Judson Manufacturing

Judson Manufacturing, founded by Egbert Putnam Judson in 1882 at the foot of Park Avenue in Emeryville, became the city’s oldest and largest industrial facility. Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1812, Judson came to California in 1852, engaged in mining, established San Francisco’s first assay works, and built a wide range of businesses including chemical works, fuse works, candle works, a paper company, an explosives company, and iron mines in the Sierra Nevada foothills. After the Northern Railway was built along the east shore of San Francisco Bay in the late 1870s, he bought nine acres from Joseph Emery and began constructing the company in July 1882. Its 28 brick buildings housed a tack factory, woodworking and pattern shop, file factory and machine shop, bolt shop, bridge shop, foundry, and rolling mill. By 1886, it was one of the major employers in Alameda County, and its tack factory was the largest in the United States. The company supplied steel for the Golden Gate Bridge, Bay Bridge, Oakland City Hall, Grace Cathedral, and several buildings in the San Francisco Civic Center and on the campuses of U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University. Judson never married, and when he died in 1893 he left his fortune to his nieces and nephews. In 1894, Wallace Christie, born in Illinois in 1860 and experienced in Utah mining, came to Emeryville as assistant manager of Judson Manufacturing and led the successful campaign to establish Emeryville as its own city. Emeryville was incorporated on December 2, 1896, Christie was elected its first mayor and held that office for 40 years, and the new Board of Trustees held its organizing meeting in Christie’s office at the plant on December 11, 1896. The plant declined gradually in the late 20th century: Peko-Wallsend acquired it in 1979 and operated it for seven years, the mill closed in September 1986 after 104 years of continuous operation, Birmingham Steel ran it as Barbary Coast Steel for about three years until 1991, and the property then stood vacant for more than six years. In October 1997, IKEA bought the site, cleared it, and built a 274,000 square foot retail building, which opened on April 12, 2000 as Northern California’s first IKEA store.

Emeryville, California · United States