Site of the National Box Company

Site of the National Box Company. . INCREASING OPERATING FACILITIES. According to advise from Natchez, Miss, the National Box Co. is making extensive improvements and additions to its plant at the place which will bring the total investment of the company at Natchez to over $3,000,000. In addition to the box factory and the veneer plant, a supplemental unit has been placed in operation by the company recently for the manufacture of buckets. , Barrel and Box, A Monthly Package, Chicago, March, 1919. , Improvements underway at the plant of the National Box Factory, located at Natchez, will make the big factory modern throughout and one of the largest in this section of the south...An electrical plant is being installed and all machinery will be electrically driven...The total number of employees is 700. , Packages, Milwaukee, January 1919 , The National Box Factory occupied the site of the French settlement area located on the plateau between the Mississippi River and Fort Rosalie, founded in 1716 pictured above in a map view dated to ca. 1729. , ...all of us who subscribed to the fund to purchase the site for the box factory will have to stand the loss resulting from the caving of the bluff, some $4,000 I hear, or $50 apiece all around. We agreed to furnish the site and will have to remove the debris of the cave before we can turn the location over to the factory. George Kelly, owner of the mansion Melrose, December 12, 1917. , The National Box Company complex was built in 1917 on the plateau between the bluff and the Mississippi River. , Some members of the Chamber of Commerce subscribed to a fund to acquire the site and ready it for construction. A land slide before the transfer of ownership necessitated additional assessments. A second slide in 1918, after the plant was built, required extensive foundation work. , The box factory largely made box parts for assembly and used poplar, cotton wood, sap gum, and sycamore because they were flexible and their light colors allowed for printing on the boxes. , Working at the factory was a life-changing event for may Natchez African Americans who were able to rise above janitorial jobs to better paying jobs on the assembly line. , The National Box Company ceased operation about 1940, and the factory was operated by different business until its final closing in 1958. The buildings were demolished within a decade or so. , (side-bar box) , AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS , Instituted 1852 , Report on cause and correction of foundation troubles of box factory at Naxchez, Mississippi . , During 1817 a large box factory was built on a bench of land adjoining the east bank of the Mississippi, at Natchez, Miss. Following the completion of the plant settlement occurred in the foundations under practically all the buildings and machinery, and it appears that the entire building site would slip down the hill. , After graduating from the Natchez Institute....I got a job as an apprentice electrician at the new National Box Company plant. Both the box factory's chief engineer and chief electrician were baseball fans. They offered me the electricians job on condition that I'd play on the company baseball team on Saturdays and Sundays... I enjoyed rubbing elbows with low-come factory hands and learning how they thought and lived. In the process, I learned to change 880-volt fuses without electrocuting myself and to rewind electrical motors. George William Healy, 1905-1980, long time editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.