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J. G. Brill – known professional car builder – Packard
chassis also built ambulance and hearses on Ford Model T chassis.
The J.G. Brill Company was founded in 1869 at
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as J.G. Brill & Company, by John George Brill
(1817-1888) and his son, George Martin Brill. The elder Brill had come
to the United States in 1840 from Germany, where he had learned the
cabinetmaker’s trade in Bremen. He found work at
Murphy and Allison’s Philadelphia car works, where he rose to the
position of foreman of the streetcar shop. In 1868/69 he left and
started his own car shop.
The firm initially built all kinds of cars: horse-drawn
streetcars, cable cars, and passenger cars for steam railroads. But by
the mid 1880s it was concentrating on the booming streetcar market.
As the firm prospered, it was chartered 1887 in
Pennsylvania as the J.G. Brill Company, and soon relocated to a large
plant on Philadelphia’s Woodland Avenue.
In 1899 the company laid plans to consolidate its own
activities with those of several other firms into the Consolidated
Street Car Company, which would have absorbed 90% of the electric car
builders in the United States, but these plans were later abandoned.
Brill nevertheless acquired the entire capital stock of
many smaller manufacturers such as
American Car Company, St. Louis, MO (1902),
G.C. Kuhlman Car Company, Cleveland, OH (1904),
John Stephenson Company, Elizabeth, NJ (1904) and the
Wason Manufacturing Company, Springfield, MA (1906).
Brill was incorporated in Pennsylvania 1 August 1906 and
organized on 6 February 1907. It thereafter acquired the majority of the
capital stock of the
Danville Car Company, Danville, IL (1908).
All these acquisitions gave the company strategically
located plants in most parts of the country. In 1912, Compagnie J.G.
Brill was formed with a plant at Paris, France, that produced cars and
trucks for electric lines overseas.
In 1917, at the outset of the 1st World War, Brill
joined with J. G. White & Company, to organize the Springfield Aircraft
Corporation, producing airplanes for the war effort. The production of
airplanes was completed at the end of 1918.
The
John Stephenson Company plant in Elizabeth, NJ, was sold in 1919.
In 1920, the combined production of all these plants in
the production of electric and steam railway cars, trucks and kindred
appliances, approximated 3,700 cars and 14,000 trucks per annum. Its
principal plant in Philadelphia consisted of some 28 acres.
Every conceivable type of car was built by Brill. A few
of the more notable Brill designs were the patented
Brill Convertible Car, in which removable side panels made the same
car either opened or closed; the patented
semi-convertible, introduced in 1902, with roof pockets where both
sashes lodged, one upon the other; the
“Narragansett” car, an open car with a patented two-step running
board to facilitate boarding by women in tight skirts; the heavy
steel high-speed articulated cars built in 1926 for the Washington,
Baltimore & Annapolis; and the lightweight, high-speed
Bullet cars (below) developed in 1930.
Brill had patents covering virtually every component of
car construction, from trucks to trolley wheels, and the firm pioneered
“package” selling and assembly line production.
Brill Corporation was formed in 1926 as a holding
company owning controlling stock in J.G. Brill Co. and the various Brill
electric car plants.
As the trolley industry began its decline in the 1930's,
Brill experienced hard times, reporting a $1 million loss in 1933. One
by one the Brill plants closed, and production of trolley cars ended at
the Philadelphia plant in 1941, at least in part because it sold only
thirty of its new Brilliner streetcars.
The Brilliner was an attempt to match the PCC car, a
design collaboratively developed by industry suppliers and major transit
systems to redefine the streetcar in the face of overwhelming automotive
competition. Similar in many respects to the PCC, the new car featured
styling and colors by famed designer Raymond Loewy, well-known for his
efforts on the Pennsylvania’s GG1 electrics.
Production of buses continued, and the Brill interests
were merged into ACF-Brill Motors, Inc., in July 1944. ACF-Brill Motors
itself ceased business in 1954.
Brill had a Canadian branch called Canadian Brill, that was located in
Preston, Ontario (1922).
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