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Harry Clay Trexler""Harry Clay Trexler"" (Industrialist and Philanthropist) "Colonel Harry Clay Trexler with His Irons in the Fire." From Newspaper Artists Club, "As We See 'Em" (1911). (Source: Author's Personal Collection) Early Life Harry Clay Trexler was born in Easton, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1854. He was the son of Allentown businessman Edwin W. Trexler and Matilda (Sourneck) Trexler. He was a descedant of Peter Trexler (d. 1758), one of the early Pennsylvania German settlers of the Lehigh Valley. After attending Allentown public schools and Tremont Seminary in Norristown, he joined his father's lumber business. In 1885, Trexler married Mary M. Mosser of Allentown. When Trexler began his career, in the late 1860s, Allentown, the commercial center of the agriculturally rich Lehigh Valley region, was undergoing a tumultuous economic transition. The town's first burst of growth had been fueled by the contruction of the Lehigh Canal, by the boom in anthracite coal, and by the growth of an extensive local anthracite iron industry. In the early 1870s, the invention of Bessemer steel making technology, the discovery of bituminous coal in western Pennsylvania, and the national depression following the Civil War destroyed the local economy. Led by a visionary Board of Trade, in which Trexler was active, Allentown determined to diversify its economy, giving generous incentives to enterprises willing to locate in the city. The success of this initiative set off a housing boom from which the Trexler firm profited enormously. By the first World War, Trexler's lumber business was among the largest in the United States, owning tracts of timber and sawmills in Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, with distribution yards in Portsmouth, Virginia and Newark, New Jersey. Social Entrepreneur Trexler began to aggressively expand his interests beyond lumber in the 1890s. With partners John D. Ormrod and Edward M. Young, he organized the Lehigh Portland Cement Company, which became one of the largest cement producers in the world, with twenty plants operating in ten states. He consolidated scattered electric railway properties into the Lehigh Valley Rapid Transit Company, one of the most innovative and efficient traction companies in the Northeast. He similarly consolidated the region's electric utilities, forming the Pennsylvania Power & Light Company in the 1920s. He purchased dozens of telephone properties, consolidating them into the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania. He was also active in banking, finance, and real estate development. Inspired by the Cities Beautiful Movement, he used his combined interests to promote city planning -- turning Allentown into a model of balanced development (a dramatic contrast to industrially ravaged Bethlehem and Easton). Like his contemporary, candy magnate Milton S. Hershey (1857-1945), Trexler's entrepreneurial activities were driven by a social vision. Just as Hershey the his company of model of welfare capitalist benevolence (eventually leaving the firm to a charitable foundation) and the town of Hershey an industrial paradise, so Trexler sought to build and sustain a community that would be a model of harmonious industrial and social relations -- one that would preserve the best of Pensylvania German culture while accomodating itself to the challenges of urban capitalism. In addition to running his companies with the good of the community in mind, Trexler lavishly supported the city's churches, schools, and cultural institutions, hoping to create a mutually supportive social infrastructure that would sustain the community through good times and bad. Fearing the power of Philadelphia interests and their traditional hostility to the Pennsylvania Germans, Trexler worked with New York financiers to curtail the Philadelphians' power and to create an economic climate favorable to local control of the city's business life. Trexler was particularly concerned about how Allentonian's spent their leisure time, He feared that the cinema, the automobile, and the temptations of urban life would draw people away from family and communitry activities. To study the problem, he retained the services of leading sociologists like James Brossard (who joined the faculty of Muhlenberg College, on whose board Trexler sat), and Luther Fry (who was hired by the Allentown Morning Call newspaper, which Trexler owned). Their findings led Trexler in invest huge sums of money in the creation of parks, supervised playgrounds, band concerts, and annual youth festivals, as well as encouraging him to back comprehensive reform of Allentown's schools. Following his death in a automobile accident on November 17, 1933, the terms of his will revealed a plan to institutionalize his vision. The Harry Clay Trexler Estate (now the Trexler Foundation) sought to maintain the integrity of his holdings and the continuity of local industrial leadership. The proceeds of the estate were devoted to supporting local institutions and activities that embodied the city's unique sense of community. The effectiveness of Trexler's communitarian vision is suggested by the fact that the city, though devastated by the Depression, ended the disasterous decade of the 1930s with more businesses in operation than at the end of the "boom" decade of the 1920s. Sources Brossaard, James H. 1918. The Churches of Allentown: AStudy in Statistics. Allentown: Jacks, The Printer. City Planning in Allentown: Its Past, Present, and Future. 1963. Allentown: Allentown City Planning Commission. Fink, Leo G.. 1935. Memoirs of General Harry Clay Trexler. New York: Paulist Press. Folsom, Burton W. 1981. Urban Capitalists: Entrepreneurship and City Growth in the Lehigh and Lackawanna Valleys, 1800-1920. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Friede, E.B. 1974. "The Impact of the Great Depression on Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1930-1941." Unpublished dissertation. New York University. Friede, E.B. 1978. "Cooperation Conquers: The Response of Allentown's Entrepreneurial Community to the Great Depression of the 1930s." Leigh County Historical Society. Proceedings XXXII, 114ff. Hall, Peter Dobkin. 1981. " The Community Foundation and the Foundations of Community: Harry Clay Trexler and the Creation of Modern Allentown." In A Salute to General Harry C. Trexler. Occasional Papers. Lehigh County Historical Society. Hellerich, Mahlon 1982. Allentown, 1762-1987. Allentown: Lehigh County Historical Society. Kibler, Karyl Lee, & Hall, Peter Dobkin. 1981. The Lehigh Valley: An Illusrated History. Woodland Hills: Windsor Publications. Marushak, Donald R. 1981. "Parks Are for People: A Tribute to General Harry C. Trexler. In A Salute to General Harry C. Trexler. Occasional Papers. Lehigh County Historical Society. Harry C. Trexler, 1854-1833. 1981. Occasional Papers. Allentown: Lehigh County Historical Society.
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