Broad
Ford Aerial History
Compiled & Written by K. R.
Overholt Critchfield, © August 28, 2009
With Thanks To
Jeffrey Antol & Penn
Pilot
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Broad Ford, PA - June 26,
1939 (apv110-89) - Penn Pilot Photo
Centers
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Historic
Photographs from Penn Pilot
With a timely e-mail from my
Internet friend, Jeffrey Antol, I was made aware
of a great new resource, Penn Pilot, an
online library of historic aerial photography
sponsored by the Pennsylvania Geological Survey,
supported by Pennsylvania State Archives, and
hosted online by Pennsylvania State University.
Presented here are several photographs from the
past that show Broad Ford from the air, but they
are cropped versions of the huge and amazingly
detailed historic aerial photographs that are
available at Penn Pilot (see Broad
Ford Views 2 for more details). My thanks to
Jeffrey Antol, for his expertise in utilizing
this amazing resource, and to all those who
worked to build this wonderful web site. And
special thanks back to the past for the aerial
photographers whose work produced these amazing
pictorial archives!

Penn Pilot Photo Centers --
http://www.pennpilot.psu.edu/
The first Penn Pilot aerial
picture shown above, taken on June 26, 1939, is a
cropped version of the really large photograph
that will come up for you, if you click on a
particular red dot on a grid. Other dots
represent other pictures taken in the same time
period -- the available eras being 1937-1942,
1957-1962, and 1967-1972. The 1957-1962 records
have only recently been added, so we will have to
check back periodically to see if more eras have
been added.
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Photograph
of the Broad Ford Distillery Complex, c. 1942
Above is a photo you have seen on
my web site before, a picture reportedly dated
from the late 1930s to the early 1940s. Since the
photographer and the actual date are unknown, it
cannot be given a proper notation.
In the left central area, we can
see the elevated train track and a couple stone
piers that supported it -- the base of the one to
the right of the central tree is painted white.
Would the trains in that time period even fit on
that span? Perhaps the elevated track was not
even being used in 1939, and it remained on site
as a relic of the past.
Notice the track that curves
toward Warehouse I and the attached Bottling
House in the lower right corner. Trains using
that track would stop right there and take on
loads of bottled spirits, probably in the wooden
crates often found for sale on Ebay. The long arc
of track that skirts the whole complex has been
modernized, and is being used today by the CSX
Railroad.
Below is an additionally cropped
and enlarged version of the June 26 aerial
photograph, which gives us a closer aerial view
of the entire A. Overholt and Company
distillery complex as it existed at Broad Ford in
1939.
What I cannot figure out is where
the outlet for the elevated track was located,
for it appears to end in a patch of grass and
trees. Were trains coming into the complex
engine-first, only to back up out of it? Or was
there a stretch of track that followed the road
to the northeast as part of A. O. Tinstman's
Mount Pleasant & Broad Ford Railroad? More
research is needed here.
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Broad Ford, PA - June 26,
1939 (apv110-89-Detail) - Penn Pilot Photo
Centers
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Your guess is as good as
mine, but upon closer inspection (and mindful
that I am a rank amateur), the picture above may
have been taken on a very bright day with lots of
reflecting sunlight, or perhaps the photographer
wanted a stark contrast between the water,
terrain and buildings. Or maybe this is a shot of
a flood -- in June -- because to me, it appears
to show a flood along the Youghiogheny River.
Initially, a flood scenario seemed doubtful,
until the Pittsburgh area suffered serious
flooding just this past June 2009, when several
days of heavy rains caused a whole lot of damage,
and prompted several emergency rescues to save
people from imminent death by drowning in their
own city streets. Therefore, the possibility of a
flood occurring in June is not so unlikely. After
all, the National Park Service identified Broad
Ford as being "situated on the Youghiogheny
River floodplain."
The next shot below was taken on
the same day, and it still looks like a flood to
me. And notice that many of the pictures display
solid line tracings along the length, or a
portion of the length, of the Swinging Bridge
across the Youghiogheny River and beyond, to
where I do not believe the footbridge actually
extended. To me, the lines look like they were
added later, possibly drawn by hand. Perhaps
someone was proposing that a bridge, road or
railroad track be built along that route, because
the stone supports used for the Swinging Bridge
were originally built to support a railroad track
that linked both sides of the river. That track
would have been active when coal and coke were
being transported during the days when a grandson
of master distiller Abraham Overholt was making a
name for himself -- "Coke King" Henry
Clay Frick.
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Broad Ford, PA - June 26,
1939 (apv110-88) - Penn Pilot Photo
Centers
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Shown below, another aerial
photograph was taken at a slightly different
angle on July 2, 1939, less than a month later,
and the quality is much better. In this one, the
fields appear to have returned to normal, and the
only suggestion of high water is found at the
southernmost tip of the island.
