The Domino Sugar Refinery is a mixed-use development and former sugar refinery along the East River in the neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York, United States. When active as a refinery, it was operated by the Havemeyer family's American Sugar Refining Company, which produced Domino brand sugar and was one of several sugar factories on the East River in northern Brooklyn.
The family's first refinery in Williamsburg opened in 1856 and was operated by German-born Frederick C. Havemeyer Jr., the son of American Sugar's founder. After a fire destroyed the original structures on South Third Street and Kent Avenue, the current complex was built in 1882 by Theodore A. Havemeyer, Thomas Winslow, and J. E. James. The American Sugar Refining Company grew to control most of the sugar industry in the United States by the late 19th century, with the Brooklyn refinery as its largest plant. Many different types of sugar were refined at the facility, and it employed up to 4,500 workers at its peak in 1919. Demand started to decline in the 1920s with advances in sugar refining and the construction of other facilities, but the refinery continued to operate until 2004.
In the early 21st century, the refinery was redeveloped as office space, residential towers, and parkland. The complex's filter, pan, and finishing house was made a New York City designated landmark in 2007, because of its historical significance as one of several industrial concerns on Brooklyn's waterfront. After the failure of an initial redevelopment proposal by CPC Resources, SHoP Architects proposed another design in 2013, which was approved the next year. Demolition of the non-landmark structures in the refinery began shortly afterward, and the first new tower in the development project opened in 2017. , the refinery redevelopment consists of four completed towers; the Filter, Pan, and Finishing House; and a waterside park called Domino Park.
Refinery The industrial waterfront of Brooklyn was developed in the 19th century with the construction of major shipping hubs such as Red Hook's Atlantic Basin, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Industry City. The village of Williamsburgh in northern Brooklyn was incorporated on the bank of the East River in 1827, with most of the commercial enterprises located on the waterfront, and Williamsburg grew rapidly after 1855, when it became part of the city of Brooklyn (itself later subsumed into the City of Greater New York).
German-born cousins Frederick C. Havemeyer and William Havemeyer, of the Havemeyer family, had established their first sugar refinery on Vandam Street in modern-day Hudson Square, Manhattan, in 1807. The original refinery occupied a lot of , but by the 1840s it had expanded to ten stories and occupied the whole city block. Frederick C. Havemeyer Jr. (1807–1891), who joined the Havemeyer family business in 1823, helped the operation grow into a large sugar-refining corporation.
Original facility The Havemeyer family's sugar-refining operations had outgrown its Manhattan plant by the mid-19th century. The first member of the Havemeyer family to open a facility in Williamsburg was John C. Havemeyer, Frederick Jr.'s nephew. At the end of 1856, John C. Havemeyer and Charles E. Bertrand co-founded Havemeyer & Bertrand at the intersection of modern-day Kent Avenue and South 3rd Street. The firm assumed the name Havemeyer, Townsend & Company in 1858, then Havemeyers & Elder in 1863. The refinery employed several Havemeyer family members, including Theodore, Henry, Hector, and Charles, the latter two of whom later formed their own refinery. The Havemeyers & Elder refinery, also called the Yellow Sugar House, was the largest of the Havemeyer family plants.A Century of Sugar Refining in the United States. New York: De Vinne, n.d. Print. According to sketches, the complex included a five-story building, two single-story buildings, and a standalone chimney. During 1863 and 1865, the Havemeyers bought two lots between South 2nd and South 4th streets for expansion of the facility.
Several other refineries were subsequently built in Williamsburg, making it into the world's largest sugar-refining center at that time. By 1870, the neighborhood produced a majority of sugar used within the United States, and by 1881, the Havemeyer refinery processed about three-fourths of all refined sugar in the nation. Because of the depth of the East River in the vicinity of the refinery, shipments of raw sugar from overseas could be loaded directly into the facility. In February 1881, Havemeyers & Elder received a permit from the City of Brooklyn's Bureau of Buildings to add three stories to an existing six-story building on Kent Avenue between South 4th and South 5th streets. That November, Havemeyers & Elder acquired an adjacent parcel, which had previously been leased to rival refiners Wintjen, Dick and Harms. The same month, Theodore Havemeyer submitted plans for a ten-story brick structure, likely a new filter house, to the Bureau of Buildings.
Reconstruction
Construction on the new filter house was underway when the original refinery burned down on January 8, 1882, destroying the structures between South 3rd and South 4th streets. The fire destroyed several warehouses as well as the building that contained the refinery and finishing house. It caused an estimated $1.5 million in damage, though insurance policies covered about half of the losses, and resulted in the elimination of 1,200 to 2,000 jobs. Its destruction resulted in an increase in sugar prices nationwide.
