Industry & Invention

Elizabeth Township, PA · est. 1959

Around 1740, ironmaster Peter Grubb built this house amid the forges and furnaces that made Pennsylvania a colonial iron powerhouse. Grubb had opened the nearby Cornwall Furnace, tapping the region's rich ore, while the Upper and Lower Hopewell Forges hammered pig iron into usable bar iron along Hammer Creek. The dams that once powered those forges can still be traced in the water below the mansion.

East Nottingham Township, PA · est. 1996

Chartered as a borough from 1853 to 1914, Hopewell was a small Chester County valley remade into a showcase of forward-looking farming, milling, and schooling. Drawn by its water power, the Dickey family developed the valley between 1815 and the 1870s, with Samuel Dickey earning a reputation as an agricultural innovator and his kin founding local schools. Much of that 19th-century landscape of fields and buildings still survives today.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1947

A few miles south of here stood Hopewell, one of the great charcoal-iron plantations of southeastern Pennsylvania—its forge dating to 1744 and its furnace to 1770. Around the furnace grew a self-contained community of ironmasters, molders, colliers, and their families whose lives ran to the rhythm of the blast. The furnace and its village survive today under the National Park Service as a window into early American industry.

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1947

A few miles south of here stood Hopewell, one of the great charcoal-iron plantations of southeastern Pennsylvania—its forge dating to 1744 and its furnace to 1770. Around the furnace grew a self-contained community of ironmasters, molders, colliers, and their families whose lives ran to the rhythm of the blast. The furnace and its village survive today under the National Park Service as a window into early American industry.

Sulphur Springs, TX

Printer's ink flowed early in Hopkins County: deed records show a paper, the Texas Star, publishing at the county seat of Tarrant by 1854. When William Wortham bought the presses in 1855 and hauled them to Bright Star — later Sulphur Springs — he launched a lineage of newspapers that split, competed, and merged over the next century. The Echo, founded in 1878, absorbed rivals under the long stewardship of the Tate family, and through a tangle of consolidations the county's papers eventually became the Daily News-Telegram alongside the weekly Echo.

Houston, TX

Orphaned as a teenager, Massachusetts-born Horace Dickinson Taylor came to Texas in 1838 and by 1848 had settled in Houston, where he built a thriving cotton brokerage beside a Buffalo Bayou steamboat landing. He raised his family on a wooded homesite here and rose to civic prominence as alderman and, in 1866, mayor. His dredging of the war-neglected bayou revived Houston's commerce and helped the city outcompete Galveston for trade.

Hoschton, GA

In the railroad-hungry decades after the Civil War, a rail line could make or break a Georgia town, and the four Hosch brothers meant to make theirs. Founding Hoschton in 1881 along the path of the proposed Gainesville, Jefferson and Southern Railroad, they donated the land for a depot and bet the community's future on the tracks. When the trains came through, the depot became the town's commercial heart, moving cotton, timber, and passengers and knitting this corner of Jackson County into the wider regional economy.

Lufkin vicinity, TX

When the Houston East and West Texas Railroad reached Angelina County in 1882, a settlement called Bitterweed Flat grew up along the line. W. E. Hoshall bought land and timber rights in 1913 and began shipping logs from a switch there, and in 1917 Luke E. Wright built a sawmill and a company town — named Hoshall — complete with churches, schools, and a commissary, home to both Anglo and African American workers. When the mills closed, the town emptied, until by 1940 only a cemetery and a mill pond remained.

Lampasas, TX

In the late 1800s, Lampasas rode the national craze for 'taking the waters,' advertising its mineral-rich Hancock Springs as 'The Saratoga of the South' and drawing tourists, conventions, and Baptist encampments. In 1911 a spring-fed pool was carved into Hancock Park, and by 1929 the two-story Hostess House rose beside it—part bathhouse, part dance hall, where local bands and touring performers played beneath an open-air platform. During World War II the federal government leased the park as a recreation ground for soldiers from nearby Camp Hood, and in 1948 Governor Beauford Jester and Congressman Lyndon Johnson helped rededicate it.

