St. Elias Church Greenpoint

No. 145-153.

Maybe the most elegant building in Greenpoint sits abandoned It was once the St. Elias Greek Rite Roman Catholic Church, but its congregation of Russian Catholics died out. It was originally built in High Victorian style in 1869 for the Reformed Dutch Church of Greenpoint. The Reformed Church was organized in May 1848, holding its first services in a room above a local grocery store. In 1850 a small church was erected on Java Street. This was replaced in 1870 by the Kent Street building. The church was designed by William B. Ditmars, a “well known Brooklyn architect”1 about whom little is known. Ditmars designed several other structures in Brooklyn, including the former Beth Elohim Synagogue on Keap Street. In 1879 architect W. Wheeler Smith designed the Sunday school addition that is located to the east of the main church structure. The Reformed congregation used the church until 1943 when it was sold to St. Elias Church. After holding services at Temple Beth-El on Noble Street, the Greenpoint Reformed Church
moved, in 1944, to the former Thomas C. Smith house on Milton Street, where it remains today.

The church resembles other Early Romanesque Revival style churches built by various Protestant sects prior to and just after the Civil War. The central gabled section flanked by projecting square towers of uneven height, the round-arched and c^beled cornices, and the round-arched openings are all reminiscent of such Early Romanesque Revival masterpieces as the Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights and the South Congregational Church at the corner of Court and President Streets in Carroll Gardens.
The church does not quite fit in with the simple unadorned style of many Dutch Reformed churches.It obviously took a lot of money to build. Who financed this elaborate structure? The Meserole family would have been the members of the church with enough money to build such a structure. Adrian Meserole who became a millionaire was a member as were his cousins. Probably Mary Meserole Bliss was a prominent donor. She married Neziah Bliss and became rich because her husband developed most of the original real estate in Greenpoint.

Why did the Dutch sell the church and move to Milton Street? By the time that the original members of the church had made their money and become rich, Greenpoint had become a pollluted heavily industrialized area. Many of the Meseroles went to live in more affluent parts of Brooklyn. I am guessing that the congregation shrank.

The detailing of the building, however, particularly the polychromatic banded arches at the windows and doors and naturalistically-carved column capitals, places it firmly within the High Victorian movement that held sway after the Civil War. This combination of Early Romanesque Revival and High Victorian forms can also be seen at the Westminster Presbyterian Church (now the Norwegian Seamens Church) of 1867, located at the corner of Court Street and First Place in Carroll Gardens.

The focus of the Church is the pedimented entrance portico located in the center of the building. This projecting element has a compound round-arched entry supported by columns with naturalistically-carved capitals. The outer arch has banded voussoirs which are now painted, making them even more emphatic than in the original design. Each of the flanking towers has a smaller entrance arch with similar columns and banding. All of the entrances retain their original double doors. Above the main entrance is a large wheel window with heavy wooden mullions and banded half surround. All of the other openings on the front facade are narrow round-arched windows with diamond-paned glass and banded voussoirs.

Each of the towers has a round-arched brick cornice above which once rose steep roofs with polychromatic slate shingles. The larger eastern tower is still surmounted by an octagonal drum upon which once sat a sloping octagonal roof with an iron cresting. This tower was erected after the congregation decided not’to build the 175-foot spire that had been designed for the structure. The windows of the octagonal drum have stone voussoirs that have not been painted and still exhibit the original polychromatic appearance of the building. The western tower was originally topped by a.steep four-sided mansard roof.

The Sunday school, designed by W. Wheeler Smith, is an extremely handsome two-story structure designed to resemble a medieval Italian baptistry, such as that at Cremona. The angled front facade was designed to give the illusion of an octagonal building, although in reality, it extends into the building lot. The Sunday school is connected to the church by a narrow passage with an entrance door that is covered by a wooden hood resting on an ornate bracket. Projecting from the eastern side of the building is an extension with a door that is shaded by a handsome wooden porch.

The clerestory of the main section of the Sunday school is visible above this extension. The windows of the building are all round-arched; on the first floor are large openings, while on the second story the windows are grouped in threes. A polychromatic slate roof arid a finial have been removed.

The church and Sunday school are set behind a cast-iron fence of unusual design: the palings are connected by small arched forms cast to resemble the voussoir pattern of the entrance arch.

