The story
Background
John Roach emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1832 at the age of sixteen, eventually obtaining employment as a common laborer at the Howell Works of James P. Allaire at an initial wage of 25c a day. After securing an apprenticeship as an ironmolder at Howell Works, Roach later transferred to Allaire's other plant, the Allaire Iron Works in New York, where he learned the manufacturing method for marine steam engines. Roach would remain an employee of Allaire's for twenty years.
By the 1850s, Roach, concerned about the needs of a growing family and anxious to obtain a more secure financial future, began to consider starting his own business. He had been unable to save much money of his own—only $1,000 (equivalent to $38,700 in 2025)—but was able to persuade three of his co-workers at Allaire, including his brother-in-law Joseph Johnstone, who had savings of $8,000 ($309,600), to join him. The four partners mustered between them a total of $10,000 ($387,000).
In April 1852, Roach and his three partners purchased for the sum of $4,700 ($181,890) a small New York ironworks known as the Etna Iron Works, which had recently fallen into receivership. The ironworks, located at 102 Goerck Street, occupied a 40-by-100-foot (12 m × 30 m) property and consisted of a small foundry and some raw materials.
Early years
Following their purchase, Roach was given the task of promoting the business while his three partners attended to management of the shop floor. Roach began by touting for custom piecework, his first sale being for cast grate bars for a Brooklyn distillery.
By the end of the first year of operations, the partners had made a modest profit of $1,000, but now a dispute broke out over how to employ the money. Roach wanted to use it to expand the business, but his three partners voted to divide it into dividends of $250 each. Realizing that they had reached the limit of their ambition, Roach took out a mortgage on the property and used the loan to buy his partners out, thus becoming sole proprietor.
Roach thereafter began canvassing the local shipyards for business. Although New York's shipbuilders were still at this time constructing mostly wooden sailing ships, each ship needed about forty pounds of iron fastenings and cables, in addition to a number of anchors. In one ninety-day period, Roach made a profit from such sales of $8,000, giving his business a solid foundation.
Roach was able to continue expanding the business through the sale of a variety of products, including Franklin stoves, firebacks, slats for iron shutters and other items. In 1856 he added a new steam boiler to the ironworks for driving a blower which forced a draft into the melting furnace, thus obtaining a higher temperature and melting the iron faster, which saved valuable man-hours. He also purchased the adjoining property at 104–106 Goerck St., upon which stood a small three-storey building. Roach used the third floor as a pattern shop, while renting out the first and second floors to an iron shutter manufacturer.
By 1859, Roach was employing forty men and his property was valued at $15,000. A contemporary evaluator noted that Roach was "getting along well" and deemed him "safe for a fair amount of credit".
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Foundry explosion
On September 2, 1859, the forced-draft boiler for the Etna Works' furnace exploded after accidentally being allowed to run dry, killing one man and seriously injuring two others, and gutting the building in which it stood. The $5,000 damage was covered by insurance, but the foundry would be forced to close without steam power.
Undeterred, Roach negotiated the use of a boiler in a neighbouring factory, ran 200 feet of pipe from their boiler to his workshop, and was back in production within 48 hours.
Windfall capital injection
In 1859, one of Roach's closest friends, a lawyer named John Baker, died and left Roach the trustee of his estate. The estate, worth $70,000, was entrusted to Roach for investment until Baker's four children came of age. Since the money could not be claimed until 1881, it was as good as a long-term interest-free loan to Roach, who was soon to take advantage of it to expand his business.
Third Avenue Harlem Bridge
One of the largest projects undertaken by the Etna Iron Works was for construction of the Third Avenue Harlem Bridge over the Harlem River, New York. The project was submitted to public tender by the City of New York in 1860 and Roach secured the contract with the lowest bid. The contract called for a bridge with a pivoting center section which could be rotated to allow large ships to pass through one of two channels beneath.
Roach had no prior experience of bridge building, so he hired an engineer with appropriate experience to design and oversee the project, and subcontracted out the masonry work. The bridge that was eventually constructed was 526 feet (160 m) long, with masonry foundations, a cast-and-wrought iron superstructure, and a 216-foot (66 m) steam-powered pivoting center section spanning two 80-foot-long (24 m) ship channels. The bridge opened for traffic in 1868, and operated reliably for about thirty years until increasing maintenance costs and traffic persuaded the city fathers to construct a new bridge with faster operation and higher and wider dimensions.
From Wikipedia’s article on Etna Iron Works, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3