Marlin, TX

A well drilled in 1892 to find a public water supply instead struck 48,000 gallons a day of hot mineral water from an artesian deposit. First thought unfit to use, the water was found to have supposed curative powers, and on the initiative of local citizens and physicians a health resort grew up, with a bath house in 1895 and a second well in 1910. Marlin became a magnet for health-seekers from across the country.

Hubbard, TX

A well drilled near here in 1894 struck hot mineral water at 3,100 feet, and Hubbard joined Marlin and Mineral Wells as a Texas town promising cures in its baths. By 1907 there was a bath house and pavilion, and in 1915 two brothers, doctors John and Will Wood, opened a 14-bed hospital that drew patients nationwide for a 21-day course of treatment. The resort boomed—Hubbard's population peaked at 2,200 in 1920, and Governor William P. Hobby once owned the baths—until clogged pipes, modern medicine, and fire closed it around 1930.

Robstown, TX

Robstown sprang up where two railroads crossed, and in 1914 local businessmen C.C. Brendle and V.V. Elick built a hotel as near the depot as they could manage. Its 36 rooms quickly became the town's social hub, doubling as a showroom where traveling salesmen laid out their wares. Passing through hard times and later German fraternal ownership, the three-story building — with its brick parapet, red tile roof, and arched doorway — still recalls the boomtown energy of early-century South Texas.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2016

Founded in 1883, the Hotel Brotherhood USA was a benevolent society of Black hotel workers that grew into one of the most influential early organizations in the hospitality trade. In an era when Black laborers had few protections, it championed fair treatment, dignity on the job, and economic self-reliance, pooling resources to support its members. It has been headquartered at this Philadelphia location since 1906.

El Paso, TX

Businesswoman Alzina DeGroff bought the hotel on this site in 1899, and by 1926 had commissioned a striking new building from the Southwest's premier architect, Henry C. Trost. Renamed the Hotel Cortez in 1935, its Spanish eclectic brick facade bristles with terra cotta busts of conquistadors. Among its guests was President John F. Kennedy, who stayed here in 1963, the year of his death. The hotel closed in 1970 and was later restored and converted to offices.

Eagle Lake, TX

Eagle Lake grew up in the 1850s where three railroads crossed and stagecoaches paused, and Gamaliel Good's early hotel on this corner served the steady stream of travelers and traveling salesmen — the "drummers" — who kept a rail town's commerce humming. By 1912, when the surviving Hotel Dallas was built, the local economy had shifted to rice farming, and this house became the town's social and business hub. As railroads faded and automobiles took over, its trade declined, leaving it the last of Eagle Lake's historic hotels.

Milford, PA · est. 2007

Opened in 1852 as a summer retreat in the Pocono foothills, the Hotel Fauchere earned national fame for its kitchen once Louis Fauchere—a master chef trained at New York's celebrated Delmonico's—took charge. He brought fine ingredients, refined recipes, and the then-novel idea of the printed menu to a small Pennsylvania town. Over the decades its guest register filled with presidents, governors, artists, and writers drawn to its elegant table.

Galveston, TX

After the catastrophic 1900 hurricane that nearly wiped Galveston off the map, the island's businessmen and ordinary subscribers pooled a million dollars to build a grand hotel and signal that the port city would rebuild. Completed in 1911 and designed by the St. Louis firm Mauran and Russell, the Hotel Galvez rose in Spanish Colonial Revival style with a red tile roof and white stuccoed walls. Both hotel and city honor Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana and viceroy of Mexico for whom Galveston Bay was named.

Hopkinsville, KY

Built in 1894 and named for hometown philanthropist John C. Latham, Jr., this Italian Renaissance hotel became Hopkinsville's grand social and civic center and a celebrated stop for travelers. Its guest register read like a roster of turn-of-the-century America, from Vice President Charles Curtis and orator William Jennings Bryan to bandmaster John Philip Sousa, actress Ethel Barrymore, and aviator Eddie Rickenbacker. Fire destroyed the landmark in 1940.

Fort Davis, TX

Built in 1912 by the Union Trading Company and named for nearby Limpia Creek, the Hotel Limpia quickly became the social heart of Fort Davis. With a doctor's office, drugstore, guest rooms, and broad porches, it drew ranchers and wealthy "Summer Swallows" seeking the cool high-desert climate, where they could hear the news, play croquet, or await election returns. Later used as apartments and offices—including housing for Harvard University staff for nearly 25 years—it was reestablished as a hotel in 1978.

