page_title: Industry City
section_title: Great Depression and World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Industry City / History / Zenith / Great Depression and World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: Preferred share of the Bush Terminal Company, issued 19. January 1920 Deutsch: Vorzugsaktie der Bush Terminal Company vom 19. Januar 1920
context_page_description: Industry City is a historic intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing complex on the Upper New York Bay waterfront in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. The northern portion, commonly called "Industry City" on its own, hosts commercial light manufacturing tenants across 6,000,000 square feet of space between 32nd and 41st Streets, and is operated by a private consortium. The southern portion, known as "Bush Terminal", is located between 40th and 51st Streets and is operated by the New York City Economic Development Corporation as a garment manufacturing complex.
  Founded by Bush Terminal Company head Irving T. Bush in the early 1900s, Bush Terminal was the first facility of its kind in New York City and the largest multi-tenant industrial property in the United States. The warehouses were built circa 1892–1910, the railroad from 1896 to 1915, and the factory lofts between 1905 and 1925. During World War I, Bush Terminal was used as a United States Navy base, though it returned to private ownership after the war.
context_section_description: Despite the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, the Bush Terminal Company was initially unaffected. In early 1930, Irving Bush created a new subsidiary, the Bush Services Corporation, which would allow small manufacturers in Bush Terminal to sell directly to manufacturers, thus eliminating the need for wholesalers as middlemen. Later that year, a direct seaplane route was established between Bush Terminal and Philadelphia. In 1931, in advance of a projected increase in business, the Bush Terminal Company planned to purchase $500,000 million worth of equipment, including eight electric train locomotives. To help potential tenants and customers find Bush Terminal more easily, wayfinding signs for the terminal were installed in the 36th Street subway station. A park at the site of an abandoned dumping ground was announced in 1934, and the Bush Terminal Company bought a fleet of new trucks for Bush Terminal the same year.
  
  In mid-March 1933, seven members of the Bush Terminal Company's board suddenly quit, citing past mismanagement. The Bush Terminal Company went into receivership two weeks afterward, on April 1, 1933, due to an inability to repay its outstanding bonds. A new 11-person board of directors was appointed for the duration of receivership. The receivers started cutting costs, and by May, had eliminated $100,000 in expenses. In May 1935, the receivers removed Bush as the president of the Bush Terminal Company and subsidiaries. Shortly afterward, Bush unsuccessfully sued in Brooklyn federal court to have the receivers removed based on an accusation of incompetence. That November, stockholders filed a petition in Brooklyn federal court to reorganize the Bush Terminal Company, since the company was bankrupt. The reorganization was granted by Brooklyn federal judge Robert Alexander Inch. The company exited receivership on May 1, 1936. However, equity proceedings against the Bush Terminal Company were still pending, and in April 1937, the Bush Terminal Buildings Company filed for reorganization under a court order from Inch. Legal disputes between Bush and the trustees continued, including a libel suit filed by the trustees against Bush that later had to be re-litigated.
  Operations at the terminal itself continued relatively unaltered through the 1930s. However, vacancy rates reached as high as 35% during the Depression. The United States Postal Service decided to relocate the area's post office out of Bush Terminal in 1934 because the rent was too high. At some point, the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Internal Revenue Service, and the United States Coast Guard also occupied space in Bush Terminal.
  In 1938, after lithographers signed leases for nine buildings in Bush Terminal, the Bush Terminal Company announced that the leased buildings would receive extensive renovations. The federal government, whose Works Progress Administration stored supplies such as clothing in warehouses at Bush Terminal, was another large tenant. Other large tenants included the Monarch Wine Company, which leased three buildings at Bush Terminal in 1939, and spice companies such as the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (now A&P), whose Bush Terminal tea-packing plant was once the world's largest. By 1941, ninety percent of the rentable space at Bush Terminal had been leased, and 69 of 70 one-story buildings had been rented.
  During World War II, some buildings in Bush Terminal were again used by the federal government, which used 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 m²) of storage space at the terminal. In mid-1941, the U.S. Army moved some civilian workers into more than 500,000 square feet (46,000 m²) at Bush Terminal, spread across three buildings along First Avenue, because there was no more space at Brooklyn Army Terminal. Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1944 presidential campaign tour around New York City, which occurred in October 1944, started at the Brooklyn Army Terminal and Bush Terminal.
caption: Preferred share of the Bush Terminal Company, issued January 19, 1920
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