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Broad Ford, PA - July 2,
1939 (apv111-30)- Penn Pilot Photo
Centers
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Broad Ford, PA - July 2,
1939 (apv111-30-Detail)- Penn Pilot
Photo Centers
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Below, you will see three
different views that show Broad Ford in July
1959. Then there are two views taken in 1967,
taken on November 11 of that year -- a date that
now carries such a strong association with recent
national disasters. I made another closer detail
shot of the 1967 distillery complex. To me, it is
fascinating to see how the whole area changed
with the passing years, and how a few things
remained the same. For instance, it appears the
distillery buildings were kept in excellent
condition and the grounds were always
well-maintained clear to the river's edge.
However, just forty years after the 1967 photos
were taken, only a few structures remain at the
site. Compare these pictures to the ones you will
see in the latest web page additions to my Aerial
Photographs series (Broad Ford Views 2,
3, 4 and 5). They show
what the site looked like from the air in recent
times, up until this past spring, when more
buildings were dismantled.
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Broad Ford, PA - July 7,
1959 (apv2v-78) - Penn Pilot Photo
Centers
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Broad Ford, PA - July 7,
1959 (apv2v-91) - Penn Pilot Photo
Centers
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Broad Ford, PA - July 7,
1959 (apv2v-92) - Penn Pilot Photo
Centers
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Broad Ford,
PA - September 11, 1967 (apv1hh-212) - Penn
Pilot Photo Centers
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Broad Ford, PA - September
11, 1967 (apv1hh-198) - Penn Pilot Photo
Centers
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Broad Ford, PA - September
11, 1967 (apv1hh-198-Detail) - Penn Pilot
Photo Centers
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Thinking
Over Lost Time and Times
Looking over the once-enormous
industrial complex that was the A. Overholt
and Company distillery in times-gone-by, it
is easy to see how much history has been lost.
Today, what we have left of the site is a study
of disintegration and disillusion, primarily due
to the systematic removal of anything worth
salvaging, the neglect of several property
owners, and the trespass of locals who engaged in
major acts of vandalism (see Broad Ford
Dismantled, Broad Ford Distressed
and Broad Ford Forsaken). Too bad we
have no pictures of the grounds and interiors
taken in an era when the company and its product
were valued and respected by the community -- by
the world, really. And if anybody out there has
any such photographs, please contact me, okay?
As for myself, when putting these
photos into the context of my own lifetime, the
first shot above was taken almost exactly ten
years before my birth (in Pittsburgh, June 16,
1949), and the September 11, 1967, photo was
taken only a few months after my high school
graduation (in Goldsboro, North Carolina).
Remembering the modest collection of hopes and
dreams held close to my heart, back when I was a
fresh-faced high school graduate (when I wanted
to be a writer and singer, or a singer and
writer, or both.), and well, it was just too bad
that back then, I knew nothing about the
existence of the Overholt Distillery complex at
Broad Ford. It would have been wonderful to see
the buildings before they entered such hard
times.
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So, How Much
is Left?
How much damage has occurred
since the National Park Service published their
1990 HABS/HAER report on the A. Overholt and
Company Distillery at Broad Ford? Pardon my
mournful s-i-g-h-h-h! After a careful
examination of the historic aerial photographs,
and the modern versions we now have from several
different sources, the following is a graphic
(using one of the 1967 aerial photos), created to
indicate which buildings are now gone (orange)
and which are still standing (blue outlines). The
southernmost structure at the end of Distillery
Road looked to have been two connected buildings,
so the blue dashes show the original size of the
presently existing structure. The other set of
blue dashes are meant to show where there may
have been two buildings -- the boiler house and
engine room. I have not been to Broad Ford
recently, and cannot claim total accuracy
regarding the number of remaining buildings, but
as we can see, not much is left.

Broad Ford Graphic Showing Lost
& Existing Buildings - created by K. R.
Overholt Critchfield © 2009
Anyone who has any information
about when a building was lost, please let me
know the details, and the graphic will be
updated.
Below is a portion of the text
from the National Park Service survey, the whole
report can be found on my Table of Contents,
listed as HABS/HAER Report on Broad Ford
(1990). The bold accents
and other editorial embellishments are mine.
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Excerpts
From HABS/HAER Report on Broad Ford
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A. Overholt and Company
Current Name: Frank Drisedt Inc.
On Youghiogheny River off SR 1038, Broad Ford,
Dunbar Twp. |
Construction
Dates: 1853, 1867, 1899
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DESCRIPTION:
The Overholt Distillery is situated on the
Youghiogheny River floodplain in the town of
Broad Ford. The complex consists of an office
building, granary and grain
elevators connected by conveyor to a
series of joined buildings -- the boiler
house and engine room, distillery
and fermenting houses, machine
shop, and drying house
-- and a number of warehouses
and bottling houses. (Building
names used in this description are derived from
the 1947 National Distillers Products Corp. map
of A. Overholt and Co., Inc.)
