The Waterfront That Sugar Built

The Waterfront That Sugar Built

This article provides a good summary of sugar refining in New York. People like me, living in the shadow of the massive C & H Refinery, should read it with the knowledge that the C & H brand and the Domino brand are now owned by the same company.

The Havemeyer family began refining sugar in Manhattan in 1805. Many of the
firms that made up Brooklyn's industrial waterfront originated in Manhattan, and
moved across the river when they needed more and cheaper space. Frederick
Havemeyer and his brother William, the once and future mayor of New York City,
moved the family business to Williamsburg in 1857. The firm became Havemeyer
& Elder in 1863, when Frederick's son-in-law, Joseph Elder, joined. The firm
eventually passed to Frederick's son, Henry Osborne Havemeyer, who became, in
effect, the John D. Rockefeller of sugar, forming the Sugar Trust and becoming
the most powerful person in the global sugar trade. The plant on the
Williamsburg shore served as Henry's flagship. Before the federal government
broke up the Sugar Trust in 1922, New York City had refined as much as 70% of
the raw sugar in America.
Domino's closing in 2004 meant that 2005 was the
first year in 275 years that no sugar refinery operated within the present
boundaries of New York City.
With the trust, the Havemeyer & Elder name
disappeared. The company became American Sugar Refining in 1891, and registered
Domino as a trade name in 1902. In 1970, American Sugar became Amstar, then
Domino Sugar Corp. in 1988, and in 2001 American Sugar once again.