Collins Iron Works manhole covers still dot Tallahassee streets

There are still tons of them around, though you probably never notice.

There is no reason you should have noticed them: Manhole covers are just sort of part of the road.

But if you looked down, you’d see the name “Collins Iron Works” stamped on literally thousands of cast-iron covers for Tallahassee’s stormwater, sewage, water and electrical systems.

Collins Iron Works was a Tallahassee company, which was once one of the South’s leading manufacturers of cast-iron parts and equipment. Though the company went out of business nearly 45 years ago, its work can still be found all over Tallahassee and other cities.

“It’s a neat history,” agreed Tallahassee attorney Richard Collins, whose father and grandfather operated Collins Iron Works. “But it was hard work and labor intensive. That’s why my father eventually closed it.”

Collins Iron Works was established at the “foot” of West Madison Street, back when the one-time industrial street was a dirt road that dead-ended short of Woodward Avenue. Its main buildings were originally situated on the south side of the street, backing onto Gaines Street. In 1946, the company built a new barn-sized plant on the north side of the street at 822 W. Madison St.

Today, that area is the College Town development. An apartment complex is being built on the original site on the south side of Madison Street; a Florida State University postal facility occupies the north side.

The business was founded in 1906 as Tallahassee Iron Works, by an owner whose name has been lost. Four years later, 1910, it was bought by L. C. Yaeger, a hardware store owner and Tallahassee civic leader.

Yaeger promptly recruited R.O. Collins as his manager and sold him a half-interest in the business. Collins, a native of Georgia, had worked in foundries in Thomasville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Milwaukee and Chicago. In 1918, Collins bought out Yaeger and in 1923 renamed the business Collins Iron Works.

(Back in the day, men were often identified in newspapers by their initials. For the record, they were Louis Charles Yaeger and Richardson O’Daniel Collins.)

R.O. Collins was active in the community. He was a member of the city council in 1920, when it voted to switch to the city manager-city commission form of government. He served on the organizing committee of the 1924 Tallahassee Centennial, was a charter board member of Tallahassee Savings and Loan bank, spearheaded (unsuccessful) efforts to bring a World War I army training school to Tallahassee and helped recruit a second movie theater to Tallahassee.

After World War II, Collins was joined by his only son, Berry, who took over the business after his father’s death in 1950. Berry Collins ran the company for another 23 years before shutting it down in summer 1973.

Berry Collins closed the foundry, in part because of a lack of manpower. Forging iron parts was hot, dirty work. At the height of its success, shortly after World War II, the business employed 45 men.

By 1973, when it closed, Berry Collins was down to 15 employees.

“We needed 22 to 25 to run it efficiently,” Berry Collins told Tallahassee Democrat editor Malcolm Johnson at the time of closing. “We thought about building a new, modern plant. But we had no assurance we could get the men to run it. We had unlimited orders, but we couldn’t get the work out.”

Berry’s older son, Frank, said the business also faced demands from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration that it reduce the amount of smoke produced by the foundry – a move that would have cost more than $2 million. Both of Berry’s sons worked at the foundry during summers, and Frank was willing to take it over but his father decided to close the plant.

“The main problem was OSHA,” said Frank Collins, a retired insurance agent in Lakeland. “Up until then, it was going to continue to be a family business.”

Collins Iron Works, working with cast iron, bronze, copper and aluminum, made all sorts of products in addition to manhole covers. It made industrial boilers, drop hammers for pile drivers, street lighting fixtures, drainage grates and machine parts for paper mills, sawmills and railroad locomotives.

It also produced street signs and historic markers: In 1948, it made the large metal plaque for the Fred Mahan Highway historic marker on East Tennessee Street by Briarcliff Drive.

Berry Collins also did a lively business in side jobs for local residents – he called them “favors” because he didn’t make any money off them. If asked, he made things like drawer handles, pots and pans, handrails and finials for customers who couldn’t find what they wanted in stores.

That’s how Collins came to be talking to Johnson in 1973: Collins previously had made bronze latches for the convertible top of Johnson’s beloved Jeep, and Johnson wrote a mournful column about the business’s closing.

The iron works was Tallahassee’s most notable industrial manufacturer. The Democrat regularly did feature stories on the plant, with photos of the foundry in action. Schoolchildren took tours. And the Collins business and family, who were good friends with but not related to Gov. LeRoy Collins’ family, were frequently in the news.

The Collins Iron Works, where cast iron and steel were constantly being melted, was susceptible to fires. The foundry was destroyed and rebuilt after major blazes in 1923 and 1932. Smaller fires in 1929 and 1954 were extinguished before doing major damage.

In 1938, the foundry was robbed, when burglars broke into a safe. In 1963, the week’s payroll was stolen from the bookkeeper’s car – as she visited Berry’s wife, Mae, at the Collins home. And through the years, it attracted vandals who stole manhole covers or other metal parts.

Today, the Collins Iron Works legacy lives on in the manhole covers, water and electric meter boxes bearing its name that still dot the city.

Jon Yarbrough, chief of drainage operations for the city, estimates there are 50,000 manhole covers in Tallahassee and he estimates “maybe a quarter of them” are still Collins covers.

Yarbrough said the city replaces manhole covers if it is resurfacing a street, or when it discovers an older manhole cover at a critical access point: The Collins manhole covers were 18 inches in diameter; today’s manhole covers are 24 in diameter, making it easier to lower a ladder down the hole.

“We don’t replace them often,” Yarbrough said. “They last a long time.”

Tallahassee now gets its manhole covers from a pair of foundries in Central and South Florida. Since the 1980s, the manhole covers have been stamped with the city logo. In 1986, they began featuring the infamous “bat wing” logo of city hall flanked by two oak trees (which in silhouette looks like a bat with his wings unfurled). Since 2002, the manhole covers have borne the city’s modern “star” logo.

One can argue the new manhole covers are more attractive. But they miss that local origin.

Gerald Ensley is a retired Democrat reporter. He can be contacted at [email protected].