Semet-Solvay Company coke plant

Reverse reads: "file 10-29-39. Ironton, O. Semet Solvay, which manufactures coke and iron by-products of coal." The photograph shows a manufacturing plant with three large smoke stacks, the closest of which reads "Ironton Solvay" The Solvay Process Company was a pioneer chemical industry of the United States, a major employer in central New York, and origin of the Village of Solvay, New York. The Solvay Process Company was a joint venture between the inventing chemists, Belgians Ernest and Alfred Solvay, who owned the patent rights to the Solvay process, and Americans William B. Cogswell (1834–1921) and Rowland Hazard II (1829–1898). The Hazard family invested in an affiliated business, the Semet-Solvay Company, formed in 1895. Louis Semet, a relative of Ernest and Alfred Solvay, had developed with the brothers a coke oven designed to recover valuable materials formerly wasted in the coking process. In 1892 the Solvay Process Company built the first of the ovens in America, forming the Semet-Solvay Company three years later to build and operate them. Coke plants were located in Ashland, Kentucky; Buffalo, New York; Detroit, Michigan; and Ironton, Ohio. Semet-Solvay operated its own mines in West Virginia, providing much of its coal supply