How Phoenixville brought its wheel back home<\/p>\n
After it was decommissioned in New Jersey in 1989, the wheel was shipped to an amusement park in Biloxi, Mississippi, where it stood for 10 years before it was sold to a retirement community in South Jersey, said Conroy, who is also a board member of the Schuylkill River Heritage Center, a nonprofit museum dedicated to the industrial legacy of the town and the river.\n<\/p>\n
In 2008, Barbara Cohen, president emeritus of the center, discovered that not only did one of four Phoenix Wheels still exist \u2014 but that it was just across state lines.\n<\/p>\n
Borough officials and leaders of the center presented Cohen with an award Saturday for the pivotal role she played in the wheel\u2019s return.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cShe literally was like, \u2018We\u2019re going to bring that back to Phoenixville,\u2019 and then immediately acquired it,\u201d Conroy said.\n <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/phoenix-wheel-8-1024x683.jpeg\")
Barbara Cohen, center, president emeritus of the Schuylkill River Heritage Center, was honored for her vision and \u201cextraordinary dedication\u201d to reassembling the wheel in Phoenixville at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 6, 2026. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)<\/p>\n
The pieces were transported back home and stored there for nearly two more decades as Cohen, the center\u2019s board members, elected officials and community supporters, worked to raise the more than $2 million it would take to complete the project.\n<\/p>\n
That effort ultimately succeeded with a state grant of $750,000 from the Commonwealth Financing Authority, contributions from foundations, businesses and community members, and the backing of a private funder. Fundraising efforts are continuing to support the wheel\u2019s ongoing maintenance.\n<\/p>\n
For the enormous task of restoring, reassembling and installing the wheel\u2019s parts, Gern Jaeger, owner of Specialty Metals Welding & Fabrication, worked with engineer Tom Zeigler.\n<\/p>\n
Zeigler said Saturday that when he first saw the wheel disassembled in a field at the University of Valley Forge, a casual observer would see it as \u201ca pile of junk.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Barbara had a vision, and for some unknown reason, she placed her trust in me,\u201d Zeigler said.
\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/phoenix-wheel-9-1024x683.jpeg\")
The 78-foot-tall \u201cPhoenix Wheel\u201d was a fixture in Asbury Park, New Jersey, for nearly a century. It\u2019s now returned as a permanent sculpture to Phoenixville, Pa., the town where it was forged more than 130 years ago. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n
They visited Hagley Museum in Delaware, where Phoenix Iron and Steel Company\u2019s records were stored, in search of documents showing how the wheel had been manufactured and assembled.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we were going through the records, we found a heartbreaking entry that said \u2018Drawings destroyed,\u2019 so at that point we knew we were starting from scratch,\u201d Zeigler said.\n<\/p>\n
To reassemble the wheel, Jaeger, Zeigler and their team painstakingly measured thousands of unmarked pieces, crafting replacements for parts that were damaged or missing.\n<\/p>\n
Jaeger said the reassembled wheel is a tribute to the skill and craftsmanship of the men and women of Phoenix Iron and Steel Company who first made the wheel.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re certainly not here to see it, but maybe somebody in their lineage can see this and be proud of them,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
Chester County Commissioner Marian Moskowitz said many of Phoenixville\u2019s current residents are descended from the steelworkers who played a vital role in the town\u2019s industrial past.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI will bet you there are many people in this community \u2026 whose great-great-grandparents worked on this, and it\u2019s just so amazing to me that it comes back home,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How Phoenixville brought its wheel back home After it was decommissioned in New Jersey in 1989, the wheel…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":849386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,347127,1587,1589,347128,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-849385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix","tag-america","tag-arizona","tag-asbury-park","tag-az","tag-phoenix","tag-phoenixville","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116705463686244761","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}