{"nrhp_refnum":"86001772","name":"Dent Hardware Company Factory Complex","other_names":["D.W. Coombs Textile Machinery Company"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"1101 Third St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Whitehall","county":"Lehigh County","state":"PA","lat":40.639987983000026,"lon":-75.47467464599998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1986-08-21","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A complex of manufacturing buildings for the Dent Hardware Company in Fullerton, Whitehall Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, built in several phases from about 1894 to 1913, mostly of reinforced concrete scored or scribed to resemble masonry.","why_significant":"The complex is argued to be the most intact group of industrial architecture in Fullerton and an early collection of reinforced concrete industrial buildings in the Lehigh Valley. The firm was the nation's leading producer of brass refrigerator hardware in the early twentieth century and a major maker of cast iron toys, and the complex is the major surviving Pennsylvania example of the cast iron toy industry.","narrative":"Fullerton, a small community just north of Allentown in Whitehall Township, holds a complex of eight large and three small factory buildings erected between about 1894 and 1913 for the Dent Hardware Company. Most are reinforced concrete scored to imitate masonry, with segmentally arched windows, monitor roofs and slate-covered roofs. The company was founded in 1894 by Henry H. Dent, Henry P. Newhard and Charles C. Kaiser, who had worked for Allentown Hardware. Newhard, a trained machinist, planned and supervised the construction of the foundries, machine shop and boiler house. By 1904 the firm produced about 50,000 sets of refrigerator hardware a month, roughly ninety percent of national output. It was also a major maker of cast iron toys from 1898 to 1937. The complex is regarded as the most intact industrial group in the area, and one of the few early reinforced concrete industrial collections in the Lehigh Valley. The iron foundry is no longer standing.","period_of_significance":"1894-1913","architect_builder":"Henry P. Newhard (builder/architect as stated on form)","architectural_style":null,"criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The company went out of business in 1973; since then the complex has been principally used as warehousing.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:32.495861-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/86001772.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86001772/726728d8ea-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86001772/726728d8ea-1600.webp","licence":"CC0","author":"Smallbones","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dent_Mill_Complex_Lehigh_Co_PA.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Smallbones</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dent_Mill_Complex_Lehigh_Co_PA.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71998714","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dent_Hardware_Company_Factory_Complex","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5259373"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/lehigh-county/dent-hardware-company-factory-complex-86001772/"}