Kilmer House

In recognition of the 100th anniversary of the passing of Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson in 1910, this is one of several posts looking at the earliest years of Johnson & Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson as our first president, and the Company’s first senior management transition.

It’s 1887 and Johnson & Johnson has grown in just one year from 14 employees in one building to 125 employees in several buildings.  Our original building from 1886, the four-story former wallpaper factory, is now the plaster mill, filled with machinery designed by founder James Wood Johnson to mass produce medicated plasters.  Now, for the first time, we have an opportunity to see what it looked like inside that building. Let’s take a short walk through.

Artist’s Rendition of the First Johnson & Johnson Building from 1886

So how can we go back to 1887 and see inside our first building?  We can do that because we’re fortunate to have in our archives the second article ever written about Johnson & Johnson.  (In case you’re wondering, the first article was a single paragraph in the March 3rd, 1886 edition of The New Brunswick Times, announcing that the three Johnson brothers had rented a building and would soon start operations.)

The Second Article Written About Johnson & Johnson, from 1887

In April of 1887, a publication called The Detroit Pharmaceutical Era did an article on the manufacture of medicinal plasters (another name for medicated plasters, the popular medical product of the day).  Since the Johnson brothers changed the way in which those products were made and improved their efficacy, the article focused on how Johnson & Johnson manufactured them.

A Medicated Plaster

Medicated, or medicinal plasters delivered medicine directly through the skin.  They were made of rubber infused with a medication – commonly to generate heat or pain relief – and they were sticky on one side.  You peeled off the backing and stuck the plaster, or as big a piece of the plaster as you needed, directly over the part of the body needing the medication, and removed it when you were done. 

The Johnson & Johnson buildings in 1887.  Our first building, the former Janeway and Carpender wallpaper factory, is the building on the left.

Here’s a detailed eyewitness description of Johnson & Johnson in 1887, from the writer at The Detroit Pharmaceutical Era who came here to do the article:

“The factories of the house of Johnson & Johnson stand back from the depot of the Pennsylvania Railroad at New Brunswick, N.J. about 150 feet.  They are large and extensive, including, as they do, three handsome brick buildings and covering an area of 8,00 square feet, or about two acres of land.  In the neighborhood of 35,000 square feet of flooring are used in the manufacture of all the products of the firm…The main building, which is devoted entirely to the manufacture of the rubber plasters, is of brick and is four stories high.  In its basement is a 200-horse power engine which furnishes power for all three of the buildings.  Back of the main edifice is a smaller one, devoted exclusively to the manufacture of mustard plasters, while on its side is still another brick building five stories in height, devoted to the manufacture of the numerous other pharmaceutical preparations turned out by the house.”   [Detroit Pharmaceutical Era, “The Manufacture of Medicinal Plasters, April, 1887] 

The products made in the five story building would have included sterile surgical dressings, sterile sutures, and adhesive tapes.   If anyone’s wondering what that basement engine room might have looked like, it probably looked a lot like this:

From our archives, photo showing the Engine Room, Old Mill, from 1894.

Here’s an employee in the drying room in our first building, hanging the flattened sheets of rubber that would be used to make medicinal plasters. 

According to the article, the drying room was directly over the boiler room, and the temperature of the drying room was never allowed to fall below 100 degrees.  Despite the heat, the drying process took a full week.  Also interesting is the fact that the employees in the illustrations are depicted wearing hats.  None of our plaster mill employees from the 1800s photographed in our archives are wearing hats in the photos; perhaps the illustrator (or the employees) felt that a hat would be more formal and proper for the important occasion of being depicted in an illustration for an article in 1887.  

Here’s an illustration of the plaster mixing and spreading room in our original building.  The machinery was designed by Company founder James Wood Johnson, who was a skilled and creative engineer.  His machinery improved the methods of mass producing medicated plasters. 

Plaster Mixing and Spreading Room, 1887, from the original Johnson & Johnson building. 

