The lamp house and bath house were incorporated under one roof and with the concrete-block structure.  Originally each building was a one-story common-bond red-brick building with multi-light windows,  The powerhouse and machine shop building was a one-story concrete-block building with a steel truss that supported a gable roof covered with corrugated metal.

The fan house was located on a hillside west of these building remains and retained its ventilation fan ca.1993. These buildings associated with the Brenizer Mine were vacent and partially in ruins ca.1993.

Two utility buildings remain, located on the east side of the new PA Rt. 217 and are one-story hollow clay-tile buildings with gable roofs.  The larger of the two buildings recently collasped, (ca.Dec.1999) and the smaller one is not in good shape.

Remains of the large boney dump, located east of PA Rt.217, along Mc Gee Run, are being reclaimed ca.2000.

In 1913, the town of Brenizer consisted of only two rows of double houses.  These two rows were later referred to as the "Back Row" or "Old Row."  Water pumps were located out front of the houses, between every two houses, and the outhouses were in the back yard.

Three additional building phases occurred in the late 1910's, and the early 1930's.  During this later building stage, larger six-room houses with electricity, bathrooms and furnaces were constructed.  All houses were painted coal company gray, and two maple trees were planted in each front yard. Thirteen housing types, including at least one Sears and Roebuck prefab variety, composed the final town plan.  Electricity was installed in 1924 and streetlights introduced in the town by 1927.  The company houses were sold to community residents by the coal company in 1944.

(History and description of the Brenizer Mine, with additional data and pictures adapted from "Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, 1994,"  America's Industrial Heitage Project, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, U.S. Department of the Interior, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

"The Brenizer Mine was purchased in 1917 from the Latrobe Coal Company; a new corporation was formed, and the mine was operated by the Westmoreland Mining Company. Some years later, in the early 1930's, the Watson Coal Company, and the Kiskiminetas Coal Company were merged with the Westmoreland Mining Company,and the surviving corporation operated all mines as the Westmoreland Mining Company".

"The Brenizer Mine was planned and operated in a somewhat unusual manner: instead of driving main entries and establishing production entries as required, the main entries were driven to the extrmities of the property,and all production thereafter was mined in retreat.  This meant that mining came closer to the outside facilities as the mine became older, so that, in theory at least, the mine became more economical to operate.  A cleaning plant for improving the quality of the fine coal was erected in 1940, andloading machines and shuttle cars were introduced underground shortly thereafter.  Production was in the range of 2000 tons per day;  during periods of peak demand, this deep mined production was blended with as much as 1000 tons per day of strip coal, so that the tipple probably processed as much as 700,000 tons per year.  It is my estimate that the total number of employees reached a maximum of about 350."

"From 1917 until 1939, practically all of the coal mined was sold to the railroads as railroad fuel, which was the fuel burned by the steam engines.  Most of this went to the Pennsylvania Railroad.  This market was dwindling by 1939, and the Pennsylvania Railroad established a policy of purchasing coal for fuel mainly from those mines which sold some of their output to commercial users, thus generating coal traffic over the rails and providing income to the railroads.  It was for this reason that the cleaning plant was constructed;  while the slack and stoker coal that was cleaned was not of the highest quality, it was as acceptable product to many industrial users, and the continuance of the mine's operation was accomplished."

"Operations were terminated by Westmoreland Mining Company about 1952, but were continued by three former employees, Abe L. Gray, John Chiesa and Tilio Chiesa, who leased the mine from the company and operated on a much smaller scale. I believe that the mine was almost completely worked out by 1954."

The coal was first mined by pick and shovel.  The miners wore soft hats with open flame carbide lamps attached to provide them with light.  These lamps were later replaced with battery powered lamps.  Coal was brought out of the mine by a rope system pulled by mules.  The mules and coal wagons had to cross the highway (old Pa Rt. 217),  and the coal dumped into hoppers at the tipple and the coal then was loaded onto railroad coal cars at the tipple.  The mules were kept in a barn on the old Brenizer farm.  Joseph Rowley tended the mules and Mr. Stouffer was the stable boss. Mules had a keen sense of danger.  If they sensed any danger at all, they would not go into the mine.  Gradually, each section of the mine was electrified with trolly wire, between 1915 and 1916, until all sections were fitted with electricity, and the mules were no longer used in the mine.

