In the midst of the Civil War in 1861, Scotland native Thomas Somerville opened The National Brass Works, a small brass foundry in northwest Washington, D.C., that provided Union armies with castings and fittings for cannons and howitzers during the Civil War.
Where Somerville saw an opportunity to meet the demand for brass finishing work around Washington, 155 years later the PHCP distributor that bears his name in the D.C. suburb of Upper Marlboro, Md., still is seizing opportunity as it continues to evolve as a supplier of plumbing and HVAC supplies. Today, Thos. Somerville has blossomed into a distributor that has 21 branches, 10 showrooms and employs around 400 people in the metro D.C. area. Somerville, one of the longest tenured privately held companies in the country, is No. 42 in the 2016 Supply House Times Premier 150 distributor rankings.