St. Cecilia’s Church and Father Edward McGoldrick

Saint Cecilia’s is a Roman Catholic church at North Henry and Herbert streets, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. It is named for Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. It is one of the architectural gems of Brooklyn and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

Although he did not found the church, Monseigneur McGoldrick was the driving force behind the parish for fifty years. When Fr. Edward McGoldrick arrived in Greenpoint in November of 1888, St. Cecilia’s was a tiny, working class parish centered around a crumbling wooden church with a badly leaking roof. McGoldrick knew that a new church must be built. The child of Irish immigrants, McGoldrick was ordained in the Lateran of Rome and as a young priest he traveled widely, seeing many stunning European cathedrals His goal was to create a beautiful church that inspired faith.

His parish was hardly rich. Most of his parishioners were working class Irish who lacked the funds to build a great structure, but this would not stop the determined priest. McGoldrick proved to be charismatic preacher and church leader. in his first two years as pastor, the parish raised $40,000 for the construction of a new church at a time when the average salary of the largely immigrant population was $15 a week. Somehow, in the f between his conception of the new church and its completion, McGoldrick raised the necessary $250,000.

McGoldrick envisioned a Romanesque Basilica in limestone. A shipment of limestone was mistakenly shipped to New York where it was placed in storage. Hearing of the shipment he bought it far below coast and hired architect Thomas H. Poole and the firm Byrne and Perry to build the church. The cornerstone was laid on September 27, 1891 by the first Bishop of Brooklyn, John Loughlin.

McGoldrick was a beloved figure,but perhaps his parishioners most loved him during the Great Depression. By some estimates half of Greenpoint was out of work and the church helped feed dozens of hungry families.

He died in 1938 and left a large vibrant parish. In 1941 Winthrop Park was renamed in his honor.

Gangs of Greenpoint and Williamsburg

In the 1870’s and 1880’s the Northside of Williamsburg and Greenpoint had serious gang violence.
Here are some of the gangs that terrorized people.

Meeker Avenue Gang – (1870s) Their hang out was Sullivan’s Saloon, which was located at the corner of Meeker and Graham Avenues. Members of this gang were also in the North Sixth Street Gang after being driven out of Sullivan’s Saloon, although in 1875, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported this gang forced entry into a saloon to get free beer. Some of the elder gang members were once in the Battle Row Gang. One member was charged and convicted for stealing a pair of shoes valued at $2. In 1873, the gang invaded a saloon at 333 Devoe Street and trashed it, taking the owner and his wife as hostage when the police showed up. An Officer Ward’s face and cheek was grazed by a bullet from the gang.

Gang of the Green (1885-1892) – The “green” referred to in this gang was the “open space between Bushwick and Greenpoint,” The New York Herald reported. An off-shoot of the infamous Battle Row Gang, this was a small-time gang known for highway robbery, drunken revelry, fighting with police and muggings who had a headquarters on Union Avenue. In 1885, a gang member simply known as “Bender” attempted to rob a taxi of its cash box. In September of 1886, on the corner of Union and North Second Street at a bar called Fagin & McDonald, one of the owners was challenged to a fight outside by a patron. A donnybrook ensued and five men were arrested. In June of 1891, a drunken gangster brawled with a police officer, kicking him multiple times in the head before eventually being subdued. In November, another gang member robbed two Chinese men who owned a laundry store at 337 Second Street. One of the gang members was stabbed in the neck with a pen-knife, then arrested. After sentencing, the judge said to him, “I know… that you are a member of the notorious Gang of the Green. I want to say that every time a member of your gang is convicted before me, I will give him a long sentence. I consider it my duty to do all that I can to break up the gang.” The next month, another gang member was arrested at the corner of Graham and Driggs for a stabbing. In 1892, a gangster kicked several teeth out of a policemen’s head while being arrested for “assaulting his mother.” In 1896, businessmen and reporters blamed the gang for a riot and ruining seven trolley cars by blocking the tracks, throwing rocks and shooting at the trolley cars. In reality, the violence was spurned by a union strike which didn’t stop the trolley company from hiring scabs to continue service. The gang had been broken up by this time, but the trolley owners had no problem equating unions with the behavior of gangs.

