From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
Administration Building, New Departures Mfg. Co., Bristol, Conn 118.
A large, five-story building, recently constructed at the time the photograph was taken, looms over a street and yard in an industrial area. At the right are enclosed, overhead passageways spanning the street and connecting factory's buildings. The blurred figure of a man moving around in the bed of a truck is visible at the center foreground. He appears to be unloading cement blocks into a shed on a construction site at the left. This image is part of a series made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to cover New England or upstate New York. The quest for images that would be saleable as postcards resulted in the documentation of small towns and small town life at the turn of the 20th century. As the photos were shot, the glass plates were promptly sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. Bruce Clouette and Matt Roth's book "Connecicut: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites" provides the following background, which places the New Departures Manufacturing Company squarely at the center of the centuries-long Connecticut hardware industry: "Albert Rockwell began his career in Bristol in 1888 by manufacturing clock-work doorbells, but he rode to prominence on production of ball bearings for bicycles and automobiles. Entry into bearing manufacture began in 1898 when Rockwell's firm, New Departure Manufacturing Co., brought out a bicycle coaster brake that used steel balls for friction reduction, and accelerated as New Departure supplied bearings for automobiles made by Bristol Engineering Co., a subsidiary organized in 1907. In 1919 General Motors acquired New Departure, which continued to make bicycle parts and to sell bearings to other automobile firms. At full capacity the company employed some 7,000 workers who produced 225,000 ball bearings per day. In the 1920s and 1930s New Departure and other Connecticut firms, notably Fafnir, the Torrington Co., Marlin-Rockwell Corp. (formed by Rockwell after leaving New Departure) and Norma-Hoffman Bearings Corp., made more than half of the ball bearings in the world, and New Departure was the world's largest producer. New Departure moved into a new factory in Bristol in 1971. .....Most of the plant was built between 1900 and 1930, although one c.1895 2-story brick-pier factory (131' x 41') still stands. Originally used for manufacturing, it was converted to personnel offices and the plant hospital when later factories were erected. The 5-story, 212' x 63' brick building at the southeast corner of the complex held offices and the Endee Inn, where unmarried workers boarded. Built in 1911-12, its white brick facade has trim of tile and precast concrete; the back and sides are red brick. Much of the plant was built in 1919-21, including the 1-story reinforced concrete Annealing Building, 222' x 195' with sawtooth roof; the 3-story Model Shop, 232' x 92' with brick walls and near-flat roof; and the 1-story, 312' x 102' brick factory that housed machining and forming processes. The largest factory was built in 1930; 5-story and 402' x 128', it has reinforced concrete framing and brick-pier exterior walls. With completion of this factory New Departure had 50 acres of floor space." The large structure in the image may be the Endee Inn (worker housing) and office block described above.
