Finding Aids

The E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company commonly known as the DuPont Company. It was established in 1802 and began by manufacturing gunpowder; later it produced chemical compounds. The Real Estate Division was responsible for investigating locations and the acquisition of major facilities throughout the United States. Henry H. Gunther (1919-1960), was a real estate specialist with the DuPont Company. This small collection consists of Gunther's files on acquiring plant sites.

Horace Holden Thayer, Jr. (1878-1959) was a naval architect, mechinical engineer, and businessman. Between 1909 and 1914 Thayer worked for the Delaware Construction Company which was a building company, and a subsidary of the National Real Estate Trust Company, which provided loans and financing for the properties. This small collection consists of papers relating to Thayer's early work with the National Real Estate Trust Company and the Delaware Construction Co. These materials document the formation of the National Real Estate Trust Company and building specifications for the Delaware Construction Co. There is a small amount of papers related to the businesses of his father-in-law Thomas H. Savery (1837-1910), specifically the Harpers Ferry Paper Company and the Shanandeoah Pulp Company.

John A. Bader II (1895-1961) was a Wilmington, Delaware, building contractor active during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The records are primarily Bader's business papers. The collection includes engineer's field books, diaries of trips, and job notes. Eight volumes contain profit and loss statements, cost accounting for jobs, records of checks paid, and files on individual construction jobs.

John McShain (1898-1989) was a Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.,-based building contractor, whose firm, John McShain, Inc., was by 1950 the fiftieth largest construction firm in the United States, with contracts in excess of $100,000,000. John McShain's personal and business papers document his business career, the construction industry, and his investments in hotels, car dealerships, parking garages, transit lines, and racehorses.

Levi C. Stang (1890-1962) was an electrical engineer and general manager of several electric companies throughout the Midwest. His scrapbook chronicles his career and employment as an electrical engineer through selected letters and correspondence, newspaper and other clippings, blueprints, and photographs.

The Pennsylvania Water & Power Company formed in 1910 to finish construction of the Holtwood hydroelectric facility along the lower Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. The company achieved numerous advancements in hydroelectric and steam power development in the early twentieth century, and helped bring about the electrification of Baltimore and, later, much of the Chesapeake and eastern Pennsylvania area. The records largely consist of correspondence to and from Pennsylvania Water & Power's chief engineer and later president, John Abbet Walls, and other company heads relating to operations, customers, dam construction, and numerous subjects associated with the hydroelectric industry.

The Spreckels Sugar Refining Company was the Philadelphia branch of the Spreckels family sugar refining combine. The records are primarily accounts for the construction and operation of the Philadelphia refinery under Claus Spreckels Jr. (1858-1946) between 1888 and 1895.