The historic Ferracute building on Commerce Street in Bridgeton will have to be demolished after a devastating fire ripped through the vacant structure overnight, city officials said.
Bridgeton Fire Chief Todd Bowen said fire crews were called around 12:30 a.m. to a heavy fire on the entire roof of the office building of the former industrial complex. Pockets of fire continued to burn through daybreak. Later, a construction crew came to begin demolition of the building.
“Unfortunately, due to the damage sustained from the fire and the walls not being supported anymore, it became a dangerous structure and we could not go inside," Bowen told NJ Advance Media. "We brought the heavy equipment in to extinguish the rest of the fire. Unfortunately, for public safety, it had to be demolished.”
The Ferracute Machine Company in Bridgeton — owned by the city since 2007 and on the National Historic Register — was once a sprawling complex, first owned by inventor Oberlin Smith and his brother Frederick, who purchased the site in 1877.
With the iconic brick office building placed at the front, the rest of the land housed an erecting shop, a forge, pattern storage, pattern shop, woodworking shop, carpenter shop, and boiler room.
Arthur J. Cox, co-author of the book “Ferracute: The History of an American Enterprise,” previously told NJ Advance Media that Smith was a well-respected, intelligent man who made Ferracute into a global power.
“He was one of the pioneers of manufacturing certain kinds of machine tools which were metalworking presses. Metalworking presses are different from other machine tools in that they deform metal in certain ways. Other machine tools take metal away.”
Cox and the contractor were able to help the fire department save the cornerstone of the building that has a time capsule inside of the historic brick.
A time capsule from the Ferracute Machine Company was saved after a fire forced the building's demolition Tuesday.
As Ferracute’s reputation began to spread across the county, the company sold presses and dies to some of the biggest companies in the world. A fire burned down the factory in 1903, but the factory was rebuilt the next year. Business returned to normal, and the company began making presses for bicycles. Auto companies later followed in becoming significant buyers, with Ford being the first to purchase presses to be shipped to its plants for its Model-T cars.
In 1939, in a bankruptcy proceeding in Mays Landing, George E. Bass purchased the company, and then some 40 years later the Ferracute Manufacturing Company was sold to St. Louis-based Fulton Iron Works.
The structure was eventually included in numerous historic registries — the city’s, the state’s and then the National Historic Register.
The property was listed on Preservation New Jersey’s “10 Most Endangered Historic Places” in 2000, in an attempt to raise awareness about the need for saving it.
“People have tried to save the office building and reuse it for new office space,” Penny Watson is a member of Preservation New Jersey told NJ Advance Media earlier this year. “That would be the best use of it, but it has deteriorated, and it will be expensive.”
In 2014, a business was interested in developing the site as a location for fish farming and hydroponic farming for aquatic plants. However, the plan never came to fruition.
READ MORE: He was the Nikola Tesla of N.J. but plans to save his crumbling factory are kaput
Chris Franklin can be reached at cfranklin@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @cfranklinnews or on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.
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Historic factory to be torn down after devastating overnight fire - NJ.com
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