Here’s another corner of our first building, with an automatic perforating machine, for the manufacture of porous plasters — like the Belladonna Plaster shown in this post.  (Porous plasters got their name from the rows of small round holes, or perforations, in them.)  Interestingly enough, James Wood Johnson didn’t invent this complex machine.  So who did?  Here’s what The Detroit Pharmaceutical Era said:  “The machine is a complicated one that works automatically, and is the invention of Mr. R. W. Johnson.” 

The Automatic Perforating Machine, in our original building

The article described the manufacturing process in detail, and the writer was clearly impressed by the number and variety of products the new company manufactured, because he took an entire paragraph to list them.  The writer wrapped up with an overall appreciation of the entire medicated plaster industry.

“In the entire output of the country fully 160,000 pounds or 80 tons of rubber is used yearly; and when it is considered how small the quantity of rubber material necessary for a single plaster of almost infinitesimal thickness, the full extent of the enormous number made yearly and the magnitude of the industry can be appreciated.”  [Detroit Pharmaceutical Era, “The Manufacture of Medicinal Plasters, April, 1887] 

Readers of Kilmer House can certainly appreciate the opportunity to see inside our first-ever 1886 building in 1887, just a year after Johnson & Johnson started, and the glimpse of some of our early innovation in improving one of the most popular health care products of almost 125 years ago.

In recognition of the 100th anniversary of the passing of Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson in 1910, this is one of several posts looking at the earliest years of Johnson & Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson as our first president, and the Company’s first senior management transition.

Illustration of Johnson & Johnson from an April, 1887 article in the Detroit Pharmaceutical Era, from our archives.  Our first building is on the left.

Johnson & Johnson opened its doors in 1886 with fourteen employees.  By 1887, that number had grown to 125, and the Company had expanded from the original four-story former wallpaper factory building into several surrounding buildings, overseen by James Wood Johnson, who was in charge of manufacturing.  We also had a sales office managed by Edward Mead Johnson in downtown Manhattan. (It was at 32 Cedar Street, in case anyone’s curious.) 

Robert Wood Johnson

Company founder Robert Wood Johnson initially spent a lot of his time in the New York office, notifying his many friends and acquaintances in the medical products field that he had joined Johnson & Johnson, and helping get the new business off the ground.  In 1887, Robert began spending more and more time in New Brunswick.  The original fourteen employees knew him from Seabury & Johnson, but the newer employees, used to the quieter and more laid back style of James Wood Johnson, were initially in awe of Robert Wood Johnson, who created a flurry of energy and activity wherever he went.  Their first impression of R.W. – as he was known – was that he was authoritative, opinionated and had a quick temper, but once they got to know him, they liked what they saw.  Johnson had the ability to rally and inspire his employees and get them excited about the work they were engaged in – making products that would help save patients’ lives.  “’He injects his enthusiasm, his grit and his faith into everyone else, and when ‘R.W.’ says ‘It’s a go!’ we push forward with all of our strength,’” said Fred Kilmer, who ended up so inspired by Johnson that he sold his business and came to work for the Company.  [Robert Wood Johnson: The Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, Lillian Press, 1999 p. 69] 

One of the Company’s early benefits:  subsidized employee housing on Morell Street in New Brunswick

Johnson enacted a wide range of benefits for employees that made them fiercely loyal to the new company.  When R.W. wasn’t at Johnson & Johnson, he was walking downtown to talk to the local merchants about business.  He also stopped into the New Brunswick pharmacies to make sure they carried Johnson & Johnson products.  One of those pharmacies was Fred Kilmer’s Opera House Pharmacy, right down the street from Johnson & Johnson, and he and Kilmer struck up a friendship that led to Kilmer joining Johnson & Johnson as our scientific director in 1889. 

