The Fischer Behind Two Tribeca Buildings that Bear His Name

Benedikt Fischer, a 19th-century entrepreneur, bought this building for his growing food business, at Greenwich and Beach, in 1894.

When the Fischer Mills Building at Greenwich and Beach streets was being converted into residential lofts, with its name prominently displayed on the construction signs, some Tribecans might have wondered whether there was any connection between that Fischer and the “B. Fischer & Co.” emblazoned on the facade of the building a block south, the one that contains the Tribeca Grill restaurant and the Tribeca Film Center.

The answer is yes, and the man whose name is thus doubly memorialized was a merchant of considerable skill and renown.

Benedickt Fischer came to the U.S. from Germany in 1855 at the age of 14, and in due course became successfully engaged in several lines of endeavor that, oddly enough, seemed to have no relation to one another. Fischer himself did not actually construct any of the buildings that now bear his name. The five-story Italianate structure at the corner of Greenwich and Beach was put up in 1861 by a ship chandler named Henry J. Meyer. That is, he put up two thirds of the current building: eight bays (i.e. windows) wide on the Greenwich Street front. Then, after making a bundle selling shipping supplies during the Civil War, Meyer in 1866 shifted to the warehousing business and built an addition to the earlier structure, in effect widening it to 12 bays. (The addition can be identified as it is painted a slightly different color today.)

After Meyer’s death in 1877, other warehousing concerns used it until our hero, Benedickt Fischer, bought it for his flourishing food business in 1894. But that was only a part of what he was up to. Fischer turns out to have been one of those classically industrious 19th-century immigrant lads who leapt from one success to another, never encountering failure.

In the 1850s, as a teenager newly arrived in New York, Meyer worked first as a salesman for a varnish manufacturer, then switched to a wholesale grocery concern that suited him better. A year or so later, after learning that business from top to bottom and setting aside the princely sum of $32 as capital, he formed his own dealership in tea, coffee and spices and named it B. Fischer & Co.

It was strictly a one-man operation: he would visit buyers during the day, then at night prepare his shipments for delivery. Within a few months he was able to buy a horse and wagon and his capital had grown from $32 to $100. The business kept growing, and despite some setbacks—his store had burned down twice by the 1890s—he was doing handsomely.

By 1894, when he purchased the building at Greenwich and Beach, his company was known as Benedickt Fischer Mills, or just plain Fischer Mills. The grocery trade hardly kept this paragon busy, however. During the 1870s he became interested in the manufacture of “encaustic” tiles, which are treated to have more than one color. He then organized the American Encaustic Tile Company which ended up doing a worldwide business with Fischer as president. This was hardly a modest enterprise: when the company opened a new factory in 1893, the event was attended by no less a personage than President William McKinley. Fischer also served as vice president of a silversmith company, helped found a bank and conducted an extensive real estate business. Perhaps he just never got tired.

Fischer died in 1903 but Fischer Mills kept expanding and in 1905 his son William, who had taken over the business, built the eight-story warehouse building at Franklin and Greenwich streets that bears the company’s name.

It is unclear how long the company survived; there is some evidence that Fischer’s heirs were not as industrious or dependable as he was. In any event both buildings in due course passed to other owners. The building on Beach Street housed a rice processor, another coffee roasting concern and a general warehouser. In the 1990s a developer acquired the property and the six-story building immediately south of it, a Romanesque Revival structure that dates from 1890 and wraps around another building to present a second facade on North Moore Street. He joined the interiors of the two buildings, totally renovated them, and marketed the combined structure as the Fischer Mills Building. Thus was Benedickt Fischer’s imprint on Greenwich Street rendered even greater than before.

As to the 1905 building a block south that still preserves the founder’s name, it too later housed coffee entrepreneurs, most notably the Martinson Coffee Company, which was there until the 1980s, its odors delightfully permeating the nearby streets with the smell of roasting coffee beans.