Building of the Day: 39 Waverly Avenue

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Former Rookwood Chocolate Factory
Address: 39 Waverly Avenue between Park and Flushing Avenues
Neighborhood: Wallabout
Year Built: 1910
Architectural Style: Factory Renaissance Revival with Gothic influences
Architect: Parfitt Brothers, with Ernest Flagg
Other buildings by architect:Parfitts: In Wallabout tenement buildings on Vanderbilt Ave, Bklyn Hts Montague, Grosvenor and Berkeley apt houses on Montague St. Park Slope St. Augustine’s Church on 6th Ave. Ernest Flagg: in Bay RIdge – Flagg Court, on Ridge Blvd.
Landmarked: Not yet, part of the proposed Wallabout Historic District.

The story: A previous BOTD featured the Von Glahn Warehouses on Washington Ave. In 1904, the Rookwood Chocolate Company leased the large warehouse, and smaller buildings also on Washington, for factory space. Rookwood Chocolate was one of the largest chocolate and cocoa processing companies in America, at the turn of the 20th century. They soon outgrew the Von Glahn buildings, and in 1910, commissioned Parfitt Brothers to design a large new factory behind the buildings on Washington, facing Waverly Place, between Park and Flushing Avenues. They also retained prominent architect Ernest Flagg to design the showroom space on the first floor, as well as the first floor windows. The Parfitt’s designed a handsome six story factory in red brick and limestone trim, with reinforced concrete floors. One could easily mistake the building for a school, not a factory. The Parfitts and Flagg took great care in the design; the banks of windows seem to extend the height of the building underneath large lintels with decorative keystones. The decorative red and yellow brick patterning near the roof and the limestone quoins and the windows all contribute to giving the factory a vague Gothic look, with a limestone Renaissance Revival base, much nicer than the majority of factory buildings of the time. A series of large bronze R’s in the façade advertise the Rookwood name, but also mask iron rods used for structural reinforcement. At the time of the factory’s opening, the Brooklyn Eagle said that the factory was the largest in New York State, and also one of the largest factories dedicated to the production of chocolate. Rookwood was very successful, and would eventually take up eight buildings in its complex on Waverly and Washington Avenues. In 1913, they employed 163 people, including six children on the factory floor. By the 1950’s, they were second only to Hershey’s in size, and had branch manufacturing sites across the country. But in the late 50’s, they began to fail, and the company closed in 1957. The buildings were sold to the Sweets Corporation of America, makers of Tootsie Rolls, who ran the factory with 700 workers until they closed in 1967. Today, this building is housing.