ARMSTRONG CORK COMPANY
The Armstrong Cork Company had its beginning in a
small room at the corner of Smithfield Street and Diamond
Alley, Pittsburgh, in the year 1860, when Thomas M.
Armstrong and John D. Glass purchased the hand-cut cork
business of Harry Overington, a former workman of William
King of New York City, the first person to manufacture
corks in the United States.
Mr. Glass died in 1864 and shortly afterward his interest
in the business was purchased by William L. Standish and
Robert D. Armstrong, a brother of Thomas M. Armstrong.
The name cf the firm was then changed to Armstrong,
Brother & Company, and the business was moved to a loca-
tion on Third Avenue in the rear of the old St. Charles Hotel.
Somewhat later the factory was moved to First Avenue
where it remained until 1878, when the continued expansion
of the business made necessary the purchase of land for a
much larger plant in the area bounded by Twenty-third,
Twenty-fourth and Railroad Streets and the Allegheny
River, the site of the present Pittsburgh factory, warehouse
and office build’ ngs.
The erection of the new factory was but one step in the
expansion of the Ccmpany which has been going on steadily
ever since. In 1893 the Lancaster Cork Works at Lancaster,
Pa., was purchased to supply more efficiently the trade in
in the east; in 1900 a new plant was erected at Beaver Falls,
Pa., for the manufacture of corkboard insulation from the
waste developed in the making of bottle stoppers and other
cork products, and in 1904 a similar factory at Camden,
N.J., was purchased from the Nonpareil Cork Manufacturing
Company.
For many years the Company had secured corkwood.
the outer bark of the cork oak tree, from various sources in
the cork producing countries. But in 1906 the business
had grown to the pcint where it was necessary to build a
factory at Seville, Spain, for the preparation of its raw
material. This was the forerunner of a large foreign organ-
ization which now numbers some sixteen plants in southern
France and northern Africa.
