Boston Insulated Wire and Cable Company
Dorchester Illustration 2640
Harry Benjamin Burley was born on May 26, 1867, in Epping, New Hampshire, to Joseph Cilley Burley, Elizabeth Haley.
Harry married Louise Adelaide Wells in 1901, and they lived in Brookline, Mass. for about 30 years. He died on Aug. 22, 1954, at the age of 87, and was buried in Epping, New Hampshire.
Harry and Louise had three sons, Harry Benjamin Burley, Robert Maxwell Burley and Joseph Cilley Burley. After Harry’s death, Harry Junior and Joseph took over management of the company. Robert served as a director for many years.
Harry Burley founded Boston Insulated Wire and Cable Company in 1906 on Freeport Street in Dorchester. In 1907, he acquired several parcels of land south of Bay Street, stretching from the Dorchester Avenue eastward to the railroad. The company erected a manufacturing plant at 65 Bay St. in 1909, and two years later, they had a branch in Hamilton, Ontario, to take care of business in Canada. In the mid-1900s, the company went public and in 1988 merged with and was subsumed by Draka Industries (Netherlands).
The business grew by supplying wire to automobile companies. Then in the 1930s and 1940s, BIWC produced braided metal hose for aircraft engines. In 1938, BIWC began to make cables for television cameras and was the leader in supplying the TV industry into the 1970s. In 1959-1960, Otis Elevator ordered cables for the tall buildings where other manufacturers’ cables had failed.
The Dorchester plant closed in the mid-1980s. In 1994, the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corp. bought the property and cleaned up the site. In 2001, Spire, an international digital and graphics print company, broke ground on a new 78,000-square foot office building at the same site.