Thomas F. Googerty Iron Works

Over the course of his extraordinary lifetime, Pontiac native Thomas F. Googerty grew into one of the nation’s greatest craftsmen in decorative ironwork. In 1999, Howard S. Miller, director of the National Ornamental Metal Museum, described Googerty and his work:

“An educator, writer and artist/blacksmith, Googerty spent a lifetime quietly working to improve the craft and expand the number of its practitioners. While the quantity of his ironwork cannot be compared to the tonnage that commercial shops were pounding out, it is solidly honest and very much in keeping with the Arts and Crafts tradition.”

Googerty was born Nov. 14, 1864, in Pontiac. When he was only 13 years old, he left school and worked odd jobs around Pontiac to help support his widowed mother and three siblings. At 15, he started work as an apprentice at a local blacksmith shop. Slowly he learned his trade and eventually developed a unique style of making decorative wrought iron objects.

In the mid-1880s, Googerty packed his tools and took to the road on a sort of journeyman’s quest. He worked at a variety of different types of blacksmithing, learned as much as he could from experienced smiths, and honed his craft. By the time he returned to Pontiac in 1894, he had developed into a sophisticated master craftsman.

In 1894, he was hired to teach ironwork to the inmates at the Illinois State Reformatory. Googerty began with a small, temporary blacksmith shop inside the reformatory; in 1905, he moved into a new, 4,000-square-foot shop with 18 forges, a power hammer, and “a full compliment of hand and machine tools.”

Googerty believed in the value of teaching young men the craft of ironwork. To him, his chosen trade taught self-reliance and self-respect. As Googerty himself explained, “If one is to be successful in designing and making ornamental ironwork, he must learn to use his head in conjunction with his hands; that is to say he must think out his own ideas and not be depending on someone else.”

In his teaching, Googerty not only provided a firm foundation in ironwork to his students but encouraged them to create expressive as well as practical works. According to Googerty, “Art, in its best sense, may be expressed in iron as in the more noble and precious materials.” He there was no reason why a blacksmith should not be termed an artist if he can produce splendid and beautiful work.

In 1915, he was recognized as a master craftsman by the prestigious Boston Society of Arts and Crafts. He spent his remaining active years teaching ironworking to young blacksmiths at the Illinois Boys Reformatory School in Pontiac. In the meantime, he wrote dozens of articles and published three books about decorative ironwork. Those books are still in print and although the technology of ironwork has changed significantly over the years, Googerty’s philosophic and practical lessons as set forth in his writings are still valued by both teachers and students of the craft.

Googerty’s ironwork has been exhibited in New York, Boston, Cleveland, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Detroit, St. Louis, and other major cities in the United States. Googerty died Oct. 29, 1945, in Pontiac, shortly after suffering a major heart attack. His legacy lives on in Pontiac. Examples of his work can be found on the decorative iron gates at South Side Cemetery, St. Mary’s Cemetery, and on the door of Jurassic Gemstones.