In February 1882, Theodore Havemeyer purchased a refinery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, so that operations could restart while the new refinery was being erected. The next month, Havemeyers & Elder submitted plans for a new fireproof pan and finishing house measuring to the Bureau of Buildings. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Theodore Havemeyer supervised the new structures' construction. Two people were variously cited as being the contractor: a building application in November 1881 mentions Thomas Winslow and J. E. James as the builders, while a subsequent application in March 1882 states that Havemeyer and James were co-architects. The rebuilding was funded in part by insurance money and the sale of assets. The reconstruction was reported to be completed by July 1883. In total, work cost $7 million (equal to $ million in ).
Operations The new refinery structure gave the Havemeyer family a large competitive advantage due to its size, and by 1884, the rebuilt plant employed 1,000 men who made 5,000 barrels of sugar daily. The family created the Sugar Refineries Company or Sugar Trust in late 1887. The Sugar Trust was reorganized into the American Sugar Refining Company in 1891 after the previous year's passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act; prior to reorganization, the trust had controlled 98% of the United States' sugar production. An account of the plant's operation in 1894 stated that the plant was "the largest of its kind in the world" with seven buildings on of land; the refinery employed 3,000 workers and utilized of coal a day, producing approximately 13,000 barrels of sugar per day. In 1896, American Sugar became one of the original twelve companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company continued to prosper despite further antitrust legislation, and Frederick's son Henry O. Havemeyer renamed the company "Domino's Sugar" in the early 1900s.
Many different types of sugar were refined at the facility. Raw sugar was shipped from forty countries and from Florida. Raw sugar was unloaded from piers along the East River, and mixed with water within the filter house. Then, the mixture was strained, pumped to the thirteenth floor, and placed into , circular vats called "blow-ups". Fifty pipes transported the mixture upward. Afterward, the mixture was filtered through "bone black" and canvas layers into circular tanks that measured tall and across. The solution then went into the pan house, where it was boiled at in vacuum pans that measured tall and across. Subsequently, the mixture was sent through centrifuges, where it was separated into sugar and molasses. The sugar grains were then taken to the finishing house, where they were separated in granulating machines, then roasted and dried. The roasting and drying process produced either retail-ready products such as cubes, tablets, and syrups, or individual grains that could be used as ingredients in other processes. The sugar products were packed into barrels, which were stored in the warehouses nearby.
The work conditions at the refinery were described as onerous, and the workers were poorly paid, despite working shifts of at least ten hours per day. When the refinery was founded, almost all of the workers were German immigrants, while Irish immigrants were hired as outdoor laborers. Later immigrants came from eastern, northern, and southern Europe, as well as the West Indies. Workers were paid a starting salary of between $1.12 and $1.50 per day (equivalent to between $ and $ in ), with 5- or 10-cent pay increases according to tenure. The highest-paid workers at the plant earned between $100 and $150 a month (equivalent to between $ and $ in ). According to a 1900 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article, workers were employed for at least eight years on average, and many workers either lived near Kent Avenue or took trolley lines to the refinery. Most laborers at that time lived in boarding houses, though the refinery did have lockers and showers in its basement. Workers were prone to being fired at times of job insecurity, although conditions improved in the early 20th century, when wages were increased and some workers received pensions. Most employees were men, but by 1920, about one of ten workers were women.
Later usage
Early 20th century American Sugar established the East River Terminal Railroad in 1907 to transport sugar between the refinery and the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal, immediately to the north of the sugar refinery. American Sugar believed the refinery to be so fireproof that it did not need insurance. In 1917, during World War I, an explosion destroyed part of the plant, killing between six and twelve workers. A crowd of more than 15,000 people gathered to watch the plant burn. Initially, there was serious concern that the explosion was the work of German agents, because the Germans were the United States' adversary in the war, but the ultimate cause was found to be the ignition of sugar grains in the refinery's machinery.
By 1919, the refinery had over 4,500 paid employees. The company took ownership of a pier at the end of Grand Street, one block north of the refinery, the same year. American Sugar also proposed closing the five short dead-end streets between Grand and South Fifth streets, in order to have full control of the land that comprised the refinery, but withdrew its application following local opposition. American Sugar proposed closing the five streets again in 1923, but this was also opposed by the local population. The company then threatened to move to New Jersey in 1924 over the failure to close the dead-end streets. At the time, the plant had an annual payroll of $3.5 million and manufactured of sugar per year. The New York City government allowed the company to close streets in front of the refinery.