Historic Mills of Connecticut

Companies Associated w/Complex

• A. N. Stollwerck Chocolate Co. 1906-1918
• Petroleum Heat and Power Co. #2 1929-1951
• Touraine Co., Boston and Nokol Co., Chicago, ownership 1918-1929

Use (Historic)

• Fabricated Metal Products
• Firearms, Weapons, Explosives
• Food, Beverage, Tobacco

Largest Documented Workforce

n/a

Historic Narrative

The Stollwerck chocolate works is historically significant as a German-owned asset seized by the federal government during World War I under the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA 1917). The building is also significant for its important association with the Petroleum Heat and Power Company, aka Petro, a company that was instrumental in replacing coal with oil to provide central heating in American buildings in the twentieth century. The factory was originally built in 1906 for the Stollwerck Co., then Europe’s largest chocolate manufacturer, founded in 1839 in Cologne by Franz Stollwerck, whose five sons expanded the business into a multinational corporation with production facilities in Europe and with this plant, in America. The sons innovated the use of vending machines to sell candy, and by the 1890s exported Stollwerck chocolate bars were sold in thousands of coin-operated 'slot machines' in the New York City elevated rail and later subway systems. The Stamford plant was the only one established in America, set up by Albert Stollwerck (1869-1929) who left the family business soon after. The U.S. entrance in World War I and enactment of TWEA placed German-owned assets on American soil like Stollwerck at risk of confiscation. The factory was seized by the federal government in November, 1918 along with other interests nationwide. The plant was shut down, stripped of its equipment, and sold at auction to the Touraine Co. of Boston by Alien Property Custodian A. Mitchell Palmer on December 12, 1918. The building appears to have remained empty for more than a decade until it was acquired in 1929 by the Petroleum Heat and Power Company (PHPC), a pioneer in the American heating oil industry. PHPC originated in San Francisco in 1902 when Milton Ashton Fesler (1874-1935), the owner of a sporting goods store in San Francisco, patented an oil burner 'to utilize some of the crude oil seeping out of the ground in lower California' (Advocate, 1941) Fesler’s patent no. 714,467, dated 25 Nov. 1902 described his invention as a burner '…of crude petroleum and distillates in cooking and heating stoves and all kinds of furnaces that are not operated in connection with a steam-boiler, and has for its object economy in the use of fuel and labor, the prevention of accidents by fire from the use of crude petroleum and distillates as fuel, freedom from offensive odors, and the cleanliness of the place where fuel is used.' Fesler’s burner atomized fuel for ignition by centrifugal motion, eliminating the production of compressed air as used in other systems. His small Fess System Company manufactured, sold and installed his invention on the west coast, capitalized by shares of stock. Following the company’s successful application of the burner to heat all of the buildings at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915) with oil, stockholder William C. McTarnahan (1882-1951) saw a greater market on the east coast to provide an alternative to coal. McTarnahan attracted additional east coast investors and reorganized the company as the Fess Rotary Oil Burner and Liquid Fuel Company, installing the company’s first burner on the east coast operated with road oil (there being yet no fuel oil) in Boston that year. McTarnahan recognized that for the burner to succeed on the east coast, the company would need to supply the fuel. By 1919, with growing sales and new capital, Fess Rotary Oil was reformed as PHPC '…to undertake in New York and other Eastern cities delivery of fuel oil by tank truck service.' (Oil Trade Journal, 1920). PHPC built a small factory and oil storage yard with waterfront access next to the empty Stollwerck plant, and brought Fesler east to begin manufacturing burners. The company initially focused on large buildings with offices in Boston, Providence and New York, winning recognition in 1922 for converting the heating system in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building in New York, an early skyscraper, with burner

Number of Existing Buildings

Two (2) primary blocks (originally one).

Dates of Construction

1906 with post 1951 addition

Architect

n/a

Builder

n/a

Building Type

• Warehouse / Production Shed

Architectural Description

The two existing buildings were originally one building located between the river to the east and Southfield Avenue to the west. The original building was built to manufacture chocolate in a single episode in 1906 and organized as an L-shaped, head-house and shed plan. The head-house wing facing Southfield Avenue originally had a fanciful tripartite façade featuring a protruding three-story center bay suggesting a squat tower flanked by side bays below tall parapets screening the ends of the factory’s sawtooth monitors. The façade also featured buttresses dressed as quoins and regularly spaced windows with double-hung sash. The head-house had offices on the second and third floors below ground floor storage. A single long one-story production shed wing largely lighted by the monitors extended east to the river from the head-house. The side walls had few windows. The building appears to have been significantly altered in 1929 to adapt it for the production of oil burners by introducing large rectangular window openings into the side walls of the production shed. By 1951, a warehouse wing extended south from the head-house. The warehouse wing and a three bay wide section of the original production shed was entirely removed in 1984, the latter creating an alley way between what resulted in two independent buildings. The roof above both the head-house and production shed retains its original sawtooth monitor roof profile with north-facing glazing, now surfaced with roofing around individual windows. A smaller one story wing with a flat roof projecting from the south elevation of the rear portion of the shed appears to have been added in 1984. The building retains the 1929 window openings now holding replacement sash, and the walls have been faced with spray-on stucco. The interior has been converted to two floors throughout.

Exterior Material(s)

• Brick
• Stucco

Structural System(s)

• Concrete Slab
• Structural Steel or Iron

Roof Form

• Sawtooth

Roof Material

• Metal

Power Source

• Electricity

Condition

n/a

Condition Notes

n/a

Specific Location

One legal parcel (62 Southfield Avenue) totaling 3.42 acres located between the west branch of the Rippowam River to the east and Southfield Avenue to the west.

Adjacent To

n/a

Exterior Visible from Public Road?

Yes

Parcel ID / Assessor Record Link

• 004/ 0149 / Link →

Acreage

3.42

Use (Present)

• Commercial
• Other: Purchase and redevelopment by Building and Land Technology in 2017; continued commercial use, office improvements, opening up interior to saw tooth roof structure.

Form Completed By

Wes Haynes

Date

September 2016

Bibliography

1. Sanborn Map Co., 1929-30, 1951.
2. 'Attachment Ties Up Slot Machine Money,' New York Times, March 9, 1909.
3. '$100,000,000 of Foe Holdings to be Sold,' New York Times, November 2, 1918.
4. 'Stollwerck Concern Sold,' New York Times, December 22, 1918.
5. Oil Trade Journal, 11: 1, January, 1920, p. 64.
6. The Oil Weekly, 27:3, Oct 14, 1922, p. 78.
7. W. A. Dower, 'Petroleum Heat & Power Co.,' Connecticut Industry, 5:6, June 1927, p. 12.
8. 'Power Company Buys Plant in Stamford for $1,000,000,' New York Times, April 6, 1929.
9. Sweet’s Architectural Catalogues, 1933.
10. 'Petroleum Heat and Power Company Set Up Plant in 1920,' Stamford Advocate Tercentenary Edition, June 7, 1941, 116.
11. 'Petroleum Heat & Power Co. , 511 5th Ave , New York N. Y.,'.