On Friday, Aug. 21, employees were notified that mid- 2010, production at the chemical plant, located along Bridge Street in Bridesburg, would cease and all current employees would lose their jobs.

In the end, after years of shipping chemical production processes to plants in other countries, the chemical manufacturer's work force had dwindled.

The company, which had once employed hundreds of local residents, needed to inform just 45 employees of the closure.

This is just the latest news in the tumultuous history of the century-old chemical company and the latest cutbacks since Dow Chemical Co. purchased it in July 2008.

The Bridesburg plant was able to escape this year's January layoffs of more than 900 Rohm and Haas employees, which hit various plants throughout the world.

According to Dow Chemical Co. spokesman Bob Plishka, over the course of the "last hundred years" the chemical company had slowly been outsourcing development of various chemicals to its many production plants in other countries.

In recent years, the company was creating just two products at the Bridesburg plant - ion-exchange materials for water filtration systems and a weed killer known as GOAL.

Twenty employees who had worked on the production of GOAL had known since December 2007 that production of the chemical would cease at the end of this month, said Plishka.

The 25 remaining employees will continue their work until mid-2010. After that, the plant will begin a six-month shutdown process, said Plishka.

He said no plans have been made as to what might become of the plant after it has been completely closed.

Dow incurred a significant amount of debt when the company purchased Rohm and Haas. Dow's debt to bondholders and banks was $23.8 billion in its most recent quarter, the first quarter reported since Dow purchased Rohm and Haas.

But, Plishka said that debt was unrelated to the shutdown and instead, it was the plant's slow cutback of production processes that eventually brought down the curtain.

"That's a very large site in an urban location with just one unit left (in operation)," he said of the 63-acre plant. "As production units were turned off, fewer units were producing (chemicals) while we were paying more and more costs. It made the site unproductive."

For years, the company employed hundreds of local residents and built an interesting history.

In 1932, at the Bridesburg plant, Rohm and Haas' scientists invented Plexiglas while trying to develop shatter-proof glass to use in cockpits of American fighter planes during World War II.

According to Howard "Stretch" Pyott, a former Rohm and Haas employee and curator of the Bridesburg Heritage Center, headquartered out of a former guardhouse at the Bridesburg plant, the company at one time employed so many Bridesburg locals that Rohm and Haas employed entire families.

When the plant is eventually shut down, Plishka said, the center, which houses the Bridesburg Historical Society, will need to relocate.

Contacted on Tuesday, Aug. 25, Pyott said he looks forward to talking with Dow representatives about the future of the historic association if it's moved.

He said the company's impending shut down signaled the "end of an era."

"They are probably going to just start making everything overseas," he said. "For the future, young people will not have a place where they can walk to work and make a good living. I'm sad to see it go."

Rohm and Haas Co. began in Philadelphia in 1909 at a production facility on North 2nd Street.

There, German immigrants and inventors, Otto Haas and Dr. Otto Rohm developed a dog manure substitute, named Oropon, which was used in the city's then thriving leather tannery business.

In 1920, the company - now with plants in Bristol and Chicago, Ill., - purchased the Bridesburg site from Charles Lennig and Co., which had used the plant to produce sodium sulfide and sulfuric acid.

In 1945, in an effort to support the Philadelphia community, Rohm and his wife, Phoebe, created the charitable entity, the William Penn Foundation. Since its inception, the foundation has been devoted to improving the lives of all Philadelphians. It continues this mission today.

Last year, all remaining members of the Rohm and Haas families, who had controlled 33 percent of the company, sold their shares to allow Dow to take over the chemical company.

Reporter Hayden Mitman can be reached at 215-354-3124 or hmitman@phillynews.com