The Village of Solvay was named for brothers Enrst and Alfred Solvay, Belgian chemists who perfected the synthetic process for manufacturing soda ash, an essential ingredient in many products in America’s industrial economy. Their process required large amounts of water, limestone, and salt brine, all abundant in Syracuse, and Syracuse engineer William B. Cogswell persuaded the Solvays to bring their method to America. The Solvay Process Company, the first of its kind in the western hemisphere, opened in 1884 and grew into what was probably the largest industrial operation in Central New York. Cogswell and company president Rowland Hazard shared Ernst Solvay’s philanthropic ideals toward employees and their families, and after a January 1885 accident that killed five men, they established Solvay’s Mutual Benefit Society, which by 1888 paid hospital bills, provided income for injured workers, and served as insurance for employees who paid monthly dues. Fredrick Hazard, who succeeded his father as company president in 1898, and his wife Dora helped form the Solvay Guild, which added education and training programs, childcare facilities, cooking classes, a library, recreational programs, and what many credit as the nation’s first day-care center and Syracuse’s first kindergarten classes. By 1918 the company employed 7,000 workers, many of them immigrants from Italy, Germany, and Eastern Europe, and the works dominated life in the village incorporated in 1895. Syracuse’s location on the Erie Canal and the main line of the New York Central Railroad also made it an attractive site, with the canal running directly through the factory. In 1920, Allied Chemical and Dye Company took over Solvay Process and Semet-Solvay and ended the social welfare programs, though the plant remained one of the area’s largest employers for the next sixty five years until Allied closed it in 1986 as global economic shifts and technological innovations made much of it obsolete. The process also created heavy environmental costs, producing a pound and a half of waste for every pound of product, filling 315 acres near Onondaga Lake with waste beds, and contributing to major damage in 1943 when a retaining wall failed and flooded Lakeland and the State Fairgrounds.