Wheatsworth Bakery Building
444 East 10th Street | also 436 East 10th Street | East Village | built 1928
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1908
The Bennett biscuit company, later builder of this factory, creates the Milk-Bone dog treat
The F.H. Bennett Biscuit Company was formed in 1907 by Thomas and Frederick Bennett to sell whole-wheat products they judged healthier than white-flour goods, and its first plant stood at 138 Avenue D, around the corner from this lot. In 1908 the company came up with a bone-shaped biscuit of minerals, meat products and milk, first called Maltoid. It became Milk-Bone sometime between 1915 and 1926, a nod to the amount of cow's milk in it.
“Bennett also invented the Milk-Bone dog biscuit in 1908. Originally called the Maltoid, the biscuit was a bone-shaped treat made from minerals, meat products, and milk.”
- 1927
The Bennett biscuit company files plans for a seven-story bakery on the site of three brick dwellings
On May 23, 1927, the company filed plans with the Buildings Department for a fireproof, reinforced-concrete bakery at 444 East 10th Street, beside its existing plant at Avenue D. The lot was then occupied by three brick dwellings of one to four stories. While the project was under way the firm renamed itself Wheatsworth, Inc., after its best-selling whole-wheat cracker, and announced that the new plant would triple its baking capacity.
- 1927
J. Edwin Hopkins, a baker's son who plans bakery plants for a living, designs the factory
Architect J. Edwin Hopkins moved his office to Manhattan in 1912 and by the 1920s worked with the McCormick Company, planners of bakery plants, later becoming its president. The Landmarks Commission suggests his bakery expertise came from his father, a baker who started his own business in the early 1900s. Besides this factory, Hopkins designed Van de Kamp's Holland Dutch Bakery in Los Angeles (1930-31) and bakeries in Canada, Russia and Bermuda.
- 1928
Terra-cotta wheat bundles and green-circled friezes set a Deco bakery apart from ordinary factories
Finished in 1927-28, the seven-story factory has a granite base, light iron-spot brick, large multi-pane steel pivot windows and colored terra-cotta friezes, marked with green circles, along the base and the parapet. The door surrounds at each end carry terra-cotta panels showing bundles of wheat stalks, a hint of what was baked inside. The Landmarks Commission describes the style as Art Deco and Viennese Secession, and says the ornament lifts it above typical 1920s factory buildings.
“The door surrounds at either end contain terra cotta panels with images of bundles of wheat stalks.”
- 1931
National Biscuit Company buys Wheatsworth, including Milk-Bone and a New Jersey gingerbread castle park
Nabisco opened talks to acquire Wheatsworth, Inc. in late 1930 and completed the purchase in January 1931. The deal took in the Wheatsworth crackers and Milk-Bone biscuits, the Manhattan plants, and the company's mill in Hamburg, New Jersey, along with the Gingerbread Castle Amusement Park there. Nabisco later sold the Milk-Bone rights to Del Monte in 2006 but kept making Wheatsworth crackers.
- 1957
Milk-Bone production leaves for Buffalo and the East 10th Street bakery goes dark
In 1957 Nabisco shut down the East 10th Street bakery, moving Milk-Bone production to Buffalo, New York, and a year later it sold the property to investors. Later owners and tenants included General Glass Industries, Columbia University and New York City. When the Landmarks Commission wrote its report in 2008, the building was a public storage warehouse.
“In 1957, Milk Bone production was moved out of the East 10th Street plant to Buffalo, New York, and the bakery building was shut down.”
- 2008
The Landmarks Commission designates the bakery, citing one of the few factories left in the far East Village
Four witnesses testified in favor at the Landmarks Commission hearing on October 30, 2007: Councilmember Rosie Mendez and spokespeople for three groups: the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Historic Districts Council and the New York Landmarks Conservancy. No one spoke against, and the Commission designated the building on September 16, 2008. Its report calls the bakery one of the few industrial buildings surviving in the far East Village, an area once crowded with gas works, coal yards and ironworks.
Further reading
- 444 East 10th Street; 436-446 East 10th StreetVillage Preservation: East Village Building Blocks
Nearby
- 434 East 10th Street1 entry
- 746 East 9th Street1 entry
- 107 Avenue D1 entry
- 368 East 8th Street1 entry
- 366 East 8th Street1 entry
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