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Stewart Iron Works thrived in Covington in early 1900s
Excerpt from "The Encylopedia of Northern Kentucky"

The Stewart family, which came to the United States from Scotland, arrived in Louisville, Ky., during the early 1800s after having originally settled in Virginia.

Thomas Stewart was a contractor in Louisville who died young; two of his sons became steamboat captains. A third son, Richard C. Stewart Sr. (1829-1906), learned the blacksmith trade.

By 1850, R.C., as he was known, was managing his own blacksmith business in Louisville. After stays in Cleveland, Ohio, where his sons Richard C. Jr. and Wallace A. Stewart were born, and in Newport, Ky., R.C. Stewart Sr. set up a business in Covington by 1862.

Under the name of Architectural Iron Works, R.C. Stewart manufactured verandas, balconies, stairways, doors, shutters, cellar gratings, awnings, stirrups, anchors, hog chains, bolts, hinges, railings, bridge iron and sheet iron in Covington at 813-815 Madison Ave.

Richard C. Jr. (1857-1937) and Wallace A. (1858-1910) followed their father into the iron industry, working from several locations within Covington. In 1886, the brothers ventured west to Wichita, Kan., where for a few years they successfully ran another iron concern.

For reasons unknown, they came back to this area around 1895, eventually involving themselves in enterprises at various locations. One of these enterprises was a jail cell division and the other involved decorative iron works.

In 1903, the then-called Stewart Iron Works moved to a new modern plant at 17th Street and Madison Avenue in Covington. The plant was located at what was known as the KC Junction, the intersection of the Louisville and Nashville and Chesapeake and Ohio railroads, a major railhead connection that facilitated making shipments nationwide.

Ultimately, the local iron-working firm used four buildings at the Madison Avenue site: the jail cell division, a truck division, wrought iron furniture and fence division and, much later, a chain-link fence division.

The company held a 23-year contract with the Sears and Roebuck Co. of Chicago for iron fencing.

Stewart Iron Works built railroad entrance gates for the Panama Canal; built an iron fence around the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.; and restored the entrance gates to the White House during the term of Rutherford B. Hayes for the Hayes museum in Fremont, Ohio.

During the Victorian era, Stewart Iron Works' products were shipped internationally, gracing the fronts of French chateaux, of London townhouses, of houses on San Francisco's Nob Hill, of brownstones in New York City, of homes in New Orleans, and of countless cemeteries.

At the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Stewart Iron Works was awarded the grand prize and gold medal merit in construction for its numerous designs of iron fencing and lawn furniture.

During World War I, Stewart Iron Works manufactured one-, two- and three-ton trucks, under the name of the United States Motor Truck Co. (incorporated 1914). Many of these trucks were used by the U.S. military in the war effort. However, some were sold to local individuals, including the first one off the assembly line, which went to John Craig, a contractor and former mayor of Covington.

Some of these trucks were delivered as far away as Australia.

Stewart Iron Works' truck division ceased in 1928, when the last truck rolled off the assembly line. Over the years, customers for Stewart Iron Works' motor truck division included Dow Drug Stores, the Cincinnati Enquirer, The Cincinnati Post, Firestone Tire & Rubber Co, and Cincinnati's Hoffmann Meats and French Bauer Dairy.

The motor truck division's high point was reached in 1918, when it delivered 100 to the U.S. Army. The company also made heli exhaust manifolds for use in diesel engines of submarines.

Stewart Iron Works' jail cell division delivered products to prisons such as the federal penitentiaries in Atlanta, Alcatraz (San Francisco) and Marion, Ill., as well as to state penitentiaries in New York.

A story exists within the history of the Stewart Iron Works Co. that during the early 1930s a load of jail cells en route from the dock at San Francisco to Alcatraz Island slipped off a barge and rests today at the bottom of the bay.

Each Monday The Post prints excerpts from the forthcoming "The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky," edited by Paul A. Tenkotte and James C. Claypool. Visit http://www.nkyencyclopedia.org/ on the Web.