as recognizable a feature of the community as the Johnson Company plant itself.
Within the next three years, the Johnstown Passenger Railway Company expanded its branch lines in dramatic fashion. To the west, it pushed across the Coopersdale Bridge into the Borough of Coopersdale, constructing a car barn and loop at its northern limit. To the east, it pressed up the Little Conemaugh into and through Franklin Borough. South of Johnstown, it developed exploratory lines into Dale and Hornerstown, though its main north-south route remained the Valley Pike. And together with developers promising a recreational park with a racetrack, the street railway extended its Franklin Street line to Roxbury Avenue, eventually constructing a station and loop at Roxbury Park.
Like the town of Moxham, the Johnstown Passenger Railway Company was essentially an auxiliary operation of the Johnson Company. While it was a separate corporate entity with its own capital stock and stockholders, it was entirely owned by Tom L. Johnson and his partner Fred du Pont, and entirely built by the Johnson Company. By a curious sequence of historical events, stretching from the coincidental meeting of two young boys in the offices of the Louisville Rolling Mill in 1869 to the devastating ravages of the Great Johnstown Flood almost twenty years later, the City of Johnstown and its surrounding communities had perhaps the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art street railway system to be found anywhere in the United States.