Fred Kilmer’s Opera House Pharmacy

Kilmer was a gifted writer, and he left some vivid eyewitness descriptions of his friend and employer.  Here’s one of Kilmer’s descriptions of Company founder Robert Wood Johnson that paints a picture of what Johnson was like:  Kilmer described Johnson as tall and stout, with dark hair and eyes, and a forceful, outgoing personality.  “‘If you see him you will always remember a peculiar roll of the head which accompanies his laughter and his arguments.  It is performed by dropping the chin, and ascribing there a small circle, of which the spine is the center.  It is a family roll.  He has it and all of his brothers have it…If you get into an argument with him, he will soon utter some dogmatic statement with a determined air and branch off into something else, as if he had settled the subject.  While he is undecided he is willing to listen, but when his course is once settled, I would not care for the job of turning him in another direction.’”  [Robert Wood Johnson: The Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, Lillian Press, 1999, p. 69] 

Johnson & Johnson office in 1895, with R. W. Johnson in the window looking out at the main office.

Robert Wood Johnson involved himself in every facet of the new business.  He opened the Company’s mail every morning.  He would gather a few of his managers in a room, and when the sacks of mail were brought in, they opened all of it, sorted it and responded personally to customer orders, inquiries and suggestions.  Johnson had a very good memory, and could rattle off detailed up to the minute sales figures.  He could tell you which products sold in which markets and how much they sold, how much inventory the Company had and how much could be produced and shipped in any time period, and he could recite a wide variety of economic information about the various countries in which we sold our products.   

Another facet of the business Johnson involved himself in was advertising.  Johnson & Johnson worked with a young advertiser who had bought a small agency for $500 and renamed it after himself:  J. Walter Thompson.  He and Robert Wood Johnson had been friends for several years, and Thompson personally handled the Johnson & Johnson account.  Johnson didn’t hesitate to write to Thompson with minutely detailed constructive suggestions about how to improve his ads.  (A trait his son, the future General Robert Wood Johnson, would inherit.)  Here’s an example:  “‘I return the sketch and hardly see how you can make an advertisement out of it.  It needs to have a very black background in order to throw out the white letters.’”  [Robert Wood Johnson: The Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, Lillian Press, 1999 p. 51]  (If anyone’s interested, here’s an ad campaign that Thompson worked on for us in 1910.)

Grey Terrace, Robert Wood Johnson’s New Brunswick, New Jersey House

As Kilmer House readers may know, Robert Wood Johnson lived in a big house on the corner of Hamilton Street and Easton Avenue in New Brunswick.  Every afternoon, he walked home to have lunch with his wife and three young children, relaxed for a bit in his library, and then he walked back to Johnson & Johnson to resume his business day.

The site of Grey Terrace today — a Rutgers University parking lot.  Although you can’t have lunch with Robert Wood Johnson the first, you CAN buy lunch from the Rutgers University food trucks that park on the site of Johnson’s former house.  The stone wall and short wrought iron fence that surrounded the house and property are all that remain.

One hundred years later, there are still traces of Company founder Robert Wood Johnson here in the traditions that he started:  disaster relief, support for our employees who serve in the military, and a wide range of employee benefits, not to mention three out of the four pillars of the Company’s operating model:  our broad base in human health (if there was a need in society for particular products to save lives or help people, Johnson saw to it that we developed or made those products), management for the long term and the Company’s value system that would see its full expression in Our Credo, written in 1943 by Johnson’s son.

Here are some quotes from Robert Wood Johnson the first:

“The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his courage.”

“Hire men, buy machinery and keep the wheels moving and everybody busy.”  

“We are all fortunate, in that we are engaged in manufacturing products to be used throughout the world for the relief of pain and suffering.”

And, of course, when he liked an idea and wanted to move forward with it: “It’s a go!”

A Design Classic!

1.  What do BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages have in common with the @ symbol on your computer keyboard?  They’re both part of the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Here’s the link to the BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandage entry on the MOMA design collection website.  (By the way, because the product is in the collection of an art museum, Earle Dickson, the inventor of BAND-AID®, is listed as the artist on the site!)

