New England Westinghouse Company

The New England Westinghouse Company is a former division of Westinghouse Electric. It was founded in 1915 in East Springfield, Massachusetts. Its primary purpose was to fulfill a contract to produce 1.8 million Mosin–Nagant rifles for Czar Nicholas II of Russia during World War I. In order to produce the rifles, they purchased the J Stevens Arms & Tool Company in Chicopee Falls, MA on 1 July 1916 and acquired all its holdings which included firearms and tool manufacturing facilities, and the Stevens-Duryea automobile factory. They sold the tool manufacturing portion of Stevens and shut down production of Stevens-Duryea automobiles and civilian firearms. The remaining Stevens firearms facility was renamed the J Stevens Arms Company and its machinery was retooled to meet the Mosin–Nagant contract. After some 770,000 rifles had been produced, the Czar was deposed, the Russian government defaulted on the contract, and New England Westinghouse did not receive payment. The company entered hard times and started producing M1918 Browning Automatic Rifles at the former Stevens-Duryea factory that was originally constructed for car manufacturing in 1912. In 1920 they sold the J Stevens Arms Company to Savage Arms but kept the automobile factory for use producing commercial products for Westinghouse Electric. In 1921, the Stevens-Duryea factory was the location of the first broadcasts of WBZ (AM), the first commercial radio station in the United States.

New England Westinghouse was dissolved on 8 October 1926 by the Supreme Judicial Court of Suffolk County, MA. Westinghouse continued to operate the facility until its closure, with a foundry and knitting company operating at the factory location. The buildings were demolished (with the exception of the Westinghouse office building along Page Blvd.) and the land cleared in 2010, with the eventual goal of placing a mixed development on the site.

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