The Lake Erie Engineering Works

      Heavy engines of every sort, general castings and large machinery are the products of Lake Erie Engineering Works located at Perry and Chicago Streets, directly opposite the Lake Erie Boiler Works. While under the same control as the other company, the Lake Erie Engineering Works is an entirely different and independent concern. The affairs of the two companies are directed from the same set of offices, located at the corner of Perry and Chicago streets, and Mr. Richard Hammond acts as president to both companies. Mr. Martin Carey is secretary of the Lake Erie Engineering Works.

      The Lake Erie Engineering Works was organized in this city, and located on the present site, nineteen years ago and enjoyed a phenomenal growth. The manufacturing plant of the Lake Erie Engineering Works occupies a space of five hundred by three hundred feet on Chicago and Perry streets. This includes a machine shop one hundred feet wide by three hundred feet long, completely equipped with the most improved types of overhead traveling cranes and fitted with the most modern machinery. Other buildings are the foundry, one hundred by three hundred feet; the forge shop, thirty by eighty feet; and the pattern shop, sixty by one hundred and fifty feet. All the buildings are of brick and steel construction, as nearly fireproof as it is possible to build, and thoroughly equipped with every modern convenience.

      Throughout the engine world the very name of the works is a guarantee of thorough and good workmanship. In all its markets, which are international, its product is always accepted on honor, and in Cuba and the United States possessions, products of the Lake Erie Engineering Works are in great demand.

      Here in the city of the firm’s nativity, some of its largest contracts have been fulfilled. Principal among these are the immense pumping engines used in the pumping stations of the city of Buffalo. The fame of their engines is widely known. They are used in the city of Chicago and a number of other large cities in the United States and Canada. Of recent years, the company has filled several large Government contracts in a manner that elicited the admiration of the Government.

Founded in 1888 the company to make marine engines, the company was acquired by a group headed by John T. Dillon and renamed the Buffalo Machine & Iron Corp. In 1925 it was reorganized as the Lake Erie Engineering Corp. and moved to Tonawanda, NY in 1931. In 1957, Lake Erie Engineering Corp., now located in Tonawanda, NY, was bought by the Bell Aircraft Corp.

Information Sources

• American Steam Engine Builders: 1800-1900 by Kenneth L. Cope, 2006 page 136
• A history of the city of Buffalo: its men and institutionsby the Buffalo Evening News, 1908 pages 92 & 93
• 1899 Factory View courtesy of Brian Szafranski
• Tonawanda News, 04 Feb 1957 pg. 1