In the early 1920's, the miners earned $4.80 a day.  Coal loaders made $5.00 to $6.00 a day.  At the peak in mining production, the population of the town of Brenizer was estimated at 800 persons, and there were approximately 480 men employed in the mine.  Some dug coal, some worked on the tipple and some hung wire.  Until the year 1943, the miners  had to buy their own tools.

The mine area consisted of a mine entrance, an outside motor repair shop with supplies, and a washhouse where the miners could bathe;  also, a fanhouse which supplied fresh air into the mine.  Other buildings included a sandhouse for making sand for the rails of the mining cars, a boiler room for heating water for the washhouse, and a tipple with a weigh station for weighing the amount of coal each miner dug.  The coal wagons were marked with a numbered check, a brass disk with the miner's number on it, each miner had a number issued to him.  The coal was dumped at the tipple into large railroad coal cars on tracks below to be shipped out to buyers.

A man named Jones was Mine Superintendent of the Brenizer Mine in 1913 for the Latrobe Coal Company.  Jack Watson was Superintendent for Westmoreland Mining Company, in the 1920's.  Jack lived with his wife and sons, James and John, in the large house south of town that was the original Brenizer farmhouse.  The gardens were landscaped in beautiful English style.  The grounds were surrounded by a high hedge fence.  In 1941, when Jack Watson and his family moved, Mr. Robert Mull, Mine Foreman moved in.  In 1943 or 1944, Mr. Clyde "Pete" Muir and his wife, ann moved into the house.  Pete was also a Mine Foreman.

According to Charles Horrell, of Bradenville, his father Samuel Jackson Horrell, was a Mine Foreman in 1917-1918.  He and his family, including another son, Samuel, Jr., lived in the Brenizer  farmhouse. The Horrell family moved away during the Flu Epidemic in 1918.

The town was fenced in and the gates at the three entrances into Brenizer were guarded;  when hucksters and peddlers wanted to come into town they were stopped and questioned.  A searchlight on the hill overlooking Brenizer would shine over the town all night, and the Coal & Iron Police patrolled the town.

If a man was suspected of being a "Union" man, he was ordered to leave town and was "Blacklisted," meaning he would not be hired to work in most of the local mines.  A family was given seven days to leave town, most of the time, but a single man was thrown out of town in thirty minutes.  The man 's wages were cut; the doors and windows were removed from their houses, under the pretense that they needed repaired.  Electricity was cut off to the house and the miner's families had no choice but to leave town, this all occurred during the coldest months of the year.  The family's meager belongings were hauled out to the town's gates by the Coal Company's Coal & Iron Police and dumped along the road.  The families were forced to move into a tent city, provided by the United Mine Workers Union, near Cokeville.  The tent city was along the old highway going through the Cokeville flats to the bridge across the Conemaugh River into Blairsville.

During the strike the coal company brought up "Scabs," mostly Black workers from the south, to take the place of the striking miners in the mines. The Southern workers were first housed in makeshift quarters in the mine's washhouse, then in the upper row of houses in Brenizer. These workers knew almost nothing about coal mining and were frightened to go into the mine.  Their coal production was poor, their main purpose was to break the strike.  The strike lasted approximately two months at that time, and when the miners went back to work, the mine was not in the best of shape.

Southern Blacks were brought in again as "Scabs" to Brenizer during a miners strike in 1933.  By this time, the wages dropped down to 65 cents an hour.

Kiskiminetas Supply Company Store Script used at the Brenizer company store.

Sometime after ca.1913, a new large Company Store building was built by Latrobe Coal Company in the center of town, it was a large wooden building, painted coal company gray, with a large concrete porch.

The miners and their families were expected to do all their buying at the company store.  The store stocked everything a family needed under one roof: fine groceries, baked goods, fresh fruit, fresh meat, confectioneries, penny candy, tobacco, notions, tin ware, dry goods, linens and bedding, clothing, work clothes, shoes and boots, hardware, tools, furniture and gasoline.  You name it, and it was in the company store.

