This article was first published in the Butler Eagle on Oct. 27, 2020.

Hansen Avenue runs through Lyndora, but few still remember the man for whom the street is named. Fewer still remember John Hansen partnered with the legendary “Diamond Jim” Brady to created the Standard Steel Car Company, which later evolved into Pullman-Standard.

Hansen was the chief engineer of the Schoen Company of Allegheny. Hansen, according to Ralph Goldinger and Audrey Fetters in their book, “Butler County, the Second Hundred Years,” was instrumental in replacing wooden railway cars with all-steel ones.

When the Schoen Company received an order for 600 steel hopper cars, Hansen was able to put some of his ideas into practice.

The result was cheaper rail cars and higher profits, which enabled Schoen to lower its prices and increase demand for its product.

Salesman James “Diamond Jim” Brady joined Schoen after the company broke Brady’s previous employer's monopoly on steel car undercarriages.

Brady soon became Schoen’s star salesman, but he and Hansen had bigger goals in mind.

In 1902, Brady and Hansen founded Standard Steel Car Company. They used Hansen's concept of using standardized interchangeable parts in building the rail cars.

Brady had orders for 6,000 of the cars by the time the plant opened in Butler on April 4, 1902. The factory was a half-mile long and one of the largest in the world.

The plant was on 242 acres between Fairground Avenue and Pierce Road (now Hansen Avenue) and extended from Pillow Street to Connoquenessing Creek.

Besides freight cars, the company began building all-steel passenger and baggage cars.

Standard’s initial payroll was $30,000 a week. In six years, payroll had reached $125,000.

By 1903, the plant employed 3,000 men, and housing began to be built on what had been the John McElroy farm.

Hansen named the new company town Lyndora, after his daughter, Lynda, and his wife, Grace, whose nickname was Dora. The company moved its headquarters from Pittsburgh to Butler.

Brady often stayed at the Lyndora Hotel while in Butler on business. Worth an estimated $12 million, Brady was known for his free-spending and lavish gifts to those lucky enough to be around him.

Once when Brady was at the plant in Butler, a worker spotted him outside “perspiring profusely, mopping his brow, and fanning himself,” according to Goldinger and Fetter’s book. The worker got him a chair, and Brady was so grateful he gave him $10, the equivalent of two days’ pay.

In 1907, the Standard plant produced 27,411 cars.

During the World War I, the plant switched over to producing munitions, as well as railroad cars.

Hansen lived in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh and when his partner “Diamond Jim” was in for a visit, they would visit the Butler plant, often on Sunday afternoons.

Lynda Hansen, the half-namesake of Lyndora, married in an opulent ceremony provided by her father in one of Pittsburgh’s biggest Presbyterian churches. Flowers for the event were said to have cost $50,000.

She and her husband, Bill Glatley, had four daughters and a son. When Glatley died young of a heart condition, Lynda remarried, but her second husband deserted her a short time later.

“Diamond Jim” Brady died in 1917, and Hansen retired from the presidency of the company in 1923. Hansen stayed on as board chairman until his death in December 1929.

When Hansen died, he left a $3 million fortune to his wife, but nothing for Lynda, because she supposedly was not forgiven by her father for marrying the “wrong men.”

However, when Grace Hansen died, Lynda inherited the Hansen fortune, which she subsequently squandered.

The year of John Hansen’s death was the year of the stock market crash. Standard Steel Car Co. merged with Pullman Inc. of Chicago to become Pullman-Standard.

For the next four decades, generations of workers at the plant turned out railroad cars during wars and economic ups and downs.

In its decline, the company was purchased by Wheelabrator Frye, which closed the Butler works for good on Feb. 3, 1982.