Keasbey and Mattison Company

Founded in 1873 by Henry Griffith Keasbey (1850-1932) and Richard Van Zeelust Mattison (1851-1935), the company moved to Ambler, Pennsylvania, in 1881.

He founded a library and built an opera house, offices, shops,[2] and Trinity Memorial Episcopal Church.

[4] Bell Mines excavated and milled raw chrysotile asbestos, using the open-cut method.

[10] Asbestos was then shipped by railway to Ambler, where it was processed and used to create a wide variety of products.

[5] In a 1920 report, the Pennsylvania Department of Health noted that the Ambler plant employed 900 men and used 1,000,000 gallons of Wissahickon Creek water daily.

By modern standards, working conditions at the plant were hazardous, as workers came into daily contact with the mineral.

Raw asbestos fibers were stirred into cement slurries or beaten by hand and fed into carding machines.

This was in part due to the fact that Henry Keasbey sold his 50% equity a month before the crash of 1929 for $4 million.

Today the Henry and Anna Griffith Keasbey Foundation still supports scholarships for study at Oxford University and other British education institutions.

The EPA added the BoRit Asbestos site to the Superfund National Priorities List in April 2009.

[12] In 2013, Heckendorn Shiles Architects and Summit Realty Advisers successfully converted the original "Boiler House" portion of the Keasbey & Mattison factory in Ambler.

This derelict factory and smokestack of the Keasbey & Mattison company was converted into a LEED Platinum Certified multi-tenant office building, the Ambler Boiler House.