Chelsea Market

At the National Biscuit Company complex, begun in the 1890's in what is now west Chelsea, the ovens baked everything from Saltines to Oreos. Those ovens went cold a half century ago, when the company moved out, but newer ovens have been working over the last decade in part of that old complex - at Chelsea Market, from Ninth to 10th Avenue and 15th to 16th Street. A visit to the market offers ghostly evocations of the site's history.

In 1890, eight large eastern bakeries amalgamated to form the New York Biscuit Company and soon absorbed a dozen more firms. It was competing against another consortium, the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company in Chicago.

The New York Biscuit Company immediately began building a Romanesque-style complex of six-story bakeries on the east side of 10th Avenue, running from 15th to 16th Street, designed by Romeyn & Stever - some of these survive at midblock. The rivalry was potentially ruinous, and in 1898 the two groups, along with others, combined to form the National Biscuit Company, which soon provided half the biscuit production in the United States.

In late 1898, the new company brought out a new product, the Uneeda Biscuit, and it followed with many biscuits and cookies that are still familiar: Premium Saltines, Vanilla Wafers, Fig Newtons, Barnum's Animal Crackers (now Barnum's Animals) and, in 1913, both the Oreo (originally Oreo Biscuit) and the Mallomar.