Developer Irving T. Bush laid the groundwork for today’s Industry City in 1895, setting forth to build a monumental intermodal manufacturing, warehousing and distribution center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The project, originally known as Bush Terminal, was designed to provide wholesalers in nearby Manhattan with an inexpensive location from which to import, export and manufacture goods.

Over the first part of the 1900s, Industry City thrived based to its prime location, its tremendous scale and an innovative integrated structure that provided top-tier industrial services, including an internal police force, fire department, rail network and power plant, to tenants large and small. At its peak during the industrial height of the early 20th Century, the complex – originally known as Bush Terminal – became one of the most prominent and successful facilities of its type worldwide, employing nearly 25,000 workers per day and helping Brooklyn develop into a major international seaport.

In the post-war years of the 1950s, when a changing manufacturing landscape saw a general abandonment of urban industrial properties nationwide, Industry City’s economic might diminished but never completed dissipated. In fact, the legendary Topps Baseball Card company manufactured its products at Industry City through the mid-1960s.

Today, Industry City is on the cusp of a rebirth as a dynamic 21st Century innovation and manufacturing community, one that balances existing manufacturing tenants with those centered on creative and innovation economy fields. The property’s current owners – a partnership of Jamestown, Angelo Gordon and Belvedere Capital, along with Cammeby’s International and FBE Limited – are concurrently transforming ground floor and lower levels into a pedestrian friendly series of shops, showrooms, event spaces and courtyards, loosely organized around themes such as food and food production, children and family, and home goods, while providing ample loading docks and service ground for upper floor innovation economy and manufacturing tenants.

While this transformation ushers in the next great phase of Industry City’s existence, the complex continues to emphasize its rich industrial heritage through an authentic aesthetic expression that is at once historical, referential and progressive.