Chicago Bridge & Iron Company history

With demand high, Chicago Bridge & Iron won contracts to build several hundred bridges by 1893.

The company entered 1907 on strong growth, with contracts for several hundred water tanks, hundreds of bridges, and miscellaneous structures.

In an effort to open this new market, the company established a second facility in 1911 at Greenville, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh.

Horton died on July 28, 1912, leaving the business to his wife and five children.

By 1914, as the war in Europe began to heat up, the countries involved began to purchase more and more war material from American manufacturers.

At the close of the war in 1919, George Horton decided not to involve his company in the reconstruction of Europe.

In 1922 Chicago Bridge & Iron purchased the rights to a "floating roof" storage system patented by a Bureau of Mines engineer named John H. Wiggins.

In 1929, on the strength of its tank business, Chicago Bridge & Iron absorbed the large Reeves Brothers plant in Birmingham, Alabama.

While the Canadian plant began building heat exchangers and welded ships, the repeal in 1933 of Prohibition led to massive brewery contracts for the American plants.

Layoffs were reversed in 1934 and in the following year the company began taking on new hires.

Employment ballooned from 4,000 employees in 1941 to 20,000 the following year.

Also in 1954, Merle Trees died.

In 1958, as international expansion continued, the company established an Argentine subsidiary, Cometarsa, which failed to perform well and was sold nine years later.

In 1960 the company established subsidiaries in Germany and Holland and, later, in Mexico.

1966 The company builds its first offshore oil storage structure, the Molly Brown.

John Horton, son of Horace B. Horton, who succeeded Josh Clarke as president in 1968, stepped down after only 11 months in office to pursue personal interests.

He moved to diversify the company and in 1975 purchased Virginia-based Fairmac Corporation, a real estate developer.

Liquid Carbonic had been founded in 1888 to supply carbon dioxide gas to soda fountains and soft drink bottlers. Its search ended in 1984 when the company purchased Liquid Carbonic, the world's leading supplier of carbon dioxide, from Houston Natural Gas for $407 million.

Pogue served as chairman until 1989 when he, too, turned 65.

"Companies to Watch," Fortune, November 5, 1990.

In 1996, it was acquired by Praxair.

Glenn had led the company since its 1997 IPO. The company's chief operating officer was also let go.

CB&I's 1999 revenues were $675 million.

The North American administrative offices were relocated from Plainfield, Illinois, to the Houston area in 2001.

2003 The corporate identity is updated; John Brown Hydrocarbons Ltd. is acquired.

In January 2005, the Federal Trade Commission upheld an earlier administrative law judge ruling that its four-year-old acquisition of units from Pitt-Des Moines Inc. had violated antitrust law.

The complex was started up in April 2017, making Reliance the world's second largest producer of paraxylene.

On January 21, 2020, McDermott announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.