2.  There was a fourth Johnson in the early days of Johnson & Johnson!  William Johnson, a relative of Company founders Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson, was listed as being in charge of the Company’s facilities in Highland Park, New Jersey – right across the river from New Brunswick.  Here’s a photo from our archives of one of the Highland Park buildings he managed:

The Old Suspensory Mill in Highland Park, New Jersey

3.  Decades ago, we built a plant in Texas that was completely underground.  Here’s a photo.

Strange But True:  We Have an Underground Plant

4.  Two very popular consumer products from the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies started out as surgical products.  Can you name them?  LISTERINE® Antiseptic and the K-Y® Brand of products.  LISTERINE® was first formulated in 1879 as a surgical antiseptic, and the K-Y® Brand — originally including an analgesic (K-Y® Analgesic) and a surgical lubricant (K-Y® Lubricating Jelly).  What else do they have in common?  They both joined the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies as part of an acquisition:  LISTERINE® was part of the acquisition of Pfizer Consumer Healthcare in 2006, and K-Y® was part of our acquisition of a small company called Van Horn & Sawtell in 1917.  Van Horn & Sawtell made sutures and other surgical products.

Early LISTERINE® Bottles and K-Y® Analgesic

5.  We once had a building in New Brunswick that had stained glass windows representing the different departments in Johnson & Johnson.  The windows were created especially for the Company, and each window pictured a different employee selected to represent his or her department.

6.  Johnson & Johnson has something in common with the Empire State Building and the Louvre. And that would be…architects.  In the 1930s, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the architectural firm that had just finished building the world’s tallest building when it was completed in 1934 – the Empire State Building, was hired to build the one-story Personal Products Company plant in Central New Jersey.   So what about the Louvre?  I.M. Pei, the architect who built the modern glass and steel entrance to the Louvre, also designed and built our World Headquarters in New Brunswick, and the headquarters of our Consumer operating company, also in New Jersey.

Charles Heber Clark:  Board Member and Humorist

7.  In the early days of Johnson & Johnson, a member of our Board of Directors was ranked alongside Mark Twain as a writer and humorist, and he even may have inspired Twain to write A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.   That Board member was Charles Heber Clark, who wrote under the pen name Max Adeler.

Joyce Kilmer: Poet, Author, Soldier…and writer for Johnson & Johnson

8.   And while we’re on the topic of writers, Joyce Kilmer, the famed World War I poet and son of Company scientific director Fred Kilmer, wrote articles for some early Johnson & Johnson publications.  It would have been hard for him to refuse…his father was the editor!

Dr. Grosvenor’s Bellcapsic Plaster:  if the package looks like a cigar box, that’s because it was originally a cigar box!

9.  The Johnson brothers were very resourceful when it came to packaging the Company’s early products.  In our early days, Johnson & Johnson bought cigar boxes from the local cigar box manufacturer in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to use as packaging for some of our medicated plasters.

And if observant blog readers have noticed that these jars look like fruit jars, they would be absolutely correct!  There was also a fruit jar manufacturer in New Brunswick, and we bought jars from them to package some of our sterile dressings.  Why?  Because the jars could be hermetically sealed to keep the dressings sterile.  Besides reinventing existing packaging over 100 years ago, we also were one of the very first to use a strange new packaging innovation from another local manufacturer that’s now a standard — collapsible tubes.  Here’s JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap in a collapsible tube.

The old Temple Radio Plant in Chicago

It’s 1933 — the depths of the Great Depression.  The economy is struggling, the U.S. has a staggering 25% unemployment rate, and the New Deal legislation is in its early stages.  Most of American industry is cutting back.  But for Johnson & Johnson, it’s time to open a plant in Chicago. 

