History: Rochester Lamp Company (1891)

Rochester Lamp Company, 1891

The 21 Nov 1891 edition of The Matawan Journal included an ad for the Rochester Lamp Company, 42 Park Place, New York City. Matawan area residents would have taken boats into downtown Manhattan in those days to do shopping, thus the local advertising. 

The ad said their lamp's "marvelous light [was] purer and brighter than gas light, softer than electric light and more cheerful than either." It's interesting to see an oil lamp company wrestling to maintain a market share of the lighting market as electricity was cutting into the gaslight business. Just like oil heating companies today, the argument was safety. The ad said the lamp was "all metal, tough and seamless, and made in three pieces only, it is absolutely safe and unbreakable."

42 Park Place is near the intersection of Park Place and Church Street, not far from the World Trade Center and the Woolworth Building.

The Lampworks, of Hurleyville, NY, purveyors of antique lighting and accessories, has a brief online history of the Rochester Lamp Company. Included on the page is a biography of Charles Stanford Upton, who founded the company in 1884. Edward Miller and Company manufactured the Rochester lamp from 1884 to 1892.

See also How Rochester Lamps Helped Light Up the World, by Donovan A Shilling (The Crooked Lake Review, Dec 1993)