Link-Belt Company

In 1874, William Dana Ewart, an Iowa agricultural tool dealer, patented his idea of a detachable square-link chain for harvest equipment that could be easily repaired by farmers in the field. The next year, he organized the Ewart Manufacturing Company in Chicago and opened a branch in Indianapolis in 1885.

Three years later, in 1888, Ewart formed the Link-Belt Engineering Company to produce chain elevating and conveying machinery and in 1890 created the Link-Belt Machinery Company to build accessory parts. Business and sales manager Edward A. Turner coined the term “Link-Belt” for advertising purposes. Ewart consolidated the three companies in 1906 as the Link-Belt Company.

Link-Belt built several plants in Indianapolis: the Dodge plant, 519 North Holmes Street (1901); the Ewart plant, 220 South Belmont Avenue (1913); and a facility at 7601 Rockville Road (1959). Employment at Link-Belt increased steadily from 100 persons in 1888 to 2,500 persons in 1929 to 3,400 workers by the mid-1950s. In June 1967, the company merged with Chicago-based FMC Corporation, a machinery and chemical manufacturer. At the time of the merger, Link-Belt operated 22 plants worldwide in addition to its Indianapolis facilities. In 1969, Link-Belt was the fifth-largest employer in Indianapolis with more than 4,000 employees.

In 1981, Indianapolis-based PT Components was formed in a leveraged buyout of FMC’s Power Transmission Group, obtaining the former Link-Belt Bearing Division and the Link-Belt Chain Division. Manufacturing power transmission equipment, PT Components employed 1,000 people in Indianapolis with annual sales of around $200 million (about $440 million in 2020). In 1988, the firm merged with the mechanical power division of Rexnord Corporation, a Wisconsin-based industrial equipment manufacturer. Rexnord’s division in Indianapolis retained the Link-Belt name.

In October 2016, Rexnord announced the closing of the Indianapolis plant and move about 300 jobs to Texas and Mexico. The company’s intention to close its Indianapolis location at 7601 Rockville Road caught the attention of President Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign. Employees at the Link-Belt plant hoped that he would get involved as he had in the threatened closure of the Carrier Corporation. Trump, however, did not intervene, and the westside Indianapolis Link-Belt plant closed in November 2017.