Twin contractors helped build up an expanding Kitchener

Where I live I am surrounded by condo construction and the daily work goes on — excavating, form building, cement pouring (and cement spraying! who knew?), moving huge piles of sand and gravel from one spot another (and back again). The history buff in me starts wondering: how did they do all this work a century or so ago? They had no soaring skeletal cranes; no streams of rotating cement trucks bringing premixed loads of concrete; no nimble, diesel-powered shovels and backhoes; no vibrating earth-packers rattling nearby homes.

What did they have? Above all, they had more manpower with shovels and wheelbarrows; they had carpenters erecting wooden scaffolding several storeys high; and they did have some, to our minds, primitive-looking machines.

Born in Petersburg, Ont., Egbert and Edgar Seegmiller were twins — twins with different birthdays: Egbert, April 27; Edgar, April 28, 1897. By the brothers’ 30th birthday, E & E Seegmiller Contractors of Kitchener was in business helping to construct roads, buildings, water mains, sewers — all the things a rapidly-expanding city required. In 2018, E & E is still a privatelyheld company employing between 200 and 500 workers depending on the construction season.

Photograph one is dated May 15, 1927 and shows what may be the first piece of large equipment owned by the new Seegmiller company. Steam-powered, with the bucket and extension arms manipulated via a series of cables, it featured caterpillar-type traction at the front. Homer Snyder, a great-great grandson of Waterloo Township pioneers Joseph and Barbara Schneider, was fascinated by technology, science and photography. While employed as a chemist in the 1920s and early 1930s at Kaufman Rubber in Kitchener, he took numerous photographs, including this one, before moving to Michigan where he worked for U.S. Rubber (in 2018, Uniroyal).

The second photograph shows a steam shovel operated by a rival Kitchener firm, Dunker Construction. The company began in 1887 when Henry Dunker started building houses in Berlin, Ont. Eventually, he and wife Marjorie (Godbold) had three sons, William Henry, Frederick Charles and Albert. As the boys took stronger positions in Henry’s business, the name changed to Dunker Brothers to reflect their greater roles. One of the company’s buildings which survives is Berlin’s #2 Fire Hall of 1913 featured in the Sept. 15, 2018 Flash from the Past. Perhaps the company’s best-known (and most lamented) structure was the modernistic Dunker Building (1929-1980) on King West in Kitchener, torn down to create space for the short-lived King Centre shopping complex.

The Dunker steam shovel, shown in a grainy snapshot from May 1937, shows a more advanced and compact style of machinery. It was helping to excavate the million-gallon reservoir for Kitchener Water Commission at Lakeside Park (today, Greenbrook pumping station) which was a story Flash from the Past told on Jan. 27, 2018. This photo comes from Cam Dunker, a descendant of the brothers. The company ceased operations in 1974.

Let’s transition from big construction firms in Kitchener to what was almost a one-man operation out of Elmira.

Emanuel Martin (1882-1966) was a self-taught contractor, moving up from labouring jobs, to carpentry, framing, flooring, roofing and cement work. Dozens of bridges throughout Woolwich Township and beyond were erected by Emanuel and his workers. Marion Roes profiled the legacy of Emanuel Martin in the 2008 Waterloo Historical Society annual volume.

The third photo, one of many donated to WHS by Emanuel’s daughter Luella, features an on-site gasoline-powered cement mixer with Emanuel (at right, adjusting the machine) and two others at an unknown bridge site. The large scoop at left would be lowered, then filled shovelful by shovelful with sand and appropriate proportions of cement from the bags piled nearby. As the scoop was raised by pulleys, it dumped the mixture into the revolving barrel where water was added. When ready, the mixed concrete was either poured directly into the forms erected at right or into wheelbarrows and manhandled around the construction site.

It’s worth taking a few seconds when we look at older structures to appreciate how they were built when modern equipment was just beginning to infiltrate the construction trade.

PHOTO BY HOMER SNYDER, COURTESY RITA THOMPSON Theft and vandalism were problems for contractors even back in 1927, so a guard dog was tethered to E & E Seegmiller’s new steam shovel. The steam engine was in the rear of the unit and it powered the barely-visible cables running to the arms and bucket.

PHOTO COURTESY CAM DUNKER This 1937 Dunker Brothers steam shovel is a detail from a larger photo and lacks crispness, but one can see how the technology has changed in a decade since the Seegmiller unit. Still, the noise and vibration would have been maddening for the operator.

WATERLOO HISTORICAL SOCIETY Emanuel Martin’s many construction jobs in the 1920s and 1930s are well-documented in the family’s albums. Among them are the Breslau road bridge and Freeport’s 1925 concrete bow bridge — he was a sub-contractor for both. Emanuel is in the white shirt behind the bags of cement in this 1920s photo at an unknown site.