Allis-Chalmers was in a class by itself. Through Milwaukee’s long reign as the self-proclaimed “Machine Shop of the World,” the homegrown giant produced some of the heaviest machines in some of the largest shops on Earth. From steam engines in the late 1800s through nuclear power plants in the mid-1900s, Allis-Chalmers practically defined manufacturing.
The company was the brainchild of one man: Edward P. Allis, a New York transplant who opened a machine shop in the Walker’s Point neighborhood in 1867. Beginning with sawmill equipment, his Reliance Works branched out into flour-milling machinery and then steam engines, producing some of the largest units in the world.
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Allis himself was neither an inventor nor an engineer but an entrepreneur whose strategy was to get the product order first and then procure the necessary talent and technologies to make it. He proved to be an exceptional judge of both. By the time he died in 1889, Reliance Works employed nearly 1,500 men and stretched for four blocks on the east side of South First Street.
In 1901, following a four-way merger, the next generation of company leaders adopted a new name – Allis-Chalmers – and one year later left the original works for a complex in a new western suburb called, naturally, West Allis. The facility included the forge shop pictured here in the early 1900s.
As Allis-Chalmers expanded, its local workforce swelled to more than 20,000 people during the 1940s, but hard times were ahead. Spread across multiple product lines but dominant in none of them, Allis-Chalmers had vulnerabilities that were exposed in the manufacturing recession of the early ’80s. After years of red ink, the unthinkable happened: the company went bankrupt in 1987, and the site of the West Allis forge shop, east of the intersection of Washington and 70th streets, is now a parking lot.
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK
- This enormous hydraulic forge hammer was an oversized version of a blacksmith’s hammer and anvil.
- The heavy-duty crane lifting this part was likely a Harnischfeger product, made in a factory just down National Avenue from Allis-Chalmers.
- Safety gear wasn’t a concern in these pre-OSHA years. These workers weren’t even wearing gloves.
- Heated to an orange glow, the gigantic part being pounded into shape may have been the spindle for a steam turbine, one of Allis-Chalmers’ specialties.
IN COLLABORATION WITH MILWAUKEE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
