Lehman Brothers Printing Building

Originally constructed for the New Haven Machine Screw Company in 1912, this two-story, reinforced concrete structure housed Lehman Brothers Inc., a commercial printing firm, for most of its existence. Between 1929, when Louis and Isadore Lehman relocated their engraving business to the Foster Street plant, and 2008, when Eric Lehman closed the factory’s doors for the last time, Lehman Brothers produced specialty engravings and fine stationery using one of the oldest (and largest) engraving machines in the United States (Bailey, 2008). In the summer, the company would open the modernist building’s massive windows, allowing natural light to stream in and engraving sounds to spill out into the East Rock neighborhood (Bailey, 2008).

After the business succumbed to bankruptcy, its complex, composed of the original printing press building, a one-story warehouse, and a steel Quonset hut, sat vacant for ten years, providing shelter for squatters and entertainment for urban explorers. Various efforts to rehabilitate the rapidly deteriorating property fell through, until developer Ocean Management purchased the buildings for $700,000 in 2017, with detailed plans to transform 191, 197, and 199 Foster Street into condominiums (O’Leary, 2018). The redevelopment, currently underway, entails the renovation of the 1912 structure, the demolition of the warehouse and Quonset hut, and the construction of six townhouses and a Bauhaus midrise. Once on the market in 2019, the Foster Street project will test whether New Haven’s housing boom—typified by other adaptive reuse developments, such as Winchester Lofts and Strouse Adler Apartments—can sustain $400,000 condos alongside high-end rentals (Breen, 2017).  

1912: New Haven Machine Screw Company

1929: Lehman Brothers, Inc.

2008: vacant

2010: bought by RBFH LLC (Gil Marshak)

2017: bought by Ocean Management (Shmuel Aizenberg)

The large lot on the northwest corner of the block bounded by Foster, Canner, Nicoll, and Willow Streets was vacant as late as 1901. The presence of Marlin Firearms Co. a block over, however, already suggested that this area, a sliver of the East Rock neighborhood by a bend in the Mill River, would be much more industrial than residential. Indeed, after a short-lived subdivision hinting at possible housing construction, the Foster Street lot was reassembled to its original size, purchased by the New Haven Machine Screw Company, and given industrial purpose with the creation of the screw factory. In time, the Rockbestos rope manufacturing plant would abut the expanding Marlin property, cementing the neighborhood’s industrial character. 

Founded in 1911 with John J. Reidy at the helm, the New Haven Machine Screw Company commissioned its Foster Street plant in 1912, possibly from local architect Philip Sellers (O’Leary, 2011). With $75,000 in capital at their disposal, the company constructed a modest, 10,000-square-foot factory on land formerly owned by the B. Foster estate (Businesses, 1913-1998; City Atlas, 1911). Though its size paled in comparison to the Marlin Firearms building across the street, or to the Winchester Repeating Arms complex farther west, 191 Foster had something those more established enterprises did not: a fireproof, reinforced concrete design that heralded the coming age of industrial modernism. Its long, open floor plan accommodated Machine Screw’s lengthy turret lathe machines, which molded low-carbon steel into rough-hewn screws. Advertised as “Foster safety steel-set screws,” the company’s products found their way into countless industrial machines across the region (Lucas, 1912). Nonetheless, the screw company went into receivership three years after opening. Lewis G. Richardson, who took charge of the business’s assets, managed to drastically improve its fortunes. By 1916, Richardson had hired 60-65 “expert workmen” and solicited orders for “several million spark plugs” to diversify production (Hill, 1918).  

The New Haven Machine Screw Company’s fate after 1916 is unknown. By 1929, Lehman Brothers Inc. moved into the Foster Street factory, substituting automatic printing and engraving machines for the screw-making assembly line. Having established themselves as a firm with “a very large clientele” and “a host of friends throughout New England” from their original location on Court Street, the printing shop thrived on Foster, at least after the Great Depression (Walden’s Stationer, 1919). In the 1940s, they expanded the plant to 25,000 square feet by building a Quonset hut and one-story warehouse, additions that allowed the company to meet demand for products like specialty wedding invitations and engraved White House stationery (Bailey, 2008; O’Leary, 2011). Running the machines were many long-term workers, men and women who spent decades accumulating technical knowledge not easily transferable to other trades. The din of engraving machines spilled out into the otherwise residential East Rock neighborhood when the company opened its windows in the summer.  

