HISTORY FROM OHA: The story of Brennan Motors

The company that transported Syracusans by velocipede, vehicle, and vessel

The Brennan Motor Manufacturing Company was a prominent producer of automobile and marine engines that thrived in Syracuse for more than 70 years. Patrick H. Brennan, an immigrant to America from Ireland, founded Brennan Motors in 1897, and he served as general manager of the business until his death in 1934. From 1897-1900, Brennan Motors was originally listed and incorporated in the Boyd’s Syracuse Directories as the Brennan Handle Bar Company, and began by manufacturing parts for bicycles. This initial endeavor is unsurprising, given the fact that Patrick Brennan had worked as a superintendent at the Syracuse Speciality Manufacturing Company on Leavenworth Avenue prior to the formation of his own enterprise, where servicing the bicycle industry was among the specialties. While running the Brennan Handle Bar Company, Patrick received patents for several parts that he developed, including those issued in 1897 for modifications made to bicycle crank-shaft hangers and for the invention of his own “new and original” bicycle-fork design, among additional velocipede improvements. In September 1900, a letters patent was also issued to Patrick Brennan for the professional enhancements he made to cycle crank mechanisms using interlocking parts. As Patrick Brennan’s obituary published in the Syracuse Herald in 1934 contends, the Brennan Company was at first “engaged in the manufacture of bicycles before turning to … automobiles.” Like many other smaller firms at that time, Brennan Motors shifted into providing mechanical components for motor cars within a few years of its establishment. This alteration in focus of industrial production was further accompanied by a change in location for the company. Although the Brennan Handle Bar Company was founded “in a small shop rented in a Syracuse industrial building” at 318 East Water St. in 1897, and subsequently moved to 107 North Franklin St, by the end of 1902, it was in 1904 that Brennan relocated to a larger factory at 101 Grape (now South Townsend) St. This was the former site of the Phoenix Foundry and Machine Company at the intersection of Townsend and East Water Streets, and where Brennan Motors remained until it ceased operations in 1972. The Syracuse Herald-Journal noted that by 1924, the plant had grown to encompass over 32,000 square feet that spanned across four separate buildings. Patrick Brennan was appointed a consul of the American Motor League in 1903, which roughly coincided with his company’s diversion into vehicular rather than velocipede manufacturing. The first city directory in which Brennan Motors is identified as “makers of gasoline motors designed and constructed for automobiles” as well as “manufacturers of adjustable handle bars” was published for 1902. As this description implies, the Brennan Motor Company specialized in the production of engines and engine parts, and high-grade, four-cylinder gasoline motors became synonymous with the Brennan brand. Early Brennan engines were formidable in their faculties; an advertisement published in Syracuse’s 1907 city directory states that Brennan’s standard, four-cylinder vertical motors could attain a horsepower up to 80, whereas its horizontals alternatively had a horsepower ranging between six and 30. By 1912, the firm was flexible in manufacturing two-, four-, and six-cylinder motors amenable for “any standard make of car,” including Autocar, Detroit, Elmore, Regal, and even the Ford “Model F.” The Syracuse Post-Standard recognized that in addition to completed engines, Brennan Motors also assembled component parts for automobiles and their motors, many of which included planetary gears as well as sliding transmission gears “in both the progressive and selective type.” Interestingly, the Brennan Motor Company’s industrial production was not limited to the confines of car engines, as the business even made its Model “CE” industrial gasoline motor to power construction and industrial equipment. Brennan’s foray into the automobile industry also began with crafting cars themselves, in addition to parts. As one of the first vehicle manufacturers in Syracuse, Patrick Brennan’s firm produced the Brennan “1900” automobile, as well as a gasoline motor ambulance in 1904 that was used by local Syracuse undertakers John McCarthy and Sons. The Herald-Journal described the ambulance as a trailblazing vehicle “thought to be the first of its type in the country,” with its white exterior, “leather interior, [and] room for a stretcher, two chairs, an instrument stand, and collapsible basket.” The McCarthy ambulance was also “lit with both oil and electric lamps” and capable of operating at “three forward speeds and one in reverse.” These features collectively made it an impressive vehicle in its own right and attracted ample national attention. In addition to producing Brennan automobile engines, the “internal combustion engines of its own design,” the company manufactured numerous marine motors. These engines were in high demand into the 1920s, when recreational watercraft became increasingly more common