The E.W. Bliss Machine Works building occupies the whole block between Plymouth, John, Adams and Pearl in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Between 1879 and c. 1900, Eliphalet W. Bliss erected three buildings for the manufacture of a vast array of machinery, cans, and other metal products.
After service in the Civil War, entrepreneur Bliss (1836-1903) settled in Brooklyn and in 1867 established a machine works which became the E. W. Bliss Company. In his DUMBO factories, Bliss manufactured machines, tools, presses, dies, and sheet metal. Bliss invented a machine for stamping out sheet-metal cans which were initially used for kerosene and paint. In 1884, Dr. L. P. Brockett, the author of “The Manufacturing Industries of Brooklyn and Kings County” section of Henry L. Stiles’s History of Brooklyn, wrote that Bliss “has built up in a few years an immense business in machinery for drawing and stamping cold plates of tin, sheet iron, brass or copper, in all the required forms for household and manufacturing use.” At the time, Brockett asserted, the factory building, occupying 27,000 square feet, was the largest of its kind in the world and employed between 300 and 350 people. By the early twentieth century, the factory occupied 186,492 square feet and in 1912 employed 1,646 people in its DUMBO operations – 1,521 men and fifteen women. In 1906 the company briefly forayed into automobile production.
Note “Waring Envelopes” sign on the corner. The building has been converted to residential units.
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