Rainmakers Gang (1894 – 1904) – A gang that lived under the docks along the waterfront of North 1st and North 4th streets and in tenement basements. Known as “dock rats,” they stole from factories, barges, railroad freight yards, brawled with police and assaulted and robbed local Jews by throwing bricks and cobblestones at them (hence the moniker “Rainmakers”), then demanding money. In 1900, two members were arrested for asking for a drink at a saloon owned by Samuel Goldstein, then grabbing the whiskey bottle from him. In 1903, this gang was blamed for starting a fire at 288 Wythe Avenue, beating a patrolman and mugging residents for “beer money.” In 1904, the gang started a riot with local “Hebrews” at the corner of Wallabout Street and Harrison Avenue. At the signal, the gang through paving stones and other missiles at “defenseless” Jews. Other local Jews returned the favor and a riot ensued.

The Dump Gang – (1890s) In March of 1894, seventeen of the gang members were arrested after a raid by police underneath a pier at the garbage dump on the waterfront where they lived during the winter. The officer told a judge they “lived like water rats.” By covering up holes in the pier with canvas and using coal fires, they stayed warm. The leader, “whose proud boast it is that he never worked and never will” along with the others were sentenced at the Tombs Police Court. For food or alcohol, they begged and filled up soda bottles with cheap whiskey or beer growlers. They often stole things like rope from ships along the East River and traded it in for cash. In 1898, a man was beaten to death and had his eyes gouged by this gang.

Anti-Irish riot in Williamsburg 1853

A Serious Riot in Williamsburg City 1853 and A Riot in Brooklyn City 1853
QUITE A RIOT TOOK PLACE on Saturday morning, about one o’clock, on the corner of Grand and First Streets, in which there were nearly one hundred and fifty persons engaged, which originated in the following manner.

1 It seems that six Irishmen were engaged in conversation on the corner of Grand and First streets, when two men, who were coming down Grand street, ran against them, when some words passing between them, the Irishmen were attacked, and being the strongest in numbers beat one of the men quite seriously. An outcry was made, when a large number of the friends of the two men came to their assistance.

The Irishmen made their escape through a half-way adjoining Peter Quinn’s porter-house, in First street. Officers McElroy, Armstrong and Sands, of the First Ward and Walsh and Bennett, of the second ward, arrived at this time, when the mob (supposing that these men had taken refuge in Quinn’s house) were battering in the doors with stones. The officers endeavored to protect the house from assault, but could not maintain their position without imminent danger of their lives. After the mob succeeded in getting the door open, stones were thrown into the room, some of them weighing ten or twelve pounds. Mrs. Quinn was struck in the left side with a stone, by which she was considerably injured. Mr. Quinn was also struck in the breast by a stone.

A large mirror standing at the back of the bar, and considerable glass, were also broken. At this time Mr. Quinn discharged a gun, when the mob made another rush for the door with knives, cart rungs and stones, but were kept in check by the Policemen, who stood in front of the doorway, determined to keep them back: and Captain Hunt of the Second Ward, arriving with a posse of Policemen, put an end to the disturbance, and probably prevented the loss of life, as the persons in the house were armed with four muskets, having bayonets upon them, and were determined to defend themselves in case the mob gained admittance. Officer Armstrong was struck upon the shoulder with a cart-rung, and Officer McElroy received a blow from a stone, but luckily escaped without injury.

Edward Lycett, Designer for Faience Company, Brooklyn

Edward Lycett was like Charles Cartlidge a china designer from Staffordhsire in England.
He tried to set up a commercially viable porcelain factory in Greenpoint in the 1880’s I believe in the building that now houses the Red Star on Greenpoint Avenue.

He made beautiful pieces of China that were recently shown in the Brooklyn Museum.

Here is a link to a times article on him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/arts/design/edward-lycett-designer-for-faience-company-brooklyn.html?adxnnl=1&ref=belleboyd&adxnnlx=1397833987-QFEKpLR7NWQYU9Bd+PKtBQ

Alderman Pete McGuinness on "New Women"

Pete McGuinness is my favorite character from Greenpoint history. He was a charming larger than life figure who ruled Greenpoint as the last Tammany Hall style ward boss. The G train, The pool in McCarren Park, the Bridge to Queens are some of his many lasting achievements in the area. However, his opinions about women were less than progressive.