on New York State’s Barge Canal system. In a retrospective piece published by the Post-Standard, it was noted that Brennan motors were used in watercraft in areas around and outside of the state, including in New England, Long Island, and California, and “covered most categories of marine needs — from pleasure boats to working fishermen.” One Brennan marine engine even made it as far away as Japan, where it powered a “thirty-foot-long, five-foot-wide runabout owned by R. Kawachi and Company of Kobe,” at speeds up to 18 miles per hour. Analogous to its success in the bicycle and automobile sectors, ingenuity was likewise paramount to Brennan Motors’ achievements in the marine industry. It was among the first companies to develop and manufacture outboard drives, which were engines fastened to the outside of the boat’s hull at the stern to facilitate steering. Another improvement that the business achieved in watercraft propulsion was the invention of the “imp.” Among Brennan’s most popular products, the “imp” was widely advertised as the “world’s lightest and smallest four-cylinder inboard marine engine,” and its cost amounted to $235 for the 20-horsepower version. With its miniature size and durability of its design, the “imps” were constructed to propel boats at top speeds, both forward and in reverse, and their steers equipped with propellers allowed watercraft to be held on course if the operator left the wheel unattended. “Imp” motors would also “kick-up” while the power remained engaged upon hitting an obstruction on the riverbed or lakebed, thereby allowing boaters to still move safely through shallow waters. Just as Brennan tailored its vehicular engines to run in a diverse array of car models, so too were its marine motors equally accommodating to different boats. The “imps” were marketed as “ideal for powering small runabouts, launches, dories, utilities, yacht tenders, the smallest of cruisers … sailboat auxiliaries,” and could provide “emergency and trolling power in larger cruisers.” Aside from the “imp,” Brennan Motors sold other boat engines “for every size and type of boat,” constructed to run on diesel or gasoline at a horsepower ranging from five to 200, and many were also fashioned with cooling systems engineered to operate in either fresh or saltwater. During World War II, Brennan “devoted the facilities of its plant [on South Townsend Street] almost entirely to war work,” in supplying engines and parts to the United States Navy. A Post-Standard article published in January 1942 recognized that innumerable spare parts were shipped out by the company to repair those Brennan engines that had already been “in government service for various periods,” while new orders were simultaneously received for the manufacture of entirely new engines “to meet certain Navy requirements.” Brennan’s general manager at the time, Emmett A. Brennan, the eldest son of Patrick Brennan, chose to employ two shifts of rotating workers to maximize production on the “home front.” In 1965, a major fire at the Brennan plant on South Townsend Street destroyed a section of the brick complex that included much of the workshop, walls, flooring, and roof. Ultimately, the Brennan Motor Manufacturing Company ceased operations in 1972 after 75 years of business when Emmett, as acting president and treasurer, decided to retire at 82 years of age. He passed away the following year on April 14, 1973. Throughout its history, the Brennan plant had expanded to encompass seven buildings at the intersection of East Water and South Townsend Streets, but the firm opted to sell what remained of its factory complex in 1972, by this time having transitioned into a “spare parts business,” as expressed by Onondaga Historical Association president Richard N. Wright in 1977. Industrial appraiser and liquidator Charles Gibbons was responsible for much of the disposal of the machinery and equipment utilized in the plant’s daily operations, and an auction was held on July 20, 1972, for this similar purpose of liquidation. After falling into disrepair and posing a risk of falling bricks onto the surrounding streets, the Brennan industrial block, with buildings indicative of Erie Canal-era architecture, was demolished in 2017. After Brennan’s dissolution, many of the company’s archives, including ledgers, catalogs, blueprints, and other artifacts, were acquired by the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse in 1973. From manufacturing bicycle parts, to fashioning automobile engines, to even constructing motors for watercraft, it is indisputable that this business made a substantial impact on transportation history, on both a local and national scale. It is therefore fitting that the Brennan Motor Manufacturing Company’s records are now housed in an institution dedicated to the momentous new wave of aquatic transit ushered in by the Erie Canal, as Brennan Motors fits the museum’s overarching theme of documenting and interpreting past conduits of transportation quite well.

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Maria Lore is a research associate at the Onondaga Historical Association, located at 321 Montgomery St. in Syracuse.