DAVIS FIELD
STEWART ARCHIBALD DAVIS
Some ten miles west of the begrimed old industrial town of Apollo, and about 40 miles from Pittsburgh, there has of late years sprung up a community known on the postal and railroad map as Vandergrift. Its population is about 12,000, and those that live there are harbored in comfortable dwellings, fitted out with all the modern sanitary conveniences, and supplied with gardens in which they raise their own table truck. There are no saloons in Vandergrift because, when the town was founded, it was the desire of its founders to remove from it and its people, as far as possible, those practices that are usually regarded as the prime cause of a toiler's poverty. Vandergrift is regarded as a model town for workingmen.
The little community has grown considerably since it was established for the employees of the American Sheet Steel Company, of Apollo, that earlier had absorbed the Apollo Iron & Steel Company and was later merged with the American Tin Plate Company and at last made a part of the United States Steel Corporation.
One individual who had no small part in the making of Vandergrift was Stewart Archibald Davis, now the first vice-president of the American Sheet & Tin Plate Company, who began work in a humble capacity away back in the 80's, and by slow stages since then succeeded in working his way to the front. Mr. Davis is one of the best known steel men in the country at the present time. His offices are in the Frick building, Pittsburgh. His residence address is the Bellefield Dwellings, Pittsburgh.
Mr. Davis is a native of Indiana county, or, to be more precise, Blairsville, where he was born July 21, 1867. His father and mother, Stewart Davis and Mrs. Amanda J. Davis, whose family name was De Vinney, sent him to the public schools of Blairsville, where Mr. Davis received his early education, and when he left school he sought and found employment with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. That was in 1884, and he remained there four years. Upon leaving the railroad company he decided that the steel business promised him a better future, and so he entered the clerical department of the
Apollo Iron & Steel Company, of Apollo, Pa. He has been with that company and its successors ever since, elevating himself gradually to his present high position. In the course of time the American Sheet Steel Company took over the Apollo concern, and for the reason that the business of the company had outgrown its old quarters, the shop was moved
to Vandergrift, where the model town of its employees was founded at the same time.
The company merged with the American Tin Plate Company and the firm became the American Sheet & Tin Plate Company. Mr. Davis was made district manager.
In the early 90s the American Sheet & Tin Plate Companies consolidated with the United States Steel Corporation, and since then Mr. Davis has successively been assistant to the vice-president, then
the second vice-president, and afterward was given the first vice-presidency of the company.
Mr. Davis is a member of the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania, the American Institute of Mining Engineers and the American Electro-Chemical Society. He is also a member of the Duquesne Club of Pittsburgh.