Pete’s views on women and their liberation were patriarchal. In the roaring twenties flappers or “New women” like Greenpoint’s Mae West were breaking traditional rules of feminine behavior and Pete blasted these “new women” in the papers. He proposed a law against females smoking in public and the Greenpoint police at first mistakenly enforced it.

He thundered in interviews against flappers, liberated women who recently in the village and dared to cut their hair short and even smoke in public. He raged their alleged immorality. He said,” “Young fellows go into our restaurants to find women folks sucking cigarettes,” “What happens? The young fellows lose all respect for the women, and the next thing you know the young fellows, vampired by these smoking women, desert their homes, their wives and children, rob their employers and even commit murder so that they can get money to lavish on these smoking women.”

The history of the Poles in Greenpoint

The Polish community in Greenpoint has been well-established for over a hundred years, but I have read nonsense on the internet that there was no Polish community in Greenpoint until the nineteen eighties. There were actually two Polish born people living in Greenpoint listed on the 1855 census, but the first report of an actual Polish community comes later.City officials investigated the Greenpoint tenements and in an 1885 report thy noted a plethora of overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, but also noted that there was one exception. Two Dangerstown tenements were full of Polish immigrants who kept their buildings very clean. Two Poles were listed on an earlier census, but this is one the first mentions of a Polish Community whose population would continue to grow for the next fifty years, attracted to the area by the presence of industrial jobs.

As many of the older Irish and German immigrants moved out the area in search of better neighborhoods, Dangerstown became increasingly Slavic as many Poles and Russians moved in replacing the Irish and Germans. The Polish population grew until it became the area’s largest ethnic group.

Much of this growth was due to the presence of the Area’s first Polish church, Saint Stanislaw Kostka, which was built in 1896. Famous for their devotion to the Catholic faith, in the early eighteen nineties Poles in Greenpoint had to travel all the way to South Brooklyn for a Polish language mass. However, a Polish priest secretly purchased a number of parcels of land from Germans on Humboldt Street and Poles built the graceful church, which has been a focal point of the Polish community ever since.

Like the Irish immigrants who came before them many Polish immigrants came to Greenpoint because of poverty in their homeland and the presence of factory work. The Poles quickly became the largest group working in the Havermayer sugar plant and in the American Hemp Rope manufacturing company on Oak Street. In 1910 Polish men and women organized a strike of both the American Manufacturing Company and the sugar factory, demanding higher wages. They tried to occupy the factory on Oak Street and the police were called out to quell the disturbance. The Police expected to confront Polish male workers, but were shocked when several dozen Polish women confronted them with rocks, brick, sticks and other weapons. The New York cops did not know how to respond, but several Polish women strikers ended up arrested.

Poland before the first world war did not exist as an independent country and many Poles could see that war was looming on the horizon. Fearing being drafted into the Russian, German or Austrian armies many Poles found there way to Brooklyn.

In 1918 the Poles also opened another church, St. Cyril and Methodius on DuPont Street. However, The Poles were not accepted immediately into the area. There was a strong Nativism in Greenpoint and local boys, led by Pete McGuinness and others established the “Native Borns,” a community group that opposed the foreign customs of Polish and Russian immigrants moving into Greenpoint and would beat up Poles and other foreigners who spoke their native languages on the street

During the nineteen sixties many people fled Greenpoint for the suburbs. They were replaced by Polish immigrants who were fleeing communism and poverty in Poland. Some estimates said that Greenpoint was eighty percent Polish and Polish American. Recently with the steep rise in rent the Polish population has fallen dramatically. Some say that half the Polish population has left within the last three years.

Oil Refining and Greenpoint

Greenpoint was not only the first place large scale oil refining was done in the United States, but for decades no place on earth refined more oil than Greenpoint. Charles Pratt became a millionaire and the richest man in Brooklyn by setting up the Astral Oil works on the banks of Bushwick inlet in 1867. His refinery was the nation’s first modern refinery and wsa capable of producing tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene and other oils. The site held more than two dozen huge oil tanks and today Bayside fuel still has several large oil storage tanks there.

