Cornell Iron Works

📖 The Scoop

One day in 1819, a twelve-year old boy named George Cornell left his family’s farm on Long Island and traveled to New York City to become an apprentice blacksmith. By the 1870s, the company he created, and that was carried on after him by his brothers, became the largest iron works in the United States. The J.B. & W.W. Cornell Iron Works, and later the J.B. & J.M. Cornell Iron Works, worked with the leading architects of their day to take New York’s buildings from four stories in the 1850s to thirty stories by 1899. Drawing on a wealth of sources from historic company archives and New York City architectural history, this book tells the story of Cornell Iron Works, from its origins and rise to prominence in the 1800s, to the challenges it faced in the early 1900s, to its reemergence and renewed success in the 20th and 21st centuries. With Cornell now in its 8th generation of family leadership, this story has unique insights for family businesses and for American business more generally. It also fills an important gap in New York City’s architectural and business history. The role played by the iron works as New York went from being a city of wood and brick to a city of iron and steel has been largely untold until now. Most importantly, this is the story of a company in which an ethos of integrity and concern for others that originated in 19th century America provides a foundation for success today.

Genre: Architecture / General (fancy, right?)