J.A. Jones Construction was a heavy construction company headquartered in

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...

. Operating internationally since the 1950s, it merged with Germany's

Philipp Holzmann AG Philipp Holzmann AG was a German construction company based in Frankfurt am Main. History Early years The company was founded in 1849 by Johann Philipp Holzmann (1805-1870) at Sprendlingen in present-day Dreieich near Frankfurt am Main as Phili ...

in 1979. In 2003 the company ceased operations due to the failure of its parent company.

History

The company was founded by

James Addison Jones James Addison Jones, (20 August 1869 - 25 May 1950) was the founder of J.A. Jones Construction, as well as being a known philanthropist for many organizations such as the Methodist Church, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina and surrounding ar ...

in the 1890s.Company history
/ref> One of Jones' early landmark projects was the twelve story Independence Building, Charlotte's first "skyscraper" and the soon to be first office of J.A. Jones Construction.Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission
"The Independence Building"
/ref> In 1930 the company won a major contract to build a new military airbase in the Canal Zone in Panama. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

the company built 212 cargo ships and tankers and was a substantial builder of Liberty ships in support of the war effort. It also built Camp Shelby in Mississippi as well as

K-25 K-25 was the codename given by the Manhattan Project to the program to produce enriched uranium for atomic bombs using the gaseous diffusion method. Originally the codename for the product, over time it came to refer to the project, the prod ...

and K-27, production plants for manufacturing

Uranium-235 Uranium-235 (235U or U-235) is an isotope of uranium making up about 0.72% of natural uranium. Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. It is the only fissile isotope that exis ...

at the

Clinton Engineer Works The Clinton Engineer Works (CEW) was the production installation of the Manhattan Project that during World War II produced the enriched uranium used in the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, as well as the first examples of reactor-produced plutoni ...

Oak Ridge, Tennessee Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson and Roane counties in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of downtown Knoxville. Oak Ridge's population was 31,402 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Knoxville Metropolitan Area. Oak ...

. In August 1965, The U.S. Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks selected J.A. Jones Construction to be a part of the construction consortium, RMK-BRJ, formed to perform $2 billion in infrastructure construction in Vietnam in support of the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

build-up. This contract was closed out in 1972 and the consortium disbanded. In 1979 the company was acquired by Philipp Holzmann A.G. and under that company's ownership Jones went on to build the 88-story Petronas Towers, for a while the tallest buildings in the world. However Holzman got into financial difficulties in the late 1990s and this led to the bankruptcy of Jones in 2003 and subsequent sale of Jones' subsidiaries as going concerns.BeaQuirk
"Former J.A. Jones units find life after bankruptcy"
''The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area'', August 20, 2004

References

External links

Jones Alumni AssociationShips for Victory: J.A. Jones Construction Company and Liberty Ships in Brunswick, Georgia
from the Digital Library of Georgia {{Authority control Construction and civil engineering companies of the United States Companies based in North Carolina Defunct companies based in North Carolina