When the oil fields of Pennsylvania began to develop right before the Civil War Pratt saw the chance to earn a fortune there. Experimenting in refining oil, Pratt succeeded in producing what he called “Pratt’s Astral Oil,” probably the best kerosene on the market. Taking great pride in the high quality of his oil, he was greatly pleased when he told that the Russian convent on Mount Tabor was lighted with Pratt’s Astral Oil. He said that he meant to see that the stamp ” Pratt ” should be as good as the stamp of the mint.

He located his Astral Refinery on the Southwest Edge of Greenpoint, becoming America’s first modern oil refinery. Later, John D. Rockefeller forced Pratt to sell Astral Oil and Pratt joined Standard oil’s Board of Directors, becoming a multi-millionaire. Other refiners soon followed Pratt to Greenpoint with more than 50 of them lining the East River from Williamsburg to Greenpoint making the industry a competitor to the declining ship building industry that developed in the area.

Until refining came to Greenpoint its creeks were clean enough to fish and swim in, but refining quickly killed all the life in the creeks and made Newtown Creek amongst the most polluted waterways in the world.

During the industrial boom of the 1890s, local activists calling themselves the Fifteenth Ward Smelling Committee paddled up the creek seeking the polluters responsible for the foul stenches wafting from the once-pristine waterway. They had plenty to choose from: glue-makers and fertilizer processors produced plenty of noxious by-product. But the oil refineries were the worst offenders: Workers transferring oil and solvents from one part of the plant to another inevitably spilled; storage tanks leaked; and the process of distilling oil to make kerosene, paraffin wax, naphtha, gasoline, and fuel oil left all sorts of junk. “If roughly 5 percent of the initial crude petroleum consumed by the refineries ended up as coke residue, gas, or other loss each of New York’s petroleum districts would have produced the equivalent of 300,000 gallons of waste material each week during the 1880s.” What couldn’t be resold or burned up was simply dumped on the ground or into the water. There were more than 50 refineries in Greenpoint with more refining on the Queens side of Newtown Creek in 1870, and by 1892, Standard Oil owned most of them.

At the time, Newtown Creek was one of the busiest waterways in the country, and the most hazardous: Fires routinely broke out at the refineries, sometimes burning down entire factories and leaving the chemical remains to soak into the soil. In 1919, twenty acres of the Standard Oil refinery, storing 110 million gallons of oil, went up in smoke. The oil that didn’t burn sunk into the ground. Given the natural order of things, one would expect this oil eventually to drain into the creek and escape into the ocean—but it didn’t. Instead, it slowly moved away from the creek and backed up into Brooklyn. That’s because until about 60 years ago, Brooklyn relied on its own wells for drinking water. And the borough pumped so much of its groundwater to the surface that it reversed the natural slope of its underground water table, tilting it away from the creek and toward the Brooklyn Navy Yard, near where the municipal water pumps were diligently sucking. And so the oil, slinking above the water table, flowed with it, filling the interstitial spaces where the groundwater had once been. By the forties, the aquifer was so depleted that seawater had begun to infiltrate it, making it useless. So in 1949 Brooklyn switched to water piped down from the Catskills.

One year later, on October 5, a vast underground explosion centered at Huron Street and Manhattan Avenue sent 25 manhole covers shooting into the Greenpoint sky, where they reached elevations as high as three stories. This was the first clue that anything was amiss. An investigation revealed that gasoline was leaking into the neighborhood’s sewer system, but at the time no one thought to measure the amount of manhole propellant that had not ignited. Meanwhile, with the municipal water pumps in mothballs, Brooklyn’s aquifer slowly started filling back up. By the late seventies, the water table had rebounded to its natural level. And the oil that floated on top of it reversed its flow. It now moved toward what was once again the lowest point: Newtown Creek.

Casting the Iwo Jima Memorial in Greenpoint

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The largest bronze sculpture on earth was cast on India Street. Working six days a week for three years, seven men in Greenpoint constructed what was the world’s largest bronze sculpture. This sculpture was no doubt huge: 78 feet high and over 100 tons of huge. Or, in human terms, that’s about as tall as 10 Shaquille O’Neals and about as heavy as 615 of those same Shaquille O’Neals, but this was not a work of art dedicated to that basketball giant, it was, rather, a sculpture depicting the six U.S. soldiers who were caught by Joe Rosenthal’s lens in his famous photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima. And though it is that iconic image from Mount Suribachi that was recast in bronze, this statue was meant to serve as a memorial to all the Marines who died defending the United States from 1775 to today.

