Local firm marks 100th anniversary
Jan. 1, 1902, was no holiday for Lewis C. Mechling. “It was the day he founded Fayette Engineering. And I imagine he worked that day,’ Russell Mechling Jr., his grandson, said.
Fayette Engineering is observing its 100th anniversary this year. It has been in continuous operation in the Mechling family since 1902. Russell Mechling is the third generation in the business. Three of his grown children are the fourth.
Over the century, the company has weathered this region’s economic ups and downs. Its principal client in the first half of its life was the coal industry. When coal and coke began to falter, the company turned to more traditional civil engineering.
“The first 50 years we were into mining engineering. The second 50 years we have been in municipal engineering.’
Founder Lewis Mechling lived in Scottdale just over the Fayette County line. He worked for the former H.C. Frick Coal and Coke Co. as an engineer and moved from the company’s “North End’ Scottdale office in 1896. He was 33 when he started Fayette Engineering in Uniontown.
“Lee Zearley (another Scottdale native) was a partner. He was also an engineer for Frick,’ Mechling said.
The two men were more than partners, building their homes next to one another on Berkeley Street in Uniontown where each raised his family.
Mechling offered an anecdote of the times.
“Their wives, even though they grew up together, always called each other ‘Mrs. Mechling’ and ‘Mrs. Zearley,” he said, instead of by their first names. “It just must have been the way they did things then.’
The second generation came when Russell Mechling Sr. entered the business in 1943. He was a graduate of Penn State University where he received his engineering degree. At that time C.O. Wright was a partner. The senior Mechling worked until 1970 when he retired, although he continued visiting the office, by then at 103 E. Main St., Uniontown, daily.
“We were in the Fayette Bank Building from 1902 until 1964,’ Mechling said,’ one of, if not the first, tenant in that downtown landmark. But it was under Russell Mechling Jr.’s venue that Fayette Engineering went from an operation employing less than a handful of people to one staffed by several dozen.
“It was really Dad who built this up to what it is today,’ Russell (Rusty) Mechling III, said.
“There were only two people in the office when I decided I wanted to be part of the firm,’ the elder Mechling said.
That was in 1964 when he graduated from West Virginia University with his engineering degree.
Mechling had a job with U.S. Steel, which was the successor to the former Frick Coal and Coke Co.
“It was something I always wanted to do. Dad thought it was a bad idea when I left U.S. Steel as a mining engineer.’ While in college, Mechling also worked for the former Christopher Coal Co. as an inside laborer.
“At the time the company had gone through the coal and coke boom. After World War II, work fell off. There was one full time and two other part time people. He (Russell Sr.) was in his 60s so he wasn’t putting in a lot,’ his grandson, Rusty Mechling, said.
“We got into other areas. We got into residential development, lot plans. We expanded our surveying capacity. We got into street design. The Bear Rocks subdivision (near Acme) is one of our plans. It has 1,700 lots,’ Rusty Mechling said.
Gradually, things improved. Where the first 50 years of its history were in mining engineering, the second 50 has been in municipal engineering. Fayette Engineering today employs about 50 people engaged in a variety of engineering disciplines ranging from land surveying to design to landscape architecture.
Included among the staff are three Mechling children: Gary and Rusty, both West Virginia University engineering graduates, and Ellen (Mechling) Ulmer, who has a WVU degree in landscape architecture. Mechling’s youngest, Bryan, is still in college. Lynda Mechling Kintigh lives in Pittsburgh; Mark lives in Spartanburg, S.C., and Peggy Lee Mechling Bednarik lives in Ashburn, Va.
Edward L. Myers, who started with the firm in 1978, was asked to become a partner in 1985. He’s responsible for the transportation projects.
“I remember when I first came into the business,’ Russell Mechling said. “I read about places like Atlanta and Washington, D.C. where there was enormous growth. Those were places where a small engineering company could have done very well. But we didn’t consider moving. We stayed here. We have had continuous clients here, like the Whyel family, since the day Fayette Engineering opened its doors.
“We have done a lot of work outside the area; Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama.
“But I didn’t get into this business to make a fortune. I have lived comfortably. We have always been reasonable and have a lot of repeat business,’ Mechling said.
There have been many changes, however, mostly in technology and a new location.
To illustrate, Mechling explained his grandfather “bought transits in 1902, some of which we were still using in the 1950s and 1960s. Technology hadn’t changed that much by then.’
Some of those early tools are stored alongside some of the “newer’ technology that came in the 1960s and later.
“I spent $1,800 on our first electronic calculator,’ a TV-like device offering a few more features beyond its adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. It is also stored in the Fayette Engineering museum.
“One of the first things we bought was the Umeco, a Japanese transit,’ in upgrading its equipment in the 1960s, Mechling said.
While it was “an improvement over the old equipment, it was constantly in need of repair,’ he said.
American transit makers soon began improving their equipment, which the local firm purchased.
Where the older models might have been accurate to a foot in 5,000 feet, the modern Global Positioning System (GPS) devices are accurate to a centimeter in miles.
“Things have changed quite a lot. We can survey an area now by taking readings from eight satellites. What we gain is repeatability,’ Rusty Mechling said.
“The old technology did the same thing but it was by measuring angles and distances. But even the new technology has gotten better and smaller in the five years since we began using it,’ Gary Mechling explained.
“We can even use it at night,’ he said.
Some of the company’s projects over the past century include designing Eastern Bridge, a 45-foot-long span that crosses Redstone Creek in Uniontown in 1904, which has been in continuous service since. Merging what was even older at the time with the new, the bridge, according to “Another Look’ by Walter (Buzz) Storey, is seated upon stones from a National Road bridge built in 1818.
Ulmer, the firm’s landscape architect, has designed the Main Street Project in Uniontown, South Street, which features some of the city’s only diagonal public parking, Marshall Plaza, Uniontown Mall’s landscaping and her favorite – the Fayette County 911 Center’s parking lot in downtown Uniontown.
Rusty’s involved in land development, housing development and land surveying.
“We are also doing a lot of environmental engineering,’ he said, the firm’s most recent addition, “which dovetails into a lot of the projects we do.’
The work includes environmental and site assessments and some construction management.
“We do some building designs, mostly industrial and commercial building systems,’ Gary Mechling said. “Our success can be attributed to our people. We have had a very good staff over the years,’ Russell Mechling said.
In terms of the future, “We plan on doing more of the same,’ Rusty said. “Other civil engineering companies are getting into such things as soil testing. We aren’t really looking to branch out into such fields.’
Larger firms that would have liked to buy it have also targeted the company.
“We have had several offers but we turned them all down,’ Mechling said.
The future, he added, “Is sort of out of my hands. These are the future,’ he said, sweeping an arm in the direction of his children.
“We have a much better launching pad than in 1964,’ Rusty Mechling said.
“We have a backlog of about 12 months worth of work,’ Myers added. “Most engineering companies would love to have a six-month backlog. It has always been steady for us,’ he said.
As an example of a “slow day,’ Russell Mechling once gave a worker a task of mapping the community of New Salem to keep him busy. “He worked on it one day. We never did finish it,’ he said. “We have had trouble getting everything done at times,’ he said.
As for his own future, Mechling said he has no retirement plans.
“What else would I do?’ he said, smiling. “This is what I wanted to do all along. I can’t imagine having done anything else. And I hope our next 100 years will be just as good.’