El Paso, TX

El Paso booster Zach White arrived in 1881 and staked his faith on the border city's future, building an international bridge and streetcar line and bringing electric lights and natural gas to town. His grandest gesture was the ten-story Hotel Paso Del Norte, completed in 1912 and designed by the celebrated firm of Trost and Trost to be fireproof, inspired by buildings that had survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. For generations it hosted travelers, cattlemen, and dignitaries from both sides of the Rio Grande.

Prescott, AZ

The Hotel St. Michael anchors Prescott's famous "Whiskey Row," rising on the site of the earlier Hotel Burke, which burned in 1900. The three-story replacement signaled Prescott's maturing as a territorial town, offering travelers accommodations to match its ambitions in Arizona's rugged interior.

Fort Worth, TX

Planned in 1919 by civic leaders eager to showcase Fort Worth's boom and completed in 1921, the Hotel Texas rose with elaborate terra cotta detailing under the city's noted architects Sanguinet and Staats. Its place in history was sealed on November 21, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy spent the last night of his life here before traveling on to Dallas.

Hebbronville, TX

Built in 1915 for owner Viggo Kohler, this Mission Revival hotel welcomed businessmen and travelers to Hebbronville. Soon after opening, it served as a makeshift fortress when area ranchers feared a raid by Pancho Villa's men amid the turmoil along the border. The town's oil boom brought a south wing in 1924, and the hotel has stood as a landmark on the courthouse square ever since.

Abilene, TX

When the Hotel Wooten opened in June 1930 to a crowd of more than two thousand, entrepreneur H.O. Wooten had delivered on his promise of New York–caliber lodging for West Texas. Rising seventeen stories, it was the tallest building between Fort Worth and El Paso, clad in buff brick with cast stone, marble, and granite detailing by Abilene architect David S. Castle. It endures as one of the city's finest examples of Art Deco design.

Crockett, TX

This Crockett house was built by A. T. Monroe, a kinsman of President James Monroe, who issued the Monroe Doctrine. Its walls combine hand-hewn Louisiana heart oak with an inner brick core, and the home long served as a center of local social life. Since 1911 it has belonged to the family of prominent attorney George W. Crook and is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Newburgh, IN

Built in 1839 by harness maker Joseph Weis, this is remembered as the oldest brick house in Newburgh, an Ohio River town that thrived on river commerce in the mid-19th century. Before the local Catholic congregation built its own church across the street, the faithful gathered here to hear Mass, making the home a cradle of the parish. The Women's Club of Newburgh marked the house in 1975 to preserve that memory.

Houston, TX

Chartered in 1871, the Houston Cemetery Company was one of several private ventures through which the city's business leaders pursued civic improvement after the Civil War. Choosing a picturesque site of springs and gullies between Buffalo Bayou and Washington Avenue, they named it Glenwood and made its first burial in 1872. Its winding drives and curvilinear plots followed the eastern rural-cemetery model, and the park-like grounds drew Houstonians for leisure years before the city opened its first public park.

Houston, TX

Chartered in 1874 as cotton flooded through the booming port city, the Houston Cotton Exchange and Board of Trade built this Victorian Renaissance Revival hall in 1884–85 to the design of architect Eugene T. Heiner. Trading floors and galleries filled the upper stories while the exclusive Houston Club and a basement saloon served the merchants below; a fourth floor was added in 1907. The exchange departed in 1924 and the building was restored in 1973.

Crockett, TX

When Houston County needed a new courthouse in the late 1930s, its leaders turned to federal Public Works Administration funds to build one in 1939. Designed by a county native and raised by a Dallas contractor, the building wore the sleek Moderne lines and Art Deco detail that were the height of Depression-era fashion. It has remained the seat of county government ever since.

Houston, TX

After the former city hall burned in 1912, Houston Heights mayor J. B. Marmion and the council hired architect A. C. Pigg to design a building that combined city offices, a fire station, and a small jail. Completed in 1914, it served its full civic role only until 1918, when Houston annexed Houston Heights. It then became Fire Station No. 14, active until 1995, and still stands as a decorative brick-and-cast-stone neighborhood landmark.