The miner's supplies were also stocked, such as picks, shovels, carbide lamps and carbide for their lamps, miner's caps with a mount for their lamps, mining augers for drilling the shot holes, blasting powder and blasting caps, work clothes, overalls, work boots.

In ca.1917 the Coal Company Store became the property of the Kiskiminetas Supply Company, a Company owned by Westmoreland Mining Company.

Upon entering the store, on the right was a small room that contained shoes and footwear for the entire family.  The dry goods and linens were located on the left. The butcher shop, located at the rear of the store, catered to all the needs of the miners.  Fresh meat was trucked in, and the butcher shop handled a very good quality of meat.  Afternoons were a very busy time for the butcher shop, since the miners wifes' bought meat for the days supper then. To the right of the butcher shop was the U.S. Post Office, where the residents of Brenizer had their own cubicle boxes for their mail.

The Company Store had a soda fountain in the center of the store in 1920-21.  The candy counter was located on the right towards the middle of the store, and the candy counter was the most popular counter for the children of the town.  A penny could satisfy a sweet tooth, and a nickel could buy a bagful of candy.

The Company Store Steps

The store was a very large building, painted light gray, with store front windows in front.  In the front of the store building was a large cement porch. Heavy iron railings outlined the porch, and five or six cement steps led to the porch.

The Company Store porch was the place to "hang out" in Brenizer.

(Photo courtesy of Ann Vucetich, and the Brenizer Historical Society, Brenizer, PA)

(Photo courtesy of Catherine Olmizzi, and the Brenizer Historical Society, Brenizer, PA)

The payroll office was located in the back left side of the store.  Elizabeth Reynolds was the bookkeeper, and Emily Tom Gilmore was the payroll clerk.  The office kept a list of all the earnings of the miners.  The rent and electricity were deducted from the miners' earnings before they could draw out "Script" for groceries.  Those were the days when "you owed your soul to the Company Store"  because sometimes the money was spent before it was earned, and the miners were always in debt to the coal company.

William Deck was the Store Manager in ca.1923 or 1924, Mr. Truax was manager in 1925, and John Fletcher was manager from 1935 til 1951, when the Westmoreland Mining Company, the coal company, closed the Brenizer Company Store.

William Neal, Sr. was the Assistant Manager.  Butchers were: Royden Young, William Neal, Sr. and Mr. Anderson.  Workers in the butcher shop included: Helen Yates, Margaret Yates and Clyde Rowley.  Store clerks were: Emily Tom, Mary "Kells" Chiesa, Jean Bernazzoli, Marie Ihli, Stella Macheski, Mary Macheski, Mary Sracic, Annabelle Fletcher and Norma Magnone.  William Neal, Jr. was a truck driver, and he brought in supplies and delivered to other stores owned by the coal company.  Martin Robert Patz was his helper.  This list is only a partial list, since complete and accurate information was difficult to obtain.

In the early days of Brenizer, if the miners and their families went to town to shop, usually Blairsville, they were "reminded" that their jobs were at stake.  If they wanted to spend money in town, a money clearinghouse in Brenizer would take a "Company Store Script" worth one dollar and give the miner seventy-five cents cash for it.

When the Coal Company Brenizer Store closed in 1951, Charles and Betty Patz leased the building and reopened the store and added a sporting goods dept. which sold guns and fishing equipment, they served the community until 1962.  Lou Hinsinger operated the store from 1963 to 1968.  The Keystone Club occupied the basement of the store for a short time.  The store building stood empty for a time after 1968,  the building caught fire and burned down in the early 1970's.  Surrounding homes were threatened with destruction by the fierce and intense heat.  The cause of the fire was not determined.

Officers of Local Union No. 5744, Brenizer Mine, of the United Mine Workers of America. Standing: Anson Tomb, Financial Sec; Steve Pavlik, President; Anthony Sabo, Vice President; Abe Gray, Recording Sec. Kneeling: Walter Denesuik, Committeeman, Robert Mull, Mineforeman, William Fagan, Treasurer.
(Photo Courtesy of Ann Pavlik and the Brenizer Historical Society.)

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