IN THE NEWS: Mason & Hanger Marks 200 Years By Unearthing Its Past

In preparation for its 200^th birthday, Mason & Hanger, the longest continually operating engineering firm in the U.S., is tracing its roots, gathering artifacts and information in an effort to tell the company’s story and preserve its history.

“We hired an archivist,” Ben Lilly, the company’s president, said. “We have a book called ‘First You Take a Pick & Shovel: The Story of the Mason Companies,’ which took our history through the 60s.

“We felt that it was probably healthy to have an outsider come in and do independent research of the materials that we have in various storage facilities.”

“Our history fuels the commitment and passion we have for our mission and our customers. Tracing the trail lets today’s team draw energy—and lessons—from nearly 200 years of nation-building feats.”

The effort has led to uncovering new information about the company and spurred its leadership to take a trip to see some places where the company’s history happened.

That’s how Lilly, along with Holly Holt, vice president of marketing and communications for the company, ended up in Washington on the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

The team’s research uncovered new information and connected the company to local experts in Grand Coulee that showed a clearer picture of the role the Silas Mason Company, a precursor to Mason & Hanger, played in the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam.

“We knew that we had a significant piece of it, but we really didn’t know exactly what we did,” Lilly said.

The specs of the dam are massive.

It is 450 to 500 feet thick at its base and tapers to 30 feet at the top of the structure. It’s made from 11,975,521 cubic yards of concrete, triple what’s found in the Hoover Dam.

The dam was the largest concrete structure ever built until 2009, when the Three Gorges Dam in China was completed. Three Gorges is about three times the size of Grand Coulee.

However, according to some historians, the project was also a key component of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

In 1934, the Public Works Administration, which funded and oversaw large-scale New Deal construction projects, awarded a $29 million contract for the dam's construction to a consortium led by Silas Mason II, known as MWAK.

In today’s money, the contract would be worth about $ 695 -$698 million.

To build a dam, the company also had to build a city.

On the east side of the river, MWAK built Mason City, using lessons learned during World War I when Mason built the town of Old Hickory to support the development of the Old Hickory Powder Plant in Tennessee.

Mason City featured three types of houses – one, two or three-room structures with baths and kitchens or kitchenettes – along with 60 cabin-like dormitories to house 1,360 men. It also had two dorms for women employed by the company, a hospital, hotel, two schoolhouses, storage yards, shops, office buildings, warehouses and a mess hall that could seat more than 1,300 people.

Just like Old Hickory, Mason City was built in eight months.

The dam wasn’t the only highlight on Mason & Hanger’s resume.

Mason & Hanger’s highlights from the past 200 years:

• Claiborne Rice Mason founded the company in 1827 in Chesterfield County, Virginia. He called it Mason Syndicate. “The main focus at the time was railroads,” Lilly said. The company would follow the railroads as they worked their way west.
• In 1870, the company changed its name to Mason & Hoge, and in 1885, it built a headquarters in Kentucky. “There was a lot of evolution there,” Lilly said. “But what they did once they got out to Kentucky, and the railroad industry kind of passed on, is they became experts at tunnel construction.”
• The company had experience building tunnels. In 1885, prior to its move to Kentucky, the company constructed the Rays Hill Tunnel for the Southern Pennsylvania Railroad, which was C.R. Mason’s last major project. Horatio P. Mason would be named president of the company that same year.
• In 1896, the company would complete its portion of the Chicago River Reversal. At the time, it was the largest construction project in the world, and the ASCE would designate it a historic civil engineering landmark and Monument of the Millennium.
• In the early 1900s, the company would start to expand its focus from large infrastructure projects to defense contracts.
• In 1902, the company received its first military contract.
• In 1906, Harry B. Hanger took over as president, and in 1907, the company was renamed Mason & Hanger.
  
  Ben Lilly, president of Mason & Hanger, sits in the hotel where Silas Mason signed the original contract for the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in 1934.
• When New York City needed clean drinking water to keep up with its quick expansion in 1910, Mason & Hanger built two deep-pressure tunnels for the Catskill Aqueduct system. One of them, the Moodna Siphon Tunnel, called for workers to cut through nine miles of solid rock. “The aqueducts from the Catskills are still in existence today, still serving NYC with clean water,” Lilly said.
• During World War I, Mason & Hanger would be awarded five wartime contracts, including one to construct Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. More than 1,700 buildings were finished in less than three months.
• At the same time the company was working on Grand Coulee, in 1934, it also began work on the Lincoln Tunnel for the New York Port Authority.
• In the 40s the company would finish the dam project, along with construction of the New River Ordinance Plant in Virginia, and in 1947, begin operating the Atomic Energy Commission’s Burlington Plant in Iowa. It was the commission’s first production plant for high-explosive components used in nuclear weapons.
• The company would continue its work for the nuclear commission throughout the 50s and continue to build ordnance plants and test sites, including, in 1956, the Plantex Plant outside of Amarillo, Texas, which was the Atomic Energy Commission’s second nuclear weapon production facility- which they managed for 45 years, from 1956 to 2001, providing Management & Operations (M&O) services at the mission-critical plant.
• The 60s would be dominated by Pantex and NASA, designing facilities to test missiles and rockets, which most people on post know the only real difference is that one is supposed to blow up and the other isn’t.
• Mason & Hanger’s work with training facilities would continue throughout the 80s, 90s and into the new millennium.
• By 2004, the company gained expertise in building training facilities and was entrusted to design the FBI’s New Hazardous Device School on Redstone Arsenal.
• In 2019 the company opened an office in Huntsville .

Present Day

Mason & Hanger is currently working various agencies at Redstone, including Range Training and Land Program (RTLP) AE Services, two Energy Resilience and Conservation Investment Programs (ERCIP), and supporting the Army Corps of Engineers on microgrids, which are self-sustaining electrical infrastructures that can operate as part of a larger power grid or independently, depending on the need.

“That’s been one of the best decisions we ever made strategically,” Lilly said.

“We have a long history in Huntsville, dating back to NASA contracts in the 1960’s, to our long-term relationship at Redstone. Fast-forward to today and the same “design/engineering- DNA now shows up in secure embassies, micro-grids, NASA test facilities and government installations and training facilities on five continents.”

 "The common thread is our purpose—Building a More Secure World®—which still guides every A/E discipline on our team. Mason & Hanger’s legacy remains etched in the steel and concrete of America’s early infrastructure triumphs. As we celebrate past achievements, we’re focused on tomorrow’s challenges — from resilient infrastructure to climate-smart design — continuing a Mason & Hanger tradition: engineering that serves the nation’s most critical missions. We are truly excited for our next chapter — proving that big ideas, backed by solid engineering, can move America forward.”