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The Death of a Monarch

Posted Feb 26, 2017

Last Monday's Record reported a 3-alarm fire savaged two Oak Street auto businesses. Those business were housed in a 100-year old city landmark.

The Monarch Foundry Co. is (was) one of the city's overlooked "structures of merit." Nobody paid it any attention — that is, until something inside it exploded.

"I heard a small explosion, then smoke, then flames," said Chris Vosburg, a mechanic who works at an auto yard across the street.

Vosburg dialed 911. Forty firefighters could not save most of the complex of buildings. "It went up so fast," Vosburg said.

"It" was originally a foundry incorporated in 1907 by Edward H. Noack. The foundry cast molten metal into various objects.

Those lovely historic streetlamps around town? Monarch Foundry. Manhole covers? Monarch Foundry. Various ornamental iron in old public spaces? Monarch Foundry.

At its height the foundry employed 150 workers. The innards of the cavernous wood and corrugated tin buildings were alive with heat, sparks and glowing liquid metal. The whole shebang stretched a long block from the 1000 block of Oak to Park Street.

"In terms of the industrial history of Stockton, they were a major player," said Tod Ruhstaller of The Haggin Museum.

Noack & his associates held patents on various tractor parts and a centrifugal pump popular with farmers. So the foundry was a vestige of Stockton's heyday as a sort of the Detroit of engineering innovation in tractors and other ag technology.

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