Mount Union borough

The E. DeVecchis concrete block company

Charles Howard Welch wrote in his 1909 history of Mount Union that the concrete business “is one that is coming into great prominence today.” Between Washington and Division streets he noted two concrete buildings and a block manufactory operated by C. B. Crum and Charles F. Bilger.

The 1994 National Register nomination for the Mount Union Historic District says the merchant C. B. Crum is known to have made these concrete blocks in North Mount Union after 1909, and that their local manufacture “may date from 1900.”

A souvenir book issued for Huntingdon County’s sesquicentennial in 1937 lists the E. DeVecchis Cement Block Factory among Mount Union’s industries.

The 1966 Mapleton centennial booklet lists E. DeVecchis & Sons, Mount Union, among its patrons.

The name also appears in the Daily Collegian, Penn State’s student newspaper, in thanks from the Overall Homecoming Committee in October 1983 and again in October 1984. Neither notice gives an address, so we cannot say whether they refer to this company.

In May 1996 a notice in Lancaster Farming advertised an absolute auction of E. DeVecchis and Sons, Inc., on May 17 at Burnham and May 18 at State College. It listed flatbed block trucks, rubber tired loaders, dump trucks, block, brick and building materials, office equipment, and two concrete block manufacturing facilities, one offered on each day.

Wilson R. DeVecchis was born in Mount Union in 1917 and died in December 2010. His obituary in the Lewistown Sentinel says he was co-owner and president of E. DeVecchis and Sons, Inc., which manufactured concrete products. Over the years, the obituary says, the company expanded to four manufacturing plants in central Pennsylvania. It also says he was one of the original members of the Pennsylvania Concrete and Masonry Association and its president from 1972 to 1973, and that he served on the Mount Union Borough Council.

We have not found a source that gives the year the firm began, or the reason for the 1996 sale. The obituary describes four plants, and the 1996 notice offered two facilities. We do not know how those fit together, or whether the company still exists.

Checked against the record. We read the 1909 history and the 1937 souvenir book on archive.org, the 1966 Mapleton booklet on archive.org, the 1994 nomination on the National Park Service site, and the 1996 notice and the 1983 and 1984 Collegian notices in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive. The 1909 history and the nomination do not name the DeVecchis firm. They are here for the block making they describe, and we are not saying the businesses were connected. Neither is evidence about when the firm began. Our copy of Wilson DeVecchis’s obituary comes from Find a Grave, a site built by volunteers, and we did not reach the newspaper itself. What stays open: the year the firm began, the reason for the 1996 sale, and whether the company still exists. We have not checked state corporation records, and we could not reach the Huntingdon newspapers of those years. Nothing we read says how the obituary’s four plants fit with the 1996 notice’s two facilities.

Sources

Checked 2026-11-01 · Primary sources and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive

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