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By Root 7496 0

that, as of 1855, two-thirds of all fixed capital invested in iron foundries was tied up in real estate, and only onethird in machinery. It still made economic sense for the big foundries to keep close to customers like the shipyards lining the East River from Grand to 12th streets, just as this great maritime complex, which launched one out of every seven steam-powered vessels built in the United States between 1850 and 1860, preferred proximity to its suppliers. But for many growing enterprises, cheaper land and more fluid transportation were the key desiderata. Some big operations like Steinway and Sons’ piano-manufacturing plant (1853) found a satisfactory perch on the northern edge of the built-up city. But for many, it was Brooklyn that proved most enticing.

Sugar refineries were among the first to migrate. Back in the early nineteenth century, when the Havemeyer family operation required but five employees, a little building on Vandam Street had been perfectly adequate. But as Moses Taylor and other merchants funneled vast amounts of Caribbean sugar to the city, and as refinery technology underwent explosive development, the Havemeyers engineered a drastic change in scale and location. In 1858 Frederick C. Havemeyer bought a sizable waterfront tract in Williamsburgh and erected a million-dollar plant complete with its own docks and warehouses. By 1860, the Havemeyers and their thirteen competitors were producing half the nation’s supply, and Brooklyn had become the greatest sugar-refining center in the world.

Other industries followed suit. By the 1850s Brooklyn’s factory district stretched along the shoreline from Greenpoint and Williamsburgh in the north, down past the Navy Yard at Wallabout Bay, and on to South Brooklyn, where the building of the Atlantic Basin and the decision to construct a canal from Gowanus Bay to Douglass Street to drain the surrounding marshland spurred development.

Iron foundries flourished. So did drug companies: Pfizer started up its Williamsburgh plant in 1849, and Squibb opened on Furman Street in 1858. The Brooklyn Flint Glass Works and the Cartlidge porcelain factory paced two newly substantial industries. The city’s distilleries produced over five million gallons of whiskey annually, its steampowered ropeworks thrived, and its white-lead manufacturers turned out more product than anyplace else in the United States.

Queens too proved attractive, especially as new transport increased its accessibility. In 1849 Peter Cooper transplanted his glue factory to a ten-acre site along the Maspeth Avenue Plank Road. And in 1854, Conrad Poppenhusen set up a factory in College Point to produce household goods made of the hard rubber patented in 1839 by Charles Goodyear. Around his Enterprise Rubber Works, Poppenhusen constructed a company town—by draining marshes, bringing in water, streets, and gas, building a road to Flushing, and erecting houses he rented or sold to workmen and their families, whose ranks grew to two thousand by 1860.

To the north, the bucolic Bronx remained heavily forested, divided into sizable estates, with here and there some small farms, and a few minuscule villages and townships along the New York-Boston post road. The advent in 1841 of Jordan L. Mott, inventor of a coal-burning stove, and the arrival in 1842 of the Harlem Railroad opened up a small industrial beachhead. Mott purchased from Gouverneur Morris II a site on the Harlem River bounded by Third Ave and 134th Street. (After the sale he asked if he might name his new settlement Mott Haven. “I don’t care what he calls it,” Morris grumped. “While he is about it, he might as well change the name of the Harlem and call it the Jordan.”) Here Mott erected a sprawling ironworks, with a tall brick smokestack, where his workforce produced stoves, sinks, and ornamental ironwork. He also laid out the Mott Haven Canal to facilitate access to the foundry and purchased additional acres from the Morris family on which to found a community for craftsmen, near what is now Washington Avenue and 160th Street (this time he tactfully