An Egg And A Shell
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #194
There’s a cool building in Flemington, New Jersey that I’m surprised I haven’t featured here yet. It’s at 84 Park Avenue—one of those New York City streets that so many small towns wanted back in the day. And yet the building is a testament to the town’s rural-agricultural heritage.
It’s office space now, but it’s the Old Egg Auction building:
Well, a couple of buildings: a workhorse building and an ornate building, both of which make up the Old Egg Auction complex.
Before a little bit on that, this is not even the site’s first use: one of the buildings, I believe the plain-looking one, was a glass factory in the very early 1900s! The glass company Empire—the structure is still labeled “Empire Building”—was located here. It went out of business in 1925, and some of its employees founded Flemington Cut Glass, which still existed in some form up until my childhood. (I etched a star into a glass there on a kids’ visit.)
But the complex is really known for the egg auction, which started in the early 1930s. On Facebook, someone shared photos of an old trade magazine writeup from February 1954. Here’s a little bit of it:
The first successful attempt to sell eggs at auction was started in August, 1930, by the Flemington Auction Market….All of the cooperatives in the Northeastern States that actually handle were patterned after this market.
It notes that the Flemington market was still an actual auction market, one of only three remaining that still conducted auctions (either in New Jersey or in the Northeast; it’s not clear).
“Auction markets,” the article says, “were established during the depression for the sole purpose of obtaining for the producer his just share of the consumer’s dollar.”
I’m pretty sure this:
Is this:
From a newspaper article:
When it was the egg auction, it was said to be the largest such establishment in the United States. It was started by local farmers Charles Cane, James Weisel and others in 1930 to sell eggs in the basement of the Nevius Store on Main Street in Flemington.
How long did the auctioning continue?
In 1955 nearly 450,000 cases of eggs were sold as well as 65,000 crates of live chickens. By then it had become a $2 million a year business and a prototype for other operations across the country. In 1960 the name was changed to the Flemington Agricultural Market. In 1976 the auctions were discontinued due to lack of suppliers, as there were fewer livestock and poultry farmers in the area.
The official historical marker seems to disagree:
I wonder if it was both the first and the last in the United States.
Here’s a neat history based on information the author learned as a child going to school in Union County, New Jersey, when he was assigned a project on Hunterdon County (he’d never heard of it!), of which Flemington is the county seat.
Here are some photos from the property.
The back of the pamphlet from which that 1954 article comes shows a map of New Jersey with Flemington perfectly between New York City and Philadelphia, 50 miles to either. This is an example of how urban and rural places had closer relationships while being more distinct. And it’s also an example of how the small towns in rural areas were once both conscious of and proud of their urbanity.
The building is neat, too.
Related Reading:
What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #24
What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #28
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Great story! Thanks, and merry Christmas!