The print run of our company history arrived at the office last week.
It looks great and has been a fun and interesting project. Historian Rick Geffken did a dive into the company’s early history and unearthed lots of interesting early details, too much to publish in the book.
We also did not want to write a pure company history, instead the book contains sidebars that discuss often minimally covered maritime subject such as the Chiselers Club, Lloyds Agents, Average Adjusters, Field Surveys, various shipping companies that time forgot, the Whitehall Club, the US Salvage Association and the concept of honesty in maritime.
Once printed, the book turned out to be a compendium of 150 years of maritime history as seen through Frank Martin’s eyes.
The founding period, the 1870’s, was a very fertile period for maritime companies and there are quite a number of maritime industry companies and institutions that date back from the era such as ABS, SNAME, various maritime law firms, maritime unions, a few shipping companies and quite a number of underwriters.
150 years for a company is old but not exceptional. Laird & Company, the distiller of George Washington’s and many other founders’ (and some marine engineers’) favorite drink, applejack, was founded in 1780. That is when they received US liquor license No. 1, but the Lairds were already producing applejack well before the Revolution. Laird is located only a few miles from our office and present boss Lisa Laird is a friend. When I suggested to her that Laird may be one of, if not the oldest company in the United States, she noted that there are many older companies in the United States. However, older companies than Lairds are mostly family farms, funeral homes, inns and successor law firms.
It is somewhat hilarious that funeral homes have great longevity, but upon a little reflection it makes sense. Steady business and stable products tend to result in longevity and that similarly counts for lawyers, inns and farms.
After the M&O history was printed I started to wonder. What are the oldest engineering consulting firms in the United States?
Even with AI that is not easy to figure out, but this is what I found.
The oldest consulting engineering firm in the United States points to Osborn Engineering, founded in 1892 by Frank C. Osborn in Cleveland, Ohio. Apparently, the firm is still operating today and provides a wide range of services, including civil, structural, and transportation engineering.
Well, that is interesting. 1892; so that firm is a puppy compared to Martin & Ottaway.
The Osborn website describes itself as one of the oldest engineering firms in the United States, so what is the oldest?
When searching for oldest engineering (not consulting) firm in the United States, it returned George Jerome & Co.: Founded in 1828 in Michigan, this firm is apparently recognized by the Historical Society of Michigan as the state’s oldest continuously operating business. It is a civil engineering and surveying firm which clearly is a consulting firm and, as far as I am concerned, it is the real McCoy as a continuously operating engineering consulting (or engineering) firm. The founding family even still owns it!
But what about marine engineering consultants and naval architects?
Nothing in the 1800’s comes up for that. It returns Gibbs & Cox as 1922 and all other firms are much newer.
Although we will readily stand corrected, we’ll make the claim here:
Martin & Ottaway is the Oldest Continuously Operating Naval Architectural and Marine Engineering Firm in the United States.
That leaves one category to further investigate.
Since Martin & Ottaway can fairly be called a New Jersey and a New York Company, how does an 1875 founding date compare in age to engineering consulting firms of any type in those two states?
New York state’s oldest engineering consulting firm appears to be Parsons Brinckerhoff, founded in 1885 by William Barclay Parsons in lower Manhattan. However, it is now known as WSP USA, which absorbed the original firm. We have done some projects with this august firm, but just based on their founding date, we will have to take the crown from them as New York State’s oldest continuously operating engineering firm.
In New Jersey, despite its almost incredible engineering heritage, there is no specific claim to the oldest engineering firm, but nothing older than 1901 came up, so we will take that crown too.
Knowing that funeral homes tend to have long lives, it is important to note that longevity is a curiosity; not evidence of corporate excellence.
For excellence we depend on our present day staff, and with them we hope to keep our crowns, and possibly add more, for many years to come.
