The Solvay Process Company was an American chemical manufacturer that specialized in the manufacture of soda ash. A major employer in Central New York, the company was key in the origin of the village of Solvay, New York, where it was headquartered. History The Solvay Process Company was a joint venture between Belgian chemists Ernest and Alfred Solvay, who owned the patent rights to the Solvay process, and Americans William B. Cogswell and Rowland Hazard II. Cogswell, a former resident of Syracuse, was an engineer who was familiar with the natural resources of Central New York that would be available for use in process. Knowing that American industry was importing soda ash from Europe, Cogswell envisioned utilizing the process in America. After several refusals, Cogswell eventually secured American rights to the Solvay process. He obtained capital to build a production facility from Rowland Hazard II, scion of the Hazard family. Rowland Hazard was the major American investor in the company and its first president. His son, Frederick Rowland Hazard, was an initial officer and subsequently became president. William B. Cogswell served as vice-president. Frederick's brother Rowland G. Hazard II soon followed Cogswell as vice-president. The Solvay brothers themselves had a one-third interest in the company. Wells in Tully provided salt brine, pumped by pipeline to Solvay. An elevated conveyor, with buckets suspended from a cable loop, passed in a tunnel through a hill to deliver stone from company quarries at Split Rock in Onondaga, about four miles to the south. The Erie Canal passed through the Solvay Process plant until 1917, as did Onondaga Lake, connected to the New York State canal system. The main line of the New York Central Railroad also passed through company property. The town of Solvay grew around the Solvay Process plant. The Church and Dwight Company, producer of Arm & Hammer baking soda, which used material from the Solvay process, built a production facility nearby. The Hazard family invested in an affiliated business, the Semet-Solvay Company, formed in 1895. Louis Semet, a relative of the Solvays, had developed with the brothers a coke oven designed to recover valuable materials formerly wasted in the coking process. In 1892 the Solvay Process Company built the first of these ovens in America, forming the Semet-Solvay Company in 1895 to build and operate these ovens. Coke plants were located in Ashland, Kentucky, Buffalo, New York, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Detroit,