The three-story,
stretcher-bond yellow brick office,
built ca. 1930, has a flat roof and rests on a
reinforced-concrete foundation. It has brick
pilasters and corbelling at the foundation and
hinged windows with concrete sills.
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The buildings in which the grain was
prepared and distilled stretch along the
Youghiogheny at the southwest side of the
complex. The six-story tall grain
elevators are enclosed in a
stretcher-bond yellow brick structure, the upper
two stories of which are corrugated metal with a
steel roof truss.
Resting on a
reinforced-concrete foundation, the elevator
has six-over-six-light double-hung sash windows
with gauged voussoirs and stone lintels. A
single-story corrugated metal structure which
tops the seven 58' high granary bins
connects the elevator with the bins. The
granaries are lined with steel and faced with
header-bond brick. A steel frame conveyor
for moving the grain spans the distance north to
where it enters the dynamo building
at the third floor level; it runs over the
two-story boiler house, which is
a flat-roofed stretcher-bond yellow brick
building on a stone and concrete foundation. A tall
stack of header-bond yellow tile brick
with geometric brick work and corbelling is
immediately south of the boiler house.
The distillery
is connected to the boiler house by a two-story
dynamo, mill, and office
addition built in 1907.The distillery,
built ca. 1880, is five stories tall, of
stretcher-bond yellow brick on a stone
foundation. The building has a steel frame
structural system with a flat roof of composition
paper, brick corbelling and dentil work on the
fourth floor, and multipane double-hung sash
windows with triple voussoirs and fanlights on
the first and fourth floors. "A.
OVERHOLT & CO." is carved in
stone and set over the entrance between the first
and second stories. On the distillery's south
side there are pads from the alcohol
column building. Attached to the north
of the distillery is the old fermenting
house, a two-story, stretcher-bond
yellow brick structure on an ashlar foundation.
The old fermenting house has a flat roof,
multipane double-hung sash windows, the lower
level of which are infilled, and an exterior sign
that reads: "U S Internal Revenue
Bonded Warehouse No. 3 Distillers Products Sales
Corporation." Attached to and set
back from this building is the new
fermenting house [Fermenting House
Annex].
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The machine
shop and drying house
are attached to the new fermenting house. Of
stretcher-bond yellow brick, these buildings are
one and three stories high, the machine shop has
a monitor roof, and pads for a Dorr thickening
tank and stillage tanks are adjacent to the
drying house.
Other than
a 36' diameter metal cistern on
steel trestles -- designed and erected by
Bollinger-Andrews Construction Company of Verona,
PA -- the remainder of the structures in the
Overholt Distillery complex are warehouses,
in which the whiskey was stored while it aged,
and buildings in which the product was bottled
and stored. From roughly south to north, they
are:
-- bonded warehouse B,
a three-story common-bond red brick building that
measures 77' x 100', has a gable roof of tin,
sits on a stone foundation and has infilled
windows;
-- free warehouse A,
a common-bond red brick building, two stories
tall with a tin roof and corbelled chimney and
brick pilasters and corbelling -- a garage door
has been added to its south side;
-- bonded warehouse H,
an eight-story, common-bond yellow brick building
measuring 120' x 150' which rests on a
reinforced-concrete foundation with red brick
beltcourses at its cornice and foundation. It has
vertical rows of windows with red brick
architraves and iron doors, on each floor of the
south side, and painted in white on the exterior
wall "Overholt Co. Inc. Broad Ford,
PA USA Old Overholt . . . Whiskey 100
Proof." The interior has oak
floors, eight-story numbered wood racks, and
terra cotta walls;
-- bonded warehouse C,
a seven-story (176' high) common-bond red brick
building that measures 137' x 142', has double
iron doors with double voussoirs and bracket
doors with iron lintels. The southeast end of
warehouse C contained a bonding room; the entire
structure was built in 1899;
-- bonded bottling
house and case warehouse
of common-bond red brick, one story high and
measuring 128' x 66' overall with the warehouse
66' x 66', a gable roof with wood rafters and
metal ventilators, resting on a stone foundation
with a timber, post-and-beam structural system
and multipane double-hung sash windows with
double voussoirs, fanlights, stone sills and
metal bars and shutters;
-- bonded warehouse D,
constructed in 1909, an eight-story, common-bond
red brick building that measures 163' x 114' and
has vertical rows of multipane double-hung sash
windows with triple voussoirs and metal shutters;
-- bonded case
warehouse I and tax paid case
warehouse, a two-story common-bond red
brick building, spanning Galley Run, and added to
the bottling house ca. 1935, on a
reinforced-concrete foundation with glass-block
windows and a loading dock with double iron doors
that once opened onto the B&O tracks;
[Karen's Note: The
blueprints that I have includes "SHEET 20 -
Bottling House of Bonded Warehouse I" and
"SHEET 23 - Dumping & Reducing Room of
Bonded Warehouse I," which was the warehouse
attached to the still extant Bottling House.
