Introduction
Warren Webster and his factory on Federal Street — 1888
The building has been boarded up and empty for decades, the company long gone, and a brand name that was once a standard in its line is now all but forgotten. In its day, Warren Webster & Company provided heating systems for plants, factories, and large buildings all over the country. Warren Webster & Co. developed systems and controls that made it possible to provide continuous, comfortable, and economical steam heat to large buildings. If you are in a building built in the first part of the 20th Century, there is a strong probability that there are or were Warren Webster components inside.
Warren Webster founded his business in Philadelphia in 1888. He brought his firm to Camden five years later. A large factory was built at Point and Pearl Streets. After World War I a larger plant was built at 17th & Federal Street in East Camden when it was determined that the original plant lay in the path of the soon-to-be-constructed Delaware River Bridge.
Warren Webster passed away in December of 1938, during the 50th year of his firm’s existence. His son, Warren Webster Jr., then headed the company. Sadly, grandson Warren Webster III, a graduate of West Point, was killed in action while serving in Korea in February of 1953. The company was still open in Camden as late as 1959, but by 1970 Warren Webster & Company was no longer listed in the Camden County telephone directory.
Warren Webster Jr. wrote The Life and Times of Warren Webster, a biography of his father, of which a limited edition was published in 1942.
Photos
Warren Webster
Warren Webster Company factory at Point & Pearl Streets, 1909
1915 POSA Advertisement
Warren Webster Company, 1915 POSA advertisement
Advertising Blotter
Warren Webster Company advertising blotter
Philadelphia Inquirer – December 24, 1921
The Factory, 1924
Warren Webster Company factory, 1924
Camden Courier-Post – January 5, 1928
Camden Courier-Post, January 5, 1928 — Industrial bowling league
Camden Courier-Post – June 4, 1932
Camden Courier-Post – March 27, 1936
The Webster Moderator System supplies “control-by-the-weather.” During the period of 1931, ‘32 and ‘33 the firm’s sales organization was occupied in making surveys of several thousand large buildings to determine ways and means of reducing fuel expense. It was possible to go into almost seven buildings out of every 10 and find that a saving of approximately 25 percent could be effected by applying this new development. Not only did the company finance the making of these surveys but where it found a saving possible it offered to supply its equipment and to accept payment out of the savings as made, thus combining financing of the equipment with a guarantee of its performance. Several hundred buildings have been thus modernized including among them the New York Evening Post Building and the Bellevue Stratford and Warwick Hotels in Philadelphia.
The company’s plant is operating regularly with a factory and home office staff of approximately 250 employees. More than 185 additional persons are engaged in the work of the company’s 60 branches.
Warren Webster, founder of the company, is its president and general manager; Warren Webster, Jr., a son, is vice president and treasurer, and E. Kessler Webster, a nephew, is secretary and assistant general manager.
Camden Courier-Post – June 1938
Founder of Industry Observes 50th Year as Active President
Warren Webster at 75 Still Takes Keen Interest in Manufacture of Steam Heating Appliances; Got $4 Weekly on First Job
By GORDON MACKAY
Sang James Russell Lowell many years ago—“What is so rare as a day in June”—and Warren Webster, president of Warren Webster and Company, Camden industrial giant known around the civilized globe, agrees heartily with the poet.
For it was in the month of graduates, brides and roses that Warren Webster entered the most significant period of his life, when a group of 25 decided to found the firm that bears his name today.
If the start at the age of 25 was modest enough, Warren Webster did not remain modest, and never since that golden triumph is he in the newspapers without being described as “one of the greatest salesmen in America.” He still takes a deep, personal interest in the vast industrial enterprise, of which he has been president for fifty years.
His sons, Warren Webster, Jr., and E. Kessler Webster, assume much of the load from his shoulders, but there is a business empire, which swings into every home in the world, in the regions where the natives like steam heating. Winter heating. The kind of work that requires the quality of craftsmanship.
The vast business which has grown under the deft management of Warren Webster finds its products in every corner of the earth. Not a mawkish attempt at a compliment, but it is the unvarnished truth, as the employees’ roster will well disclose.
One week before the thunder of the first battle of Bull Run, Warren Webster was born. Shortly after birth his family moved to Woodbury, N. J., and when the lad was eight the family moved to east of Gloucester county country.
When Warren was 12 the Centennial Exposition was held in Philadelphia. The youngster naturally visited this centenary of American freedom.
Young Webster entered the Prince Business House in Philadelphia to obtain a commercial training. He was graduated from that institution on April 23, 1881. Like countless of his successors of today, Warren Webster got a first job. He spotted an advertisement in the newspapers where an office boy could work for $4 a week for the N. G. Taylor Company, whose business was at 363 Branch street, Philadelphia.
Young Webster got the job, started work copying letters, running errands and doing the office chores that fell to officeboys in those days. The intense ambition of young Webster got him a job at $8 a week, with a 5 per cent commission added. It was this that drew young Webster toward his own enterprise—he wanted to be his own boss, to build his own firm.
Warren Webster had $500 saved by this time and then he took the plunge. Fifty years ago young Warren Webster, entering his majority, also entered the business world.
Saving in coal for 30 days soon amounted to a keen sharpness of note of the Webster system. He sold the ventilators which he held patents for the use of as exhaust. The first one operated successfully, the second manufactured came at once.
The modest factory in Philadelphia proved too small for the expansion of this new industry. When vacuum heating came into vogue, and Webster became interested in this new manufacture, the business expanded so rapidly as to become a vast major enterprise. Forty-five years ago the firm of Warren Webster was consolidated in Camden.
While exact figures are not at hand, the impression at the factory is that Warren Webster heating equipments have been placed in some 500,000 homes around the world. You can find them in a Pennsylvania mansion, in buildings in New York, and in the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Canada. Webster heating systems are in the Empire State Building in New York City, and other buildings in the Manhattan metropolis also.
Reams could be written about the romantic side of this seemingly prosaic industry. After all, however, the greatest tribute that could be paid to the industry and its founder is that Warren Webster has been president of the company that he organized 50 years ago, every day of its existence.
The smoothness with which the plant and the offices work and move is not only a tribute to the founder and his sons, but also to the loyalty, service and value of the 250 employes who earn their bread working for Warren Webster and Company. Warren Webster passed away on December 21, 1938.
Warren Webster Jr., 1903–1997
Warren Webster Jr. — photograph published in the Camden Courier-Post, January 6, 1942. Warren Webster Jr. took the reins as president of Warren Webster & Co. after his father’s passing. The company played an active role in armaments production during and after World War II.
The Factory at 17th & Federal Street, Late 1940s
The Warren Webster Company Factory at 17th & Federal Street, late 1940s
Working With Webster — 1940s Employee Handbook
A history of Warren Webster & Co. from the 1940s employee handbook, Working With Webster