FABER BUILDING, GREENPOINT

I never tire of Greenpoint, and each time I am there, there is something “new” I haven’t seen before, or one more layer of the onion to peel off. Much is made of Greenpoint’s waterside, its former shipping (the first ironclad.war vessel, the Monitor, was built there); and its manufacturing that included metalwork and porcelain. Not long ago I featured a lace works on Lorimer Street. But when talking about Greenpoint you must also talk about its former status as one of the world’s pencil capitals.

Eberhard Faber, the scion of a  Bavarian pencil producing family, arrived in the USA from Germany in 1848, and after his first USA pencil factory burned down in 1861, relocated to Greenpoint in 1872. His son Eberhard II (he had changed his name from John) took over the company, which remained in Greenpoint until 1956, when it decamped to Wilkes-Barre, PA. Faber is recalled by a large sign facing the East River painted on its original 1872 building at 37 Greenpoint Avenue (it may have faded away by now)…and by the huge yellow terra cotta pencils and stars on the Art Moderne building next door, constructed in 1924, which served as its offices. There are still various pencil factories located on Greenpoint’s side streets near the river, marked by the Faber star-in-a-diamond motif. Some of the factory buildings have been converted to residences, and one on Kent Street housed offices for Kickstarter, the crowd-funding company.

Faber claims to be the first pencil company to manufacture pencils with erasers; in Europe pencils still don’t feature erasers, since the theory is that children will be more careful if they can’t erase.

Dixon, which produced Ticonderoga pencils, has a HQ in Jersey City that was converted to condos.

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6/24/23