Using Rosenthal’s photo as a guide, the statue was designed by Austrian immigrant artist Felix Weihs de Weldon, the Marine Corps Memorial was cast at the Bedi-Rassy Art Foundry of 227 India Street in Greenpoint. Though the casting itself took three years, the conception and execution of the project took a great deal longer, just about 9 years. Beginning in 1945, de Weldon made scores of plaster models based on the photo, enlisting the three surviving Marines to pose for him, while asking other Marines to fill in for those who had died during fighting on the island. De Weldon was forced to alter the composition due to the scale of the sculpture. Helmets and hands were enlarged, arms elevated, and the Marines packed in tighter around the flag pole, all in an attempt to prevent distortion for the viewer on the ground. Once de Weldon’s clay and plaster figures were completed, they were shipped in sections to Greenpoint to be cast.

In August of 1954 the 108 sections of the Marine Corps Memorial were loaded onto trucks, chained down, and shipped off to Arlington, Virginia for installation.Crowds regularly gathered during the late summer and early autumn to watch workmen assemble the colossal structure. The welding and bolting of the sections were all done from inside, and a small door was built into the cartridge belt of one of the figures allowing workers to move in and out of the bronze soldiers. When they were finished, they welded it shut. And on November 10th President Eisenhower presided over the dedication ceremony for the new memorial. In the photo that ran in the paper the day afterwards, you can just make him out standing before the black Swedish granite base. He looks no bigger than a bug. The company still exists today, but under a different name. It is still using the same equipment to produce bronze sculptures like the Bull on Wall Street and the FDNY Memorial near Ground Zero.

The Union Porcelain Company

Porcelain was one of the five black arts and it was the first industry in Greenpoint, predating shipbuilding. The first pottery works in Greenpoint was established in 1848 by Englishman Charles Cartlidge, near Freeman and West Streets on what was then called Pottery Hill. Trained as a potter in England, he served as the agent for an English pottery firm before opening his own factory, Messrs. Charles Cartlidge 6c Co. The firm manufactured tea sets, pitchers, bowls, door knobs, buttons, cameos, and busts, and Cartlidge’s work was exhibited at the New York Crystal palace in 1853 and won a prestigious award. Many of the firm’s pieces were painted with colors over the glaze. Of particular renown were glossy glazed pitchers with acorns and oak leaves as a decorative motif.2? Porcelian busts had also been made, sculpted by Josiah Jones, of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Joseph Hughes, Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, Senator Daniel Webster, and President Zachary Taylor.28 A singular item was a small bust of Henry Clay to be used as a cane handle. Jewelry, too, was created —small medallions with Cartlidge family portraits. The Brooklyn Museum has a numberof examples of the firm’s work including an exotic piece that was part of the family’s collection — a porcelain cast of Cartlidge’s daughter’s hand.29 Unfortunately, the venture was not financially successful and the year following- the company’s reorganization in 1855 under the name of the American Porcelain Manufacturing Co., the business closed.
Greenpoint became the home of the first commercially successful hard porcelain company in the United States, The Union Porcelain Company located on Eckford Street. The Company thrived because of its amazing founder Thomas Smith. By the time he was twenty one he had completed the requirements to be a master builder, but working so many hours outside damaged his health and he had to return home again to recuperate. When he regained his health, he returned to New York and got a job as the city’s Superintendant of Buildings. Smith overworked himself and eventually had to go to Europe to recuperate. Smith became a very successful architect and builder , designing and building the Edwin Forrest house in the Bronx, which resembles an English Castle. He also designed the beautiful Manhattan Episcopalian “Little Church around the Corner with fieldstone. He started one of the city’s most famous construction firms and it seemed certain Smith would become famous as a builder. He became a wealthy man at a very young age with money to invest.

One of his investments was a porcelain factory in Greenpoint. It was a small establishment, with one small kiln, was started by a family of Germans. Smith would later expand the factory to cover a whole block. The factory manufactured doorknobs and other small practical porcelain items as early as 1854. They were made with a mixture of kaolin and phosphate of lime, after an English formula. They proved unsuccessful, and the works passed into the hands of a stock company, who succeeded in inducing Smith to loan them considerable sums of money. The Civil war broke out and the company failed because there was no demand for porcelain production. Smith found himself obliged to take the factory to recoup his debt. Many people warned Smith that the factory was a bad investment and that he should write off the debt, but Smith had a vision of the factory as a financial success.

