Dixon Crucible Company / Dixon Mills
187 Wayne Street, at the corner of Monmouth Street and Christopher Columbus Drive.
Other buildings located between Wayne Street and Christopher Columbus Drive, west of Varick and Monmouth Streets

Dixon Crucible Company
Photo: C. Karnoutsos, 2001

Dixon Crucible Company
Photo: C. Karnoutsos, 2001

The ubiquitous yellow Ticonderoga pencil, most associated with test taking by students, was made in Jersey City for over a century. The American inventor and manufacturer responsible for the familiar writing implement was Joseph Dixon (1799-1869), who was born at Marblehead, Massachusetts. While the company closed its doors in the 1980s, the manufacturing plant is now the Dixon Mills, an apartment complex.

As a young man Dixon took an interest in experimentation with crucibles and graphite. He mixed Ceylon graphite, found on his father's sailing vessels, with clay and water, rolled the substance into strips, baked them in his mother's oven, and pressed the strips into pieces of grooved cedar wood. The invention, however, did not replace the popular quill pen as a less expensive writing instrument until the practicality of the pencil became apparent to the soldiers during the Civil War. With its fast gaining popularity during the war, Dixon designed a machine that planed and shaped enough wood for the manufacture of 132 pencils a minute.

Dixon had moved to Jersey City in 1847 for its location and marketing potential for his products and then proceeded to construct a large manufacturing plant of several buildings. Three years later he received patents for the use of graphite crucibles in pottery and steel. He refined his steel-making process with a furnace of his own design. Other inventions with which he is associated are the first iron stove polish made of graphite, use of fast-color dyes for cotton fabrics, the prototype of the contemporary viewfinder, a process of photolithography, and a crucible that was able to withstand heat of 2,780 degrees. His steel production was recognized as superior to its English counterpart at the London World Fair in 1851, for which he received a gold medal. In 1853, Dixon's home was said to be at 20 Wayne Street.

Dixon died in 1869 at the age of seventy, but his company continued to improve upon his goal of making the affordable lead pencil. By 1872 the Dixon Crucible Company was making 86,000 pencils a day and selling them for five cents each. A century later, the company had twelve manufacturing plants in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

In 1986, the Dixon Venture Corporation, at 535 Secaucus Road, Secaucus, New Jersey, converted the former Dixon plant into a mixed use complex of 452 apartments, retail units, and a health club, known as Dixon Mills. Architect James N. Lindemon of Jersey City was responsible for the renovation of the plant into turn-of-the-twentieth century townhouses. Features of the buildings have been preserved, such as the signage, twin 150 foot high smokestacks, upper story walkways, wrought iron railings, and original stoops. Within the complex, Wayne Street has been closed off to provide a two-block landscaped cobblestone pedestrian mall.

References:

"Joseph Dixon." Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920.
Erskine, Helen Worden. "Joe Dixon and His Writing Stick." The Reader's Digest Reprint. Pleasantville, NY: November 1958.
Prior, James. T., ed. "The Dixon Company Marks 150 Years," New Jersey Business February 1977:43-44.