Houston, TX

Founded in 1874 by two former Confederate Army surgeons, the Houston Infirmary became one of the city's leading hospitals in the decades after the Civil War. It grew alongside the railroads pouring into Houston in the 1870s and 1880s, organizing medical care for their crews and reflecting the era in its segregated wards for white, Black, and Hispanic patients. After nearly forty years and a family dynasty of physicians, competition from a dedicated railway hospital helped bring its closure in 1913.

Houston, TX

In September 1935, in the teeth of both the Depression and Jim Crow, Houston's Black community leaders founded the Houston Negro Chamber of Commerce to build economic power where segregation had walled it out. With J.E. Robinson Sr. as its first president, the chamber promoted Black-owned businesses, pushed residents to pay poll taxes so they could vote, and championed fair housing and employment. During World War II its office even doubled as a rations headquarters. In 1964, under Mack H. Hannah Jr., it became the Houston Citizens Chamber of Commerce, which endures today.

Bluff Dale, TX

The Putnam brothers assembled 25,000 acres on Upper Berry Creek in 1879, building a three-story commissary for travelers and pioneering some of the area's first cattle dipping vats. The land passed through several owners before the I.T. Houston family bought its heart in 1942, and four generations have worked the ranch since.

La Porte, TX

Founded in 1897 by prominent Houstonians meeting downtown in the Binz Building, the Houston Yacht Club weathered reorganizations and financial troubles before settling into a Spanish mission clubhouse on Galveston Bay in 1927. From its earliest regattas the club sent members racing at every level, including the Olympics. In wartime its members lent their boats to patrol the ship channel and bay, and its clubhouse sheltered residents during natural disasters.

Lovelady, TX

Founded in 1900 to mine lignite — a soft coal between peat and bituminous — this company opened a slope mine here and built the company town of Wooters. The early years were a struggle to find buyers, but power plants, gins, and other East Texas customers eventually took the fuel, and by 1916–1925 the operation employed some 200 workers, a diverse workforce that included men recruited straight off ships arriving in Galveston. Natural gas undercut the market, and the company dissolved in 1932.

Houston, TX

Ships had used shallow Buffalo Bayou to link Harrisburg to Galveston Bay since the 1820s, but as Houston grew, so did the need for a deeper channel. After decades of lobbying by local congressmen and civic leaders, and pressure sharpened by the destruction of Galveston's port in the Great Storm of 1900, Houston's backers proposed the landmark "Houston Plan" in 1909, offering to pay half the cost of dredging. Congress accepted, setting a precedent for federal cost-sharing, and the 52-mile deep-water channel opened in 1914. Within a few years Houston was among the nation's leading cotton ports, and refineries, paper mills, and container terminals soon lined its banks.

Taylor, TX

Born in Ohio in 1848, Howard Bland, Sr. came to Texas in 1878 and built a homestead near Taylor around raising sheep. His annual sheep-shearing contest grew into a beloved community fair, and Bland donated the land to keep it going. A restless entrepreneur, he ran everything from a flour mill and ice house to a hotel, power company, theater, and newspaper, and served in local government and the state legislature.

Houston, TX

Built in 1880 beside a new railroad junction, the Howard Oil Company was among Houston's earliest cottonseed-oil mills, and the community of Chaneyville rose around it. Largely peopled by freed slaves and their descendants who labored in the mills and rail yards, Chaneyville became a center of Black Houston. Rebuilt twice after devastating fires, the plant grew into the largest cotton-oil mill in Texas, shipping oil worldwide for margarine and soap until the early 1920s.

Harlingen, TX

In 1929 grocer Howard E. Butt moved his growing business's headquarters to Harlingen, and the following year he and his wife Mary bought this newly built house from John and Ruth Townsend. Through the 1930s his H.E.B. Grocery expanded to more than 28 stores across the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas, while the couple became known for philanthropy and civic work. The Italian Renaissance-style home, marked by Palladian windows and spiral entry columns, was theirs until 1943.

