Queenswalk: William Demuth/S.M. Frank & Co. Factory in Richmond Hill

When I was a child, both of my parents were cigarette smokers. That was not unusual for the early 1960s. Everyone seemed to be a smoker then. They both quit cold turkey when I was around twelve. But before that, my father experimented with pipe smoking. He bought a couple of different pipes, and tried several aromatic tobacco blends before finding the combination he liked. I have to say, the pipe smoke was much nicer to be around than the cigarette smoke.

Starting in the early 19th century, the New York City area was a leader in the manufacturing of tobacco products. Cigars were the big thing throughout that century, and all of the boroughs had multiple cigar factories, both large and small. After all, one only needed a table to roll cigars, and many people rolled cigars in their homes, one of the city’s first at-home sweatshops.

Cigarettes didn’t become popular until the end of the century, but chewing and pipe tobacco also had their place in city production. Lorillard, which is still producing tobacco products, had several large factories in Manhattan and Brooklyn. There were many other companies, as well, whose names are now lost to history. But someone had to make the pipes themselves. By the turn of the 20th century, one of the largest pipe makers was located in Richmond Hill, Queens. It was called William Demuth & Company.

William Demuth was born Wilhelm C. Demuth in Germany in 1835. He came to America at 16 without a penny to his name. He worked odd jobs until he found employment as a clerk in a tobacco tradesman’s establishment in New York City. In 1862, he established his own company, specializing in pipes, cigar-store figures, canes and other carved implements.

Pipes are made out of many different substances, including glass, wood, ceramic, briar, clay, corncob and stone or a combination thereof. The famous meerschaum pipes are carved from a soft stone, also called meerschaum, which can be found in various parts of the world. During Demuth’s day, most of it came from Turkey. The Demuth Company made many different kinds of pipes, but their meerschaums put them on the map.

In 1881, William Demuth presented his friend, James A. Garfield, with meerschaums carved in the likeness of himself and his wife, when Garfield became President of the United States. Demuth would go on to commission a presidential series, with the likenesses of all of the presidents. He presented a personalized pipe to every president after Garfield. The company continued this gift giving after Demuth’s death in 1911, ending with the presidency of Herbert Hoover.

Meerschaums were works of art, but the bread and butter of the company was briarwood pipes. The factory in Richmond Hill was built in 1895, and produced and shipped millions of pipes to locations all over the world. They were the largest pipe maker in the country. Their logo, a triangle with the letters “W, D, C” was known everywhere, and appeared in all of their advertising.

Ferdinand Feuerbach was hired by the Demuth Company in 1897, and by 1903 was the production manager. He introduced two of their most popular lines, the Royal Demuth and the Hesson Guard Milano pipes. He left Demuth in 1919 to run the pipe factory of an old friend, Sam Frank. The two companies would soon have more in common than a production manager.

Sam Frank had been trained in pipe carving by his father. He worked for a time for the Demuth Company before going out on his own, founding his own company in 1900. His pipe factory was in Manhattan, on Broadway and Duane Street. He moved uptown to two other locations, the last on 21st Street. In 1910, he moved his operations to a larger plant in the Bronx. In 1922 he purchased the Manhattan Briar Pipe Company, growing the company still further.

Sam Frank eventually came back to Demuth, and was president of Demuth, while also president of his own company. In 1937, the City of New York was going to seize his property in the Bronx through eminent domain in order to make way for street widening. Frank took this opportunity to negotiate with Demuth, and move his operations to the Richmond Hill factory. In the course of these negotiations, he bought Demuth, and made it a subsidiary of Frank with Sam the head of the entire conglomerate. The combined names were added to the front of the building, an Art Deco font on a late Victorian structure.

Sam Frank died in 1943, but the business kept going. S.M. Frank & Co. had offices in Manhattan until the mid-1970s. They had retail shops until that time, as well, selling pipes and smoking related products, both their own line and others. At least three generations of Feuerbach’s also were affiliated with the company. Bill Feuerbach III, a Frank executive, wrote a history of the company in 1977. As of 2010, the company was still located in Peekskill, NY.

The factory building in Queens became apartments, some of which have a magnificent view of Forest Park. The complex was converted into apartments in 1987, and is called the Park Lane South Condominiums. They are located at 84-10 101st Street, in Richmond Hill.

(Photograph:14-42 21st St. blog)

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