I’m beginning today’s post with a trigger warning. It’s nothing truly terrible, but it’s a somewhat disturbing chunk of the past, so skip this if the use of animals in industrial production bothers you.
From my email inbox yesterday, this update from Gothamist:
speaks for itself for the most part. I was curious what was on that block…here’s 1911:
Lumber piles, okay. Smelting & Refining Works, okay. Woodworking and Manufacturing Scenery (as in, Broadway theater sets), okay. Coal Yard, okay. And then, two soap factories. The manufacture of soap usually includes working with triglycerides, and one of the easiest ways to get that material is by rendering animal fat. Rendering animal carcasses used to be a going business in New York, where most industry was on a small scale: for example, in Brooklyn, Barren Island – for the last hundred years, the site of Floyd Bennett Field – and the adjacent Dead Horse Bay were the site of a bunch of rendering plants for various purposes. The name of the bay came from the water being literally clogged with carcasses. So if piles of pig bones are being found on a block that used to contain two soap factories, I think I know why.
You must be logged in to post a comment.