Etna Iron Works

Etna Iron Works
Company typeDefunct (1881)
IndustryManufacturing
Founded1852[a]
Headquarters
New York City
,
United States
ProductsMarine steam engines, machine tools, iron products
Total assets$150,000 (1860s)
OwnerJohn Roach
Number of employees
2,000 (1860s)

The Etna Iron Works (name sometimes rendered Ætna Iron Works)[b] was a 19th-century New York ironworks and steam engineering plant, best known for its manufacture of marine steam engines during and after the American Civil War.

The Etna Works was a failing small business when purchased by ironmolder John Roach and three partners in 1852. Roach soon gained full ownership of the business and quickly transformed it into a successful general-purpose ironworks. He took advantage of the civil war to transform the Etna Works into one of New York's leading manufacturers of marine steam engines. By the end of the war, he was in a position to acquire the businesses of some of his major New York competitors, which had run into financial difficulties. Roach subsequently consolidated his operations at the Morgan Iron Works, and some time afterward rented the Etna Works to the inventor Thomas Edison, who turned it into a dynamo factory. The Roach family sold the former Etna Works property in 1887. The Etna Works buildings, along with the street on which they were located, were later liquidated in a city redevelopment.

Notable achievements of the Etna Iron Works include the building of the steam-operated Third Avenue Harlem Bridge in the 1860s, and the manufacture in the 1860s of the engines for the giant ironclad USS Dunderberg and for the passenger steamers Bristol and Providence, the latter two of which were the largest marine engines then built in the United States.
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