The Company Town by Hardy Green Page A

same undesirable result as in the other towns, the Olmsted consultants recommended a series of restrictive covenants that would define the use of town space and ensure that only desirable structures were built. They would, for example, bar tenements and stipulate the size of yards, and all houses would require approval by a board of architects.
    Immediately, McMurtry began tinkering with the designers’ grand vision. More and more space would be needed for the mill itself, he determined, much of which came at the expense of the greensward. As for the restrictive covenants, he approved only one: barring the sale of liquor. The town, he decreed, would be named Vandergrift in honor of Apollo’s largest investor, Jacob Jay Vandergrift Sr.
    It wasn’t long before the architects washed their hands of the project. But Apollo’s board at least was pleased with the outcome. The board set up a separate company to handle real estate, the Vandergrift Land and Improvement Co., and within six months of its announcement of lots for sale in the budding town, two-thirds of residential properties had been sold. This meant Apollo had practically recouped all of its $200,000 initial investment.
    The land company carefully evaluated all prospective property buyers, with an eye primarily to weeding out any union men, and it advanced money to help those it favored build homes. Supervisors and skilled operatives made up the ranks of the first buyers. The land company built a good number of houses to be rentals. Even so, the size of lots and their $750 price tag meant that only elite workers could afford to live in Vandergrift’s main residential area. The town soon offered a second subdivision, dubbed Vandergrift Heights, and in time that $150-per-lot area filled up with housing built for lower paid operatives. In a third area,
Morning Sun, immigrant laborers settled, and that region grew into a facsimile of the “Hunkytowns” common among the steel communities of Pennsylvania. 7 In a Harper’s Weekly article saluting Vandergrift, Eugene Buffington described how the foreigners had “segregated themselves . . . on the outskirts of the borough,” requiring Vandergrift officials to keep an eye on their sanitary habits and enforce “regulations for cleanliness and health.” 8
    Vandergrift borough was incorporated in 1897, and citizens elected a town council to set a tax levy and to hire a constable and policeman. On more substantive matters, the council, which consisted of skilled workers from the mill, regularly deferred to the company. McMurtry agreed to provide a firehouse and a cemetery, and to donate land for the seven churches that were established by 1903.
    Vandergrift was far from exhibiting the tidy, model looks of Pullman, Hershey, or early Lowell. Those who bought lots in Vandergrift immediately began subdividing them and constructing rental housing, while Vandergrift Heights was notable for its rutted, unpaved streets, cowsheds, and privies. But homeownership in the area seemed to have the effect the steel managers desired: A 1901 strike called by the Amalgamated drew little support in Vandergrift, where a union observer found the employees to be “bound up by their property interests.” The strike’s failure there offered McMurtry a “crowning vindication,” raved trade journal Iron Age : “With such a splendid proof of the value of an industrial town laid out on modern lines, and of a management fostering close relations with the men based on absolutely fair dealing, it is to be hoped that in the future Vandergrift will have the distinction of being only the oldest of a series of similar communities.”
    As further evidence of the community’s harmonious labor relations, in 1902 Vandergrift citizens held a ceremony in which they presented McMurtry with a silver punch bowl. Engraved thereupon were the words A TRUE FRIEND OF THE WORKING MAN. 9

    An instinctive