Port Lavaca, TX

Born in Tolosa, Texas, in 1901, Howard G. Hartzog earned degrees from Baylor and George Washington University and even played a season with the New York Giants before returning to practice law in Port Lavaca. Elected state representative in 1933, he spent fourteen years writing bills on education, vehicle safety, and water conservation, then served seventeen years as Calhoun County judge across six terms. His tenure saw the Lavaca Bay Causeway, the Matagorda Ship Channel, a new library, an airport, and hospital expansions as the county boomed in mid-century.

Henderson, TX

Brothers David and James Howard, settlers from Richmond, Virginia, built Rusk County's first brick home here in 1855, molding the bricks on site with a mud mill and later a patented machine and kiln. Their bricks went into the old courthouse and much of the town's later construction. Texas statesman Sam Houston, a cousin of David Howard's wife, was a frequent early guest.

Newton, TX

James William and Louisa Cheshire Howell brought their family from Alabama in 1872, and their kin bought up adjoining land until the settlement of Howell earned a post office in 1889. Son Marmaduke is credited with introducing terrace farming to Texas in 1882, a soil-saving practice on the region's rolling land. A one-acre cemetery was set aside in 1876 — its oldest marked grave a Howell grandchild who died in 1875 — and later deeded to the family's descendants.

Hubbard, TX

Hubbard was founded in 1881 as a shipping center and supply point on the St. Louis and Southwestern Railway. It took its name from Richard B. Hubbard, a Civil War colonel of the 22nd Texas Infantry who became governor of Texas and later U.S. minister to Japan. A banking and market town, it was also known for its mineral waters.

Hubbard, TX

Founded in 1881, the same year the town rose, the Hubbard City News grew through mergers with rival papers and decades of family ownership to become a leading voice in central Texas. Brothers who had once set type for the paper went on to lead and own it, and it survived until a 1973 tornado destroyed its office. The paper was sold to a Mexia publisher in 1969.

New Boston, TX

Built in 1904 for Robert M. Hubbard and designed by architect Bayard Witt, this exuberant Victorian home crowned with eight irregular gables and leaded glass hosted statesmen and leading figures of Texas society. Hubbard himself became a public servant of consequence: named to the Texas Highway Commission in 1918 by Governor W. P. Hobby, he chaired it until 1925 and pushed to raise the highway department's standards during the automobile age's crucial early years.

Ashley, PA · est. 2017

Rising over the anthracite fields of Luzerne County, the Huber Coal Breaker was built by the Glen Alden Coal Company in 1939 to crush, sort, and clean up to 7,000 tons of hard coal a day. It was among the first to use Menzies cones to separate coal from rock and an aerial tramway to haul off waste, and its product was famously dyed to market Glen Alden's trademarked "Blue Coal." When anthracite demand faded, the breaker shut down in 1976 and was demolished in 2014, closing a chapter in the region that once heated much of the nation.

Keokuk, IA

Backed by local businessmen, engineer Hugh Lincoln Cooper built the great dam and powerhouse across the Mississippi at Keokuk between 1910 and 1913. On completion it was among the largest hydroelectric projects in the world, drawing on the river's power to light homes and drive industry across the tri-state region.

Humble, TX

Around the turn of the 20th century, Humble's Masons still belonged to lodges in neighboring towns until, with help from Justice of the Peace F. K. Wise, they chartered their own lodge in 1908. They first met in the bank building of Ross Sterling — future Texas governor — and after a 1912 fire bought the property to build their own hall. The lodge remained active in civic affairs for decades.

Baytown, TX

Ross S. Sterling and five partners founded the Humble Oil Company in 1911, incorporating in 1917 and financing a Baytown refinery by selling half its stock to Standard Oil of New Jersey. First oil flowed into the still in 1920, and a company town grew up around the plant, complete with low-interest home loans for workers. By World War II the refinery's research was producing vital war materiel, and the enterprise eventually became part of what would be renamed Exxon in 1972.

Cornplanter Township, PA · est. 2001

Along Cherry Run in Venango County, chemist Jon Bruns and the Lodovici Brothers opened the Humboldt Refinery in 1862, in the heart of the region where America's oil industry was born only a few years earlier. Named for the great naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, the 47-acre works was among the largest and most scientifically advanced refineries of its day, featuring a two-mile pipeline, oil-fired boilers, and even aniline dye production. It ran until 1868, a brief but ambitious chapter in the frenzied early oil boom.