Perhaps due to their small scale, Lehman Brothers survived longer than many other New Haven industries; by 2004, however, union healthcare costs and competition from electronic printers drove the firm into bankruptcy (Bailey, 2008). On December 9^th, 2008, a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee named Michael Daly arrived at the plant, ordered its workers and owners to leave, and changed the locks. The firm’s executives—many of them descendants of the founding Lehman brothers—moved to a Connecticut firm that purchased the company’s brand and products; the workers, meanwhile, were told to seek $180,000 worth of unpaid wages, benefits, and severance pay in bankruptcy court. With thirty-plus years of experience in an obsolete trade, seventeen former employees did exactly that, attempting to capture some of the $1-10 million Lehman owed its creditors (Bailey, 2008; Bailey, 2010). 

The decade-long struggle to renovate this out-of-place factory on Foster Street began almost as soon as Lehman went under. Peter de Bretteville, a Yale architecture professor from Hamden, drew up plans to convert the printing press building, with its “robust concrete frame,”  into an apartment complex (Bailey, 2009). He quickly became the site’s preferred bidder, though his bid decreased considerably after an environmental study revealed the land would need to be decontaminated before any construction could start. Two years after Lehman folded, a little known Israeli-American developer named Gil Marshak outbid de Bretteville and several other buyers, purchasing the site for $505,000. His real estate company, RBFH (Rebuilding Fair Haven) LLC, failed to do anything with the property for years, despite the cooperation of partners like historic preservationist Alek Juskevice, who wanted to “bring vibrancy” to a part of East Rock “that’s sort of vacant and dead” (Bailey, 2010). Little occurred between 2010 and 2017. Vines obscured the factory’s white concrete walls. Its windows shattered. Michael Daly, the firm’s bankruptcy trustee, went to federal prison for embezzling $11,000 from the Lehman Brothers estate. Urban explorers like Philip Damico made YouTube videos marveling at the structure’s decay. 

Then Ocean Management purchased the property in 2017 for $200,000 more than Marshak had paid (O’Leary, 2018). Owned by Israeli investor Shmuel Aizenberg and run by New Haven native Mendy Paris, Ocean Management had spent the last three years buying up run-down properties in the city; by the time it bought the Lehman factory, it already owned 900 apartments. In this case, the firm wanted to “transform a vacant and unused industrial plant and reintegrate the property into the East Rock neighborhood” (Peak, 2018). It plans to do so by spending $8-10 million testing whether New Haveners will buy condominiums rather than renting luxury apartments. Now in its initial stages, the construction plans call for the demolition of the warehouse, the Quonset hut, and an abandoned two-story home on the property. Deemed more historically significant, the 1912 printing press building will remain standing, rechristened as a condominium complex with six two-bedroom, 1,500 square-feet units. On one side, separated by a row of trees, six Greek Revival townhouses will rise up, reweaving the site into East Rock’s urban fabric. On the other, a four-story, synthetic stucco Bauhaus midrise will accentuate the development’s modernist feel. Condos will sell for around $400,000 (Breen, 2017).

The development’s success is up in the air, and will be until it opens in mid-2019. Yet a good number of residents are excited about it. Kevin McCarthy attended a community meeting where Ocean Management explained its plans. “This is the first time that a development has met with applause at a meeting,” he said (Breen, 2017). In June 2018, the city’s zoning board approved the project despite its high density, which can only legally occur when the development shows “such unusual merit as to reflect credit upon the developer and upon the city” (Peak, 2018).  

The Lehman Brothers plant straddles the border between East Rock’s vanishing industrial sector and the rest of the comfortably residential neighborhood. To the east lie brick manufacturing complexes, once home to a rope foundry and gun maker, now renovated into retail and office spaces. To the west, East Rock’s trademark 2.5- and 3-story homes, with their tiny yards, elaborate porches, and varied color schemes, grant the neighborhood an almost suburban character. A half-mile away, East Rock itself rises into the sky, promising potential tenants of Ocean Management’s condo complex “amazing views” of the ruddy cliff (O’Leary, 2011).