Full of faith and patriotism, even in that dark hour of civil war in his country’s success in the near future, he decided to manufacture porcelain,despite having no experience in porcelain production. Smith began to consider some way of utilizing this factory in the prosperous times that he believed were to come at the end of the war. Smith decided to study the process of making porcelain thoroughly.Smith had an iron will, a mechanical genius and a great understanding of chemistry, even though he had little formal schooling and he was determined to succeed.

In 1863 since he was in Europe to restore his health Smith embraced the opportunity to visit the porcelain factory of Sevres, in France, and some of the English potteries in Stoke-on-Trent. He also visited Staffordshire in England and so engrossed himself in the minute details of making porcelain that soon he became an expert on its production. The Europeans laughed at the idea that Smith would be able to produce quality porcelain in America because the process required expensive raw materials, machinery and expert production knowledge, but Smith was not a man to give up his vision. When he had returned home he had fully made up his mind to undertake the manufacture of hard porcelain in the greenpoint works. The factory was put in thorough repair, new buildings erected, machinery and materials procured; and after two years of experiment and spending much of his personal fortune, he put upon the market a small quantity of genuine porcelain. He began the process of trial and error in producing high quality hard porcelain. It took Smith two years of experimentation,but Smith succeeded in producing high quality porcelain. He called the new company the Union Porcelain works and it paid good wages.

He was shrewd enough to realize that he could not immediately produce high quality China, but he was able to produce doorknobs, insulators, caster wheels and other hardware trimmings that allowed the firm to pay its bills and for Smith to continue his experimentation. Finding a ready market, he increased his productions each year, and by the application of new and improved machinery overcame the numerous and formidable obstacles which beset every step of his pathway.Nowhere else, either in France or Germany, in China or Japan, had the manufacture of hard porcelain been successful without government aid and patronage. He was not only fighting his battles without assistance from his government, but was threatened, at the very start of the firm’s market entry with the reduction of American tariff duties on European and Asiatic porcelain; Smith, however, would not give up his venture and risked his whole fortune expending over $250,000 on buildings and the plant, buying a quarries of quartz and feldspar to be sure of the best; quality. He built and furnished a machine shop where he could produce his own machinery and tools; when he found a need for a machine which would do his work better than it was done, inventing and manufacturing it; When the time came for producing decorated china, Smith resolved to use only original designs, as he had already done in the forms of his vases and dishes.however people advised him to copy European designs, but Smith wanted to create uniquely American patterns. He avoided copying European motifs and produced uniquely American themed China that is still collector’s items. Soon the firm was able to produce high quality china, vases and more delicate porcelain pieces. His work compared favorable with the European pieces of Limoges, Meissen and Berlin in design, delicacy and tastefulness of their decoration. Each year the quality and quantity of his production improved. Even the White House purchased its China from Smith’s Greenpoint firm.

Soon he procured the services of an eminent artist and sculptor to aid him and his son in this part of his work. In 1874 he hired a first rate German sculptor and painter Thomas Muller. The German was famous for his decoration and for his porcelain images of famous Americans. Two years later Muller’s work would win prizes at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and put Union Porcelain on the map. The porcelain won prizes in competitions at home and abroad. Every year has witnessed material progress, till his establishment is known all around the word. Connoisseurs paid high prices to acquire the firm’s creations The Union Porcelain works grew to become a vast enterprise.

Some of his vases are of such exquisite design that they are in the collections of major museums Like the Metropolitan or the Brooklyn Museum. One of the pieces shown by Union Porcelain at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 was the Keramos Vase, which commemorated Longfellow’s poem of the same name and was embellished with raised designs depicting the history of ceramics. Soon after exhibiting the Keramos Vase, Smith constructed Keramos Hall as a commercial building and exhibition area with space for civic organizations (Greenpoint Hebrew Civic Club, the Progress Club, the Young Mens Republican Club, Greenpoint Taxpayers and Citizens’ Association, etc.) and professional trades such as attorneys and engineers . In fact, the risers of the front steps of Keramos Hall are faced with original pieces Union Porcelain tiles from Smith’s factory.