National Sugar Refining Company

National Sugar Refining Company. New York refinery on Newtown Creek. , This section of the park is the former site of the New York Sugar Refining Company of Long Island City., Claus Doscher, a Brooklyn sugar refiner, founded the New York Sugar Refining Company of Long Island City in 1897. Located on Second Street between 54th Avenue and Newtown Creek, the refinery began operation with an output of approximately 4,000 barrels of refined sugar a day. Workers unloaded sugar from docked ships via a float bridge and stored the raw sugar in a large storage shed along the waterfront. The sugar was then moved to the refinery, a tall brick building between Second Street and the shoreline. In 1900, the refinery merged with two others to form the National Sugar Refining Company of New Jersey., Despite numerous strikes and shortages of raw sugar, by 1948, the refinery employed 1,300 people and produced 4 million pounds of refined sugar a day under the brand Jack Frost Sugar. By 1950, the refinery had expanded to a 24-acre site that extended south from 54th Avenue to Newtown Creek and from the East River shoreline to Fifth Street., The complex of some 20 buildings included a power house, the original office building, garages, a laboratory, warehouses, syrup tanks, buildings for sewing, drying and filling sugar bags, and the original refinery building, containing the sugar mill and filter and pan operations. The refinery also had deep water facilities to accommodate large ships. The refinery closed in 1964, and eight years later, the Daily News redeveloped the site into a printing plant.