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

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 United ...

. Operating internationally since the 1950s, it merged with Germany's Philipp Holzmann AG 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 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 The Panama Canal Zone (), also known as just the Canal Zone, was a concession of the United States located in the Isthmus of Panama that existed from 1903 to 1979. It consisted of the Panama Canal and an area generally extending on each side o ...

in Panama. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the company built 212 cargo ships and tankers and was a substantial builder of

Liberty ship Liberty ships were a ship class, class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Although British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost cons ...

s in support of the war effort. It also built

Camp Shelby Camp Shelby is a U.S. Army post whose south gate is located at the southern boundary of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, along U.S. Highway 49. It was originally established during World War I, and has served almost continuously since then as a trai ...

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 produ ...

and K-27, production plants for manufacturing

Uranium-235 Uranium-235 ( 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 exists in nat ...

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 pluton ...

Oak Ridge, Tennessee Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson County, Tennessee, Anderson and Roane County, Tennessee, Roane counties in the East Tennessee, eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, Knoxville. Oak Ridge's po ...

. In August 1965, The U.S. Navy

Bureau of Yards and Docks The Bureau of Yards and Docks (abbrev.: BuDocks) was the branch of the United States Navy responsible from 1842 to 1966 for building and maintaining navy yards, drydocks, and other facilities relating to ship construction, maintenance, and repai ...

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 (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

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 The Petronas Towers (), also known as the Petronas Twin Towers and colloquially the KLCC Twin Towers, are an interlinked pair of 88-storey supertall skyscrapers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, standing at . From 1996 to 2004, they were the tall ...

, 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 The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) is an online public collection of documents and media about the history and culture of the state of Georgia, United States. The collection includes more than a million digitized objects from more than 200 Georgi ...

{{Authority control Construction and civil engineering companies of the United States Companies based in North Carolina Defunct companies based in North Carolina