Archive for November 16th, 2023
The octopus’ garden
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few days ago, you got to see the Drake Well – the very first commercial oil well in the United States. Regaled, you were, with tales of the Pennsylvania Oil Rush of the late 19th century, and a corporate leviathan named John D. Rockefeller, who formed a monopoly over the new industry which was called the Standard Oil Trust.
An attempt at summarizing Standard’s business practices was made in that post – describing their ‘combinations’ scheme of horizontal integration, which gave Rockefeller and Standard an iron grip on the prospecting, drilling, pumping, transport, pricing, refinement, marketing, and delivery of petroleum to oil’s ‘end’ customers. Over 90% of the global market was under their control, and a near total monopoly over the domestic North American Market was achieved.
Pictured above is the National Transit Building in Oil City, Pennsylvania. This was a regional HQ for Standard Oil during PA.’s Oil Rush. The ‘head office’ was in NYC, specifically the Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway, in lower Manhattan.
An excellent history of Oil City’s National Transit Building, and the titan of industry which inhabited it, can be accessed here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Directly across the street, where an oil exchange building that was built by the local entrepreneurs once stood, is the Oil City National Bank Building. Like the National Transit Building across the street, the bank building is part of Oil City’s historic district. My understanding of the history here is that once Standard Oil established itself across the street, the first thing to go was the Oil Exchange, and that the bank itself was a part of Standard’s ‘combinations of horizontal integration.’
Once the local Oil Exchange was closed down, if you had petroleum you wanted to ship to markets on the Eastern Seaboard – you’d have to cross the street and talk to one of the Standard men who represented another near total monopoly – the Pennsylvania Railroad. Need barrels? Pipes? Labor? Talk to someone in the National Transit Building.
You could bet going in that you weren’t going to be paying the same price for services or materials as Standard Oil was. It was also likely that one of the Standard Oil men would make an offer to buy you out, and expand their empire by making you a vassal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
National Transit Building was completed in 1890, and after the 1911 Sherman Anti Trust judgement against the Standard Oil Trust broke the octopus up, the building and its offices were bought by the three locally headquartered companies of Pennzoil, Quaker State, and Wolf’s Head. The building passed into private hands in 1957, and then in 1993 it was donated to a non profit corporation which subsequently failed to make a go of it. It was empty and abandoned for a spell.
Ralph Nader bought the building in 1995, invested $100,000 in renovating it, renamed it as the Civic Renewal Center and then gifted it back to Oil City. Today, it’s home to artist studios and private offices.
Check out the current management’s website here.
Back tomorrow with more, from Oil City.
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