Taylor & Boggis Foundry

The Taylor & Boggis Foundry is a former manufacturer of gray iron castings and builders’ hardware in Cleveland.

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The Taylor Foundry Company was founded by Harvey Taylor ² in 1864 ⁴ and manufactured gray iron castings and builders’ hardware in the Flats district of Cleveland. ^{1 7 8} In 1875, Taylor recruited Robert Boggis to join the company, at which point it became the Taylor & Boggis Foundry Company. ²

The foundry, by that point a four-story brick building, completely burned on April 9, 1883. ⁶ The losses were estimated at $60,000. The stock was mostly ruined, including finished and rough castings for stoves and sewing machines.

A second plant was later built along the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad (C&P). ⁸ A grade crossing elimination project along the C&P necessitated the purchase of a new site along the Erie Railroad at 3027 East 55th Street. The new site was dedicated in 1912, which consisted of a complex built of steel, brick, concrete, and glass. ⁷

On April 11, 1945, Another large fire destroyed about half of the interior of the foundry after sparks from a passing locomotive ignited the roof of an oil storage shed. ⁵ Damages were estimated at around $25,000.

In August 1969, the Oglebay Norton Company acquired Taylor & Boggis and its affiliates, Ohio Industrial Properties, and Ohio Industrial Castings. Eventually, Taylor & Boggis was consolidated under the Ohio Foundry Company and relocated to East 71st Street and Stanton Avenue. Taylor & Boggis was spun back off as a separate entity in 1993, becoming the T&B Foundry. By the 2000s, the foundry was facing declining sales. ⁹

In 2012, the T&B Foundry declared bankruptcy, eventually leaving the site vacant and saddled with nearly $2 million in liens. ³

In March 2015, Cleveland Heights developer J. Duncan Shorey acquired the abandoned site from the Cuyahoga Land Bank and proposed to transform the grounds into The Foundry Project. ³ It would include a $4.5 million, 40,000-square-foot aquaculture farm, an orchard, artist studios, a farmers market, and a data center. The total cost of the project was estimated at $15 million to $25 million, including $6 million to abate asbestos from the six-story building.

Shorey received letters of intent from Maximum Seafood, a Toronto-area live fish broker, and Sweetwater Springs Fish Farms of Indiana. ³ Additionally, the Cleveland Institute of Art expressed interest in renovating the top three floors of the Foundry Building into a studio center for artists with infrastructure including a glass-blowing furnace.

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Sources

1. “T&B Foundry.” Rustbelt Reclamation, 6 Oct. 2015.
2. “Obituary.” Iron Trade Review, 16 June 1910, p. 1173.
3. Litt, Steven. “Developer J. Shorey plans to turn a vacant foundry into a fish farm, arts complex.” Plain-Dealer [Cleveland], 19 May 2015.
4. Rose, William Ganson. “Cleveland: The Making of a City.” Cleveland: The Making of a City, Kent State University Press, 1990, p. 360.
5. “$35,000 Fire.” Evening Independent [Massillon], 11 Apr. 1945, p. 8.
6. “At Cleveland – Loss $60,000.” Enquirer [Cincinnati], 10 Apr. 1883, p. 4.
7. “Layout and Construction of a Modern Foundry.” Foundry, Jul. 1912. pp. 283-291.
8. “The Taylor-Boggis New Foundry at Cleveland.” Castings, Jul. 1912, pp. 97-101.
9. “T&B Foundry Company.” Manta.