George A. Fuller - The Fuller Company After Fuller

The Fuller Company After Fuller

Following the death of Fuller, Harry S. Black, Fuller's son-in-law, took over as president of the Fuller Company and aggressively expanded its capitalization and operations, merging it with smaller companies, and bringing on to the company's board of directors such men as Henry Morgenthau, Sr., former New York City mayor – and Tammany Hall man – Hugh J. Grant, and banker James Stillman and creating what became known as the "skyscraper trust". In 1902, he took the company public, listing it on the New York Stock Exchange, and then put together a merger with Alliance and New York Realty to create a new $66 million dollar company, the United States Realty and Construction Company; the Fuller Company – which by then had offices in New York, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Pittsburgh – would remain an independent company under the umbrella of the new entity.

Black announced:

The new company will undoubtedly enter foreign fields, with the view of introducing steel construction in cities like London, Paris and Berlin. Its relations will be very close to the United States Steel Corporation, and naturally, as we will be the largest consumers of structural steel in the world, our terms as to price and delivery will be most favorable.

Indeed, Black had constructed the new company's board of directors with an eye for its need for steel and rail transport. It included Charles Schwab of U.S. Steel, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Charles Tweed of Southern Pacific, Charles Francis Adams, former head of Union Pacific, and representatives from J.P. Morgan and the Mutual Life Insurance Company. Since Black had put together U.S. Realty, he naturally expected to be named the company's president, but the board passed over him and selected Bradish Johnson, president of New York Realty, one of the firms folded into the new conglomerate.

U.S. Realty's stock never performed as expected, although the members of the board did receive substantial salaries and large dividends on the stock they owned, even as the company was underpeforming. When the Fuller Company was implicated in the corruption of the building trades union leader, Samuel Parks, its stock fell. Board members dumped their stock and left the company, but Fuller was buying up stock at the same time. He took control of the company, naming a new board which made Black president.

Among the many buildings constructed by the Fuller Company under Black were the Pennsylvania Station, the Flatiron Building, R.H. Macy's flagship store on Broadway and 34th Street, lauded at the time as the biggest store in the world, the New York Times Building in Times Square, the Plaza Hotel on Grand Army Plaza and Central Park South and the Savoy-Plaza Hotel across Fifth Avenue, the biggest hotel in the world at the time, designed by McKim, Mead & White, and demolished in 1964. In Chicago, Fuller built the Stevens Hotel, designed by Holabird & Roche.

The Fuller Company was liquidated and sold in 1970.