On the south side of West 26th Street immediately after the High Line can be found the vast buildings which once housed the successful H. Wolff Book Manufacturing Company. To anyone of a certain age the name H. Wolff Book Manufacturing Company means “big book manufacturer”, with echoes of “the end of book manufacturing in New York City”.
As may be seen from this photo, someone has taken a chisel to the name sign and chopped off an “F”. Seems a pretty silly gesture.
Looking down the street from the High Line gives an impression of the scale of the building(s), 508 and 518 W. 26th, which now seem to be filled with art galleries. This is Chelsea, and the space is great. The building farther away, #518, was the first one constructed; it was built specifically for the H. Wolff Company, and was completed in 1910. Their expansion led them to construct, in 1926-27, the adjacent building, 508 West 26th, shown in the first photograph and in this one to the east (left) of the original structure; (508 is the grey building, and 518 the pinker one). The expanding company made further acquisitions in the neighborhood, and also subcontracted space to Grosset and Dunlap, George H. Doran, van Reese Press, and Greenwich Lithographers.
Photo: 14 to 26th Street (where you can find a detail which enables one to see the sign a bit more clearly)
And here, viewed from the west is the no-longer visible evidence (you can see a new building going up in the previous picture) of their location in barely legible white paint on the brickwork, immediately below the Grosset and Dunlap sign which just shows below that reddish line.
The High Line we think of as a sort of aerial park, but it isn’t all that long ago that it was functioning as a means of hauling industrial goods to the railway station, or to the docks. H. Wolff leased and in 1957 purchased 259 Tenth Avenue (just along 26th Street) which had a private rail siding linking in to the High Line. Traffic along the High Line was halted in 1980, when its northern extension was demolished to make way for the Javits Center. A 5-block section at the southern end was demolished as recently as 1991.
Certainly by 1962 when members of the Guild of Book Workers toured the plant this New York location was only involved in binding books. Printing was done in their plant in New Jersey, or came from different printers. They’d turn out 100,000 bound volumes a day. The Guild members were shown around by Jerry Bloom who I knew in a different capacity later on!
In 1968 the company was sold to American Book-Stratford Press who had just constructed a large plant out of the city in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. Harry Wolff, who succeeded his father in the business, died in 2013 aged 86. It’s surprising how little information about this huge company is readily available online.
Before starting my day I picked up a tattered Charles Dickens book I’ve moved with me for many years. Curious on the publishing house lead me to this article on H. Wolff Book MFG’ CO., New York City. – thank you, for this bit of history.
Picked up the book Barbarossa by Alan Clark published by H. Wolff 1965. Had never heard of this publisher. Thank you for the short bit of history.
I have 2 books printed and bound by the H. Wolff Book Mf’g Co. They are part of a collection of the works of Charles Dickens.. There is no copyright date or date of any kind and the books are old. I am just trying to find some information about the books.
I keep getting feedback that I have commented before, but apparently Isomeone else posted a similar comment, but mine is new.
Not sure there’s much one can discover about this. In the late nineteenth century there was a lot of undated publishing of “standard” works going on. These were often sold door-to-door or by mail order, and were not intended for any market like libraries (where bibliographic details such as place and date of publication might have been valued). I wrote about such a book a couple of years ago: https://rhollick.wordpress.com/2017/06/30/stereotype/.
I suppose there might be some academic somewhere who had been studying these sorts of books and who might recognize the one you have — but that’s obviously a pretty long shot. But at least you know the book was printed in New York City! And can enjoy reading it.
[…] second case, from a book printed in 1931 by H. Wolff on a heavier stock (a 45# or 50# smooth offset sheet) probably results from some other cause like […]