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Terra Cotta

Alfred, United States of America

Terra Cotta

The Terra Cotta Building is a historic building built by the Celadon Terra Cotta Company at Alfred, New York in 1892. The structure is a one-story, 16-foot-wide (4.9 m), 25-foot-deep (7.6 m) building built almost entirely of bricks, architectural terracotta, and roofing tiles manufactured by the com

pany. The building was built adjacent to the company's Alfred factory and functioned as a sales office and physical catalog of their work. After its construction, local papers reported that "there is probably no more novel or artistic building in Allegany county than the new office of the Alfred Centre Terra Cotta Company." Under the early direction of George H. Babcock, the Celadon company grew to become a major producer of roof tiles. From the 1890s through the early 1900s the Alfred factory made tiles used on projects including mansions, train stations, and Carnegie libraries. In 1906 the company merged with the Ludowici Roofing Tile Company of Chicago to form the Ludowici-Celadon Company. On August 29, 1909, a fire destroyed the factory in Alfred, and the Ludowici-Celadon company relocated most operations to their other plants. The Terra Cotta building was spared from damage and housed...

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