Where Was Clapp's Baby Food Processing Plant Located in Rochester Ny
Baby nutrient was big business organization in Rochester for decades at the Gerber Products plant on Buffalo Road.
The world's biggest babe-food maker, which started in Michigan, opened its 3rd found in Rochester soon after World War II. The complex was at 460 Buffalo Road, just westward of Mountain Read Boulevard, and peak employment there was at least 700.
Gerber Products' iconic water tower, which looked similar a giant baby nutrient jar, became a Rochester landmark. While Gerber is still effectually, its presence in Rochester is long gone, terminated hither at a fourth dimension when a company official said, "People are just not making babies."
Gerber moved into Rochester in 1950. The visitor bought a factory that had belonged to Curtice Brothers Co., a canning company that started here in the 19th century. A 1951 ad in theDemocrat and Chronicle called the Buffalo Road site Gerber's eastern headquarters and said one time completed information technology would be "the nearly modernistic and one of the largest baby nutrient plants in the globe."
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The advertisement too mentioned the shortly-to-be-familiar landmark.
"Loftier atop the water belfry, overlooking our new plant on Buffalo Route, the famous Gerber Baby greets the people of Rochester and the many visitors doing business in this thriving urban center," the ad stated.
Why Rochester?
Gerber selected Rochester because of the surface area'southward "rich, fertile farms and orchards" that went on to grow fruits and vegetables for its products. Construction moved quickly here – in the beginning four years, Gerber added facilities totaling more than 200,000 foursquare anxiety for warehouses, a cereal plant and a "battery of cooking facilities."
Looking dorsum
The company started in the 1920s as part of Gerber Cooperative Canning in Freemont, Mich. According to an often-shared tale, Dorothy Gerber, daughter-in-police to company possessor Frank Gerber, was fed up with straining peas for her newborn babe. Her husband, Dan, had the cannery do it and things took off from there.
Past 1940, the company name inverse to Gerber Products. Three years later, a 2d institute opened in Oakland, California, and Gerber stopped canning adult foods. Rochester's plant, as noted, came in 1950 and Gerber later added facilities in Asheville, North Carolina, and Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Gerber was thriving in the mail service-Earth War 2 babe-boom era of the 1950s and '60s. So, too, was the Rochester found, which added another 55,000-square-pes warehouse in 1957 and boosted employment, "now on ii shifts the year round."
A lot of babies were eating a lot of Gerber baby food. The Rochester found continued to abound, adding another 100,000 square-foot building in 1961. European supermarket managers visited the found in 1967. They weren't the only ones checking things out at that place – Gerber offered and promoted tours of its Rochester factory, as did many other local firms at the time, similar Eastman Kodak, Xerox Corp., the R.T. French Co. and Rochester Telephone.
By the early 1970s, Gerber was diversifying into a variety of businesses. The company began edifice solar day care centers, including some in the Rochester area. Work at the Rochester manufactory could be noisy and intense, as Jim Borg wrote in a 1978Democrat and Relate story.
"What ends with a baby's quiet burp begins with the skull-splitting roar of steam-driven machinery at the found," Borg wrote. "Jars of strained fruits and vegetables and juices roll off the associates lines affixed with labels printed in Castilian, French, German, Japanese and other languages. Each, of course, boasts the famous Gerber baby face up."
By then, Gerber was "no longer riding the nifty of the mail service-World State of war Ii baby boom," Borg noted, just company officials were still optimistic. That optimism soon inverse, every bit did the fate of Rochester's plant.
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Gerber announced plans in early on 1980 to cease producing baby food in jars in Rochester. The company connected to produce dry cereal here (like oatmeal), merely the shutdown eliminated some 170 jobs. Gerber employment in Rochester, which had reportedly been near 425 in 1975, was reduced to nearly 120.
News stories cited technological advances and "a renewed involvement in breastfeeding" every bit reasons for the job cuts. Demand for baby food was down because of declining birth rates and, every bit Jackie Farnan wrote in a 1982Democrat and Chroniclestory, "The baby-food stage of an infant'due south life is (now) shortened for nursing babies."
The machinery at Rochester's Gerber plant was slower than at the newer or more recently renovated plants, which were turning out i,100 jars per minute compared to 750 per minute here.
When it airtight
The Rochester plant closed for skilful in 1982. The well-recognized water tower – 118 feet tall and encasing 75,000 gallons of water – eventually came down, likewise.
Kodak bought Gerber's massive complex and ran its optical disk operations there. While Gerber'southward in one case-thriving industry has ended here, the company itself is still huge. Now headquartered in Virginia, Gerber Products Co. is now a subsidiary of global conglomerate Nestle Grouping.
Alan Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.
Source: https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/rocroots/places/2018/09/01/whatever-happened-gerber-plant/1147510002/
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