Hummelstown, PA · est. 2005

From 1863 to 1929, quarries near Hummelstown cut a rich, even-grained brownstone prized by builders across the country as a fashionable masonry stone. The Hummelstown Brownstone Company, founded by Allen Walton, drew immigrant stone-cutters and laborers whose skilled hands shaped the blocks that faced churches, rowhouses, and public buildings far beyond Pennsylvania.

West Bradford Township, PA · est. 2014

Humphry Marshall, a Chester County Quaker, became one of the first commercial nurserymen in the new nation and, in 1785, wrote Arbustum Americanum: The American Grove, the first book on North American trees and shrubs by an American. From the house he built here, he shipped native plants to eager European collectors curious about the flora of the New World. His work earned him the title Father of American Dendrology, and his specimens graced the royal gardens of King George III and King Louis XVI.

Greenville, TX

Hunt County's first railroad arrived on October 1, 1880, when a Missouri, Kansas & Texas (Katy) train rolled in from Denison. The line was no accident: a group of Greenville businessmen guaranteed a $5,000 cash bonus and secured the right of way across the county to bring the tracks their way. Pushing on to Mineola almost immediately, the Katy touched off a boom in Greenville's population and economy.

Ayr Township, PA · est. 1947

William Hunter raised this grist mill in 1812, and generations of local farmers hauled their grain to its water-powered stones. Remarkably, the mill kept grinding without pause, still turning on its water wheel and running much of its original machinery long after such works fell silent elsewhere. It stands as a living survivor of the early republic's rural economy.

Huntingdon, PA · est. 1982

When Pennsylvania carved Huntingdon County out of frontier Bedford County in 1787, the young commonwealth was still ratifying the new federal Constitution. The county took its name from Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, an English patron whose gifts helped the fledgling University of Pennsylvania — a nod to the transatlantic ties that still shaped early American learning. Its valleys of fertile ground, iron ore, timber, and rushing water power drew settlers who would turn the region into a working landscape of farms and forges.

Huntington, TX

Settlers eyed this spot in the 1880s, but Huntington only boomed when the railroad arrived in 1900, carving a town from the virgin pine forests at the height of the southern timber industry. Named for Southern Pacific chairman Collis P. Huntington, it filled quickly with sawmills, churches, stores, saloons, and a rail station, thriving on lumber and cotton. Its library, dedicated in 1953, memorializes nineteen local men lost in World War II.

Boston, MA · est. 1956

This Boston site was once the Huntington Avenue Grounds, home of the Boston Americans of the young American League. In 1903 it hosted four games of the very first modern World Series, in which Boston defeated the Pittsburgh Nationals five games to three. The plaque sits roughly along what was then the left-field foul line.

Huntsville, TX

Authorized under the Republic of Texas and begun in 1848, the Huntsville "Walls" Unit became the state's first penitentiary, receiving its first inmates into a half-finished facility in 1849. Over the next century it ran inmate-labor textile mills, endured the notorious convict-lease system until its 1910 abolition, and launched Depression-era ventures like the license-plate plant and the famed Texas Prison Rodeo. Its cells held figures from Kiowa chiefs Satanta and Big Tree to gunfighter John Wesley Hardin.

Huntsville, TX

English immigrant George Robinson began printing the Huntsville Item on August 20, 1850, in a two-story building he shared with a dentist. Through the Civil War—during which Robinson served in the Texas state troops—epidemics of yellow fever, and repeated fires that burned the newspaper office again and again, the Item endured, passing to his son Fred and later to a series of owners. One of the oldest newspapers in Texas, the Item has published continuously across three centuries.

Galveston, TX

John Henry Hutchings came from North Carolina to Galveston in the 1840s and, with partners John Sealy and George Ball, built the banking and commission house of Ball, Hutchings & Co. On Avenue O he raised one of early Galveston's rare brick homes—complete with a schoolroom—using bricks fired on a Brazoria plantation. During the Civil War the firm ran cotton through Matamoros, Mexico, and Hutchings served the Confederate government; the storm-battered house, later expanded by architect Nicholas Clayton, stayed in the family into the twentieth century.