"Old Dominion Glass Company" Our panoramic photograph of workers at the Old Dominion Glass Company dates from the early twentieth century. Founded in 1901 and located at North Fairfax and Montgomery, Old Dominion was one of four glassworks located in Alexandria. This photograph shows the factory from the north side of Montgomery Street. If you look very carefully, you will see several small boys in the photo, including one sitting on and one peaking out of the barrel in the foreground. -- Vertical File Collection, #117 Do you have photographs, letters, records, or other documents pertaining to life in Alexandria? We welcome donations! The Alexandria Library's photograph collection primarily depicts life and architecture in Alexandria. An index of photographs is available for browsing at Special Collections at the Barrett Library, 717 Queen Street. For information on obtaining high quality copies of photographs, please see the photo duplication form on this site.

August in Washington, DC, is usually a sweltering, sticky mess. This year as we consider whether any outdoor activity is worth leaving air conditioning, let us cast our minds back a hundred years to the workers for whom July and August meant a two-month furlough from the even greater heat of the glass furnaces. In those two months, the furnaces that normally blasted at 2800 degrees, day and night, seven days a week, were shut down to cool. Workers were paid from money that was withheld from their regular wages the rest of the year.

In its industrial heyday, Alexandria supported four glass factories: Virginia Glass, Old Dominion Glass Company, Belle Pre Bottle Company, and Alexandria Glass. Virginia Glass, first to open in 1894, was in the 1800 block of Duke Street. Glassblowers from Virginia Glass left to found the Old Dominion at North Fairfax and Montgomery Street in 1901. In 1902, the Belle Pre Bottle Company of Delaware opened their factory at Henry and Madison. Alexandria Glass was founded in 1905 in the 1100 block of North Henry on a lot leased from Belle Pre.

At the peak of productivity in 1907, the four factories employed about 1600 men and boys in a semi-automatic manufacturing process. Raw materials were mixed in melting furnaces. A skilled worker pulled out just enough molten glass for a bottle. The glass was encased in a mold at the end of a blow pipe, and a glassblower provided the lung power that forced the glass into the shape of a hollow bottle. After the neck was applied, the bottle was handed off to another craftsman for finishing. After the neck was formed, the bottle was placed in an annealing furnace that moved the glass along a differentially heated tunnel. Starting off at just below melting point, the glass liquefied just enough to fill in any cracks or gaps. A conveyor belt moved the bottles down a gradually cooling tunnel until it was cool enough to pack.

The skilled craftsmen who worked the glass were supported by helpers who held the mold, heated the neck, placed the bottle in the annealing oven, and shuttled the unfinished bottle from one station to the next. These helpers were young boys or, later, girls, immigrants, and people of color who were paid very little for their efforts. While a skilled glassblower might make eight to 15 dollars a day, helpers typically earned less than $1/day.

In 1907, a team of three men and their helpers typically produced 5-6,000 small bottles a day. The Washington Times of Dec. 8, 1902 reported that the three Schwartzmann brothers who were glassblowers at Old Dominion set a new record for number of bottles blown and packed in eight and one-half hours -- 329 dozen plain beer bottles. The previous record, 309 dozen, had been set by three glassblowers at Massilon, Ohio. Unfortunately for the Schwartzmanns and other skilled glass workers, Michael Owens was perfecting an automated bottle manufacturing machine that could pump out 12 bottles a minute. The machine reduced the staffing numbers and skill level of workers required for bottle making, thereby reducing the cost of bottles to 10 to 12 cents per gross when hand blown bottles cost the $1.80 a gross.

The factories were sufficiently susceptible to fire that they were frame built to allow for easy and economical reconstruction. After the glory days of the turn of the century, labor problems and scarcity of raw materials plagued them. Owens' patented bottle maker and Virginia's early adoption of prohibition shuttered the smaller factories, though Old Dominion soldiered on until 1927 when a disastrous fire brought about its demise.