Edward J. Berwind
- Bobby Kelley
- Sep 14
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 21
(June 17, 1848 - August 18, 1936)
Edward Julius Berwind was an American business magnate and one of the most prominent coal operators of the Gilded Age. He was born in Philadelphia on June 17, 1848. Appointed to the United States Naval Academy by President Abraham Lincoln, he later served as a naval aide during the Grant administration before leaving the service to enter business.
Together with his brother Charles F. Berwind and Judge Allison White, he organized the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company. Working closely with financier J. P. Morgan, the firm consolidated and expanded coal operations throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Colorado. At its height, Berwind was regarded as the largest individual owner of coal properties in the world. His company towns included Windber in Pennsylvania, its name formed from a transposition of "Berwind," and Berwind in West Virginia, which housed thousands of miners and their families. Subsidiaries such as the Kyber Coal Company in Kentucky also carried his name.
The company supplied much of the coal used by the United States Navy, and through his business partnerships with Peter A. B. Widener, Berwind was involved in the establishment of the New York subway system. He also served as a director of the International Mercantile Marine Company, which owned the White Star Line and by extension the Titanic. He wielded enormous influence over the steamship business in both New York and Philadelphia.
Berwind was known as an inflexible employer who refused to bargain with labor unions and maintained closed-shop policies in the coal fields. During the 1922 coal strike, his company imposed wage reductions of up to 54 percent, and striking workers were ordered to vacate company-owned housing within five days, forcing many families into temporary tent settlements.
His reputation as a "robber baron" was shaped by such practices, though his company endured, and the Berwind Corporation continues today as a family-owned business managing vast real estate holdings and mineral rights.
In 1886, Berwind was married to Sarah Vesta Herminie Torrey in Leghorn, Italy. The couple never had children, Sarah died in 1922.
His personal life reflected the grandeur of the Gilded Age, expressed most vividly through his residences. In Philadelphia, he maintained a distinguished townhouse that reflected his family’s long ties to that city.
In Manhattan, he commissioned a grand limestone mansion at Fifth Avenue and East 64th Street, completed in 1896.
Designed in the French Beaux-Arts style by architect Nathan Clark Mellen, the house was one of the largest private residences built in New York during the era. Its double-height ballroom, ornate interiors, and prominent location made it a showplace of Fifth Avenue society.
In Newport, Rhode Island, he commissioned Horace Trumbauer to design The Elms, a summer residence modeled after the Château d’Asnières near Paris, completed in 1901. This estate, staffed by dozens of servants and set within elaborate formal gardens, became one of the grand symbols of Newport society and remains preserved today as a National Historic Landmark.
Edward Julius Berwind died in Manhattan on August 18, 1936, at the age of 88. He was entombed in the Berwind Mausoleum at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. The mausoleum, modeled after the Tower of the Winds in Athens, was designed by Horace Trumbauer and built by Presbrey Leland, standing as an enduring monument to his wealth and legacy.
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