Judging from newspaper photographs, and recent
shots by Flickr photographer
cjb19772009, it appears the Bottling House,
located at the northwestern corner of the
distillery complex and skirted by the railroad
tracks, was the actual site of the fire of
October 14, 2004, reported to be in the
"distillery cafeteria." My thanks to
cjb for clearing up that mystery!]
-- only the brick foundation
with concrete footers remains from bonded
warehouse F, which was destroyed by fire
in 1987 -- it was also on the north side of
Galley Run.
Two of the
residences
[There were more than two?] owned by the
Overholt Company are on Connellsville Road. One
red brick, two-and-a-half story residence has a
gable roof with chimneys, a stone foundation, and
dates to ca. 1840. Adjacent to this structure is
a one-and-a-half story red brick house.
. . . . . The first expansion
at the Broad Ford Distillery began in 1867, and
by 1868 a four-story building measuring 112' x
66' had been constructed . . . . . Passing
through the complex on an elevated steel
trestle with concrete piers was the P&LE
Railroad. The B&O tracks
are situated to the northeast.
. . . . . In 1899, the entire
plant was reconstructed and the rack warehouses
completed. . . . . By 1935, the Overholt Company
employed 217 people at Broad Ford and the
corporate offices had moved to New York City. Six
years later, employment had dropped to 199
people. . . . . By 1942, the cooper shop
and state shed had been
demolished and a 141' x 60' employee
recreation building that included a
bowling alley had been constructed. This building
is no longer extant.
- Taken from
Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic
American Engineering Record
America's Industrial Heritage Project
National Park Service, U.S. Department of the
Interior, Washington, D.C., 1990
[Karen's Note:
The NPS report states that the "tax paid
case warehouse" was attached to the Bottling
House ca. 1935, and that it had glass-block
windows and a loading dock with double iron doors
that once opened onto the B&O tracks -- no
letter designation was mentioned for this
building. The report did not mention two other
warehouses. The blueprints that I have includes
drawings of a bonded warehouse E,
which was five stories high and seems to match
the roof of the building labeled E in my graphic.
Warehouse F was said to be located "on the
north side of Galley Run." So which building
was warehouse G? Since there
were warehouses designated F, H and I, there must
have been a warehouse G, right? The graphic shows
my guesses, but if anybody has information that
will clarify this issue, please let me know.
Nevertheless, it may be safe to assume that the
Broad Ford Overholt Distillery included at least
nine major warehouse structures. Once. But not
anymore.]
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~~ Afterthought ~~

Standing Beside the Small
Engine - Photograph by K. R. Overholt
Critchfield © 2004
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The
Conveyor Engine?
In the NPS
photo above, when I was busy highlighting
the steel frame conveyor, it seemed to me
that maybe some kind of machine was
nestled on the track. I began to wonder,
how did the grain get transferred? Was it
done by a moving conveyor belt? Or was
there a device that got filled up with
grain and then did the actual conveying
along the long track to the third floor
of the Distillery Building? Would it have
had to operate in both rain or shine? My
curiosity grew because I remembered
finding what appeared to be a small train
engine, a miniature of some sort, during
my Broad Ford Safari, back in
the summer of 2004. Looking now at the
picture of this engine, maybe it is part
of the conveyor device that is just
barely visible in the NPS photo. I wonder
if it can still be found somewhere on the
premises, right there where I found it? I
hope so.
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See More
Photos
I hope the information given on
this page has been helpful in showing how much
history has been lost at Broad Ford, and how
fragile the future is for those buildings that
remain. You are cordially invited to be
enlightened further by seeing more photographs in
this new Broad Ford series. Broad Ford
Dismantled shows the effects of the
dismantling of the last-standing, huge bonded
warehouse and other buildings that occurred this
past spring, featuring the photography of
"cjb19772009," who publishes his work
on the Flickr photo sharing web site. In
Broad Ford Distressed, cjb shows us the
current conditions of what is left at the site,
and Broad Ford Forsaken reveals cjb as a
contemplative artist studying abandonment and
desolation in the haunted remains of the Overholt
Distillery complex. And then be sure to visit the
new pages of Broad Ford Views,
consisting of a collection of all the best bird's
eye views of Broad Ford that could be found on
the World Wide Web.
Go on to the second page, Broad Ford Aerial History,
Page 2.
Go on to Broad Ford Dismantled,
or the first page of Broad Ford Distressed,
or to the first page of Broad Ford Forsaken, Inside Looking Out.
Go on to Broad Ford Views 2,
the first of several new pages in the Views
series.
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