Rock Candy – Brooklyn (1894)

At the turn of the 20th century, the Brooklyn waterfront was lined with industrial plants.

Only in 2014 was the enormous red, neon sign for the Domino Sugar refinery finally taken down.

(I was one of thousands of New Yorkers who petitioned the city to preserve the last reminder of Brooklyn’s former industrial might.)

There was a time when more than a quarter of all the nation’s refined sugar came from Brooklyn.

If you were in the candy business in the late 19th century, and you did not have the massive machinery to refine your own sugar, you may have ordered sugar syrup using a postcard like this from a firm selling the products of a refinery in Brooklyn.

You could, with a much simpler workshop, transform syrup into the marvelous confection of “rock candy”.

I have not seen this crystalline delight for many years and do not know if it is still available.

As a boy, I could find it at folk festivals and at the gift shop of the Landis Valley Farm Museum.

(Even in my youth, the candy store was disappearing from towns and cities.)

The sight of the large, clear crystals, usually formed on a length of string, was delightful at that time.

(Now, I blanch at the thought of all that sugar.)

The firm of Dryden & Palmer sold both the rock candy product and the syrup for making it.

The postcard advertisements were probably printed in Brooklyn, using the blank postcards sold by the post office.

This early version of a government-printed postcard bears the image of Jefferson in black ink.

A hundred and twenty-five years have passed since Dryden & Palmer sold their sweet wares; the molasses tankers, the roaring fires, and the aroma of burnt sugar are all gone from the Brooklyn waterfront (where rents have risen faster than any other place in metropolitan New York).

I have also lost my taste for rock candy, but still feel the nostalgic pull of the candy stores that once occupied a niche in many towns and cities.