Like everywhere else, Chicago had been hit hard by the Depression, but 1933 did hold some bright spots.  Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry opened in 1933.  Chicago hosted the World’s Fair that year, highlighting a century of progress, and the first All Star baseball game was played at Comisky Park, with Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth in the lineup.  Ruth hit the first ever All Star Game home run, and his team won the game. 

But, still…why did Johnson & Johnson open a major Midwestern plant during the worst of the Depression, and why in Chicago?

The founding Johnson brothers (from left, Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson, Edward Mead Johnson) who began the Company’s tradition of managing for the long term.

One of the many Johnson & Johnson traditions going all the way back to our founding in 1886 is prudent long-term management of the Company.  As a result, Johnson & Johnson was able to not only weather the financial crises of 1893, 1907 and 1929, but it came out stronger each time.  This philosophy was combined with the demand for the Company’s medical and consumer products, which had changed the way surgery was practiced and gave consumers a growing number of safe, reliable products they could use in the home.  So although Johnson & Johnson did have to tighten its belt during the Depression, it was in a good position to continue its steady and responsible growth.  Another big factor in the decision to open the Chicago plant was summed up best by Robert Wood Johnson:  “…we were developing new ideas, new machines, new processes, new ways of doing things.  These called for more than additional space; they demanded a new factory in which we could develop and test departures from old, established methods.”  [Robert Johnson Talks It Over, Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ, 1949, chapter 17, “Johnson & Johnson, Chicago”, p. 65]

Robert Wood Johnson, circa 1930s

Robert Wood Johnson, son of the founder by the same name, was in his second year of leading the Company.  He was putting in place his philosophy of decentralization, which could be summed up as:  “Be as local as you can be.”  Johnson – and Robert Hayden, the Company’s vice president of manufacturing at the time — wanted Johnson & Johnson to be seen as a local Midwestern business, part of the community there and not as some firm from back East that people really didn’t know all that well.  Besides, Chicago was one of the country’s major railroad and highway hubs, which would help the Company ship its products out West much faster and more efficiently.  The Company already had a small suture plant in Chicago, and the general manager of that plant was enlisted to help find a good location.  I’ll let Robert Wood Johnson describe what happened:

“…sites and factories were easy to find, but we were planning for the future, not merely for 1933.  We therefore continued our search until we found a location that would give us what we needed for many years to come.  We discovered it in the Clearing Industrial District, a modern development in the southwestern part of Chicago.  The site had plenty of space – several acres – and a good one-story factory with a fine, imposing entrance.  There was also a modern office building that seemed to be just right for our needs.”  [Robert Johnson Talks It Over, Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ, 1949, chapter 17, “Johnson & Johnson, Chicago”, p. 66]

Our historic Chicago Operations

Here’s a picture of the site they chose.  The main building was the former Temple Radio plant and you can see from that photo that it had great art-deco architectural features, including the “fine, imposing entrance” that so impressed Robert Wood Johnson.

Hundreds of unemployed Chicagoans lined up in front of the plant to find jobs, and a number of them were hired to work at the new Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies facility.  When a brochure on the Chicago plant’s history was published in 1968, many of those Depression-hired employees were still there.

Nine Chicago employees in 1970 who were with the Company since the plant opened in 1933

The new Chicago plant proved to be so efficient that its first product line (MODESS® Sanitary Napkins) was in production just one month after workers were hired and the plant opened.  During World War II, the Company’s Midwestern plant made an enormous contribution to the war effort, which was recognized by its earning of an Army-Navy “E” Award for Excellence.  The plant also supported Bond Drives and other efforts during the war. 

Employees in Chicago Celebrate Earning an  Army-Navy “E” Flag During World War II

The Chicago facility lived up to its mission of providing a place to try new things, and it was one of the first Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies locations to enter the computer age in 1964 with the installation of a massive IBM computer with a card system.  In 1967, that was upgraded to an IBM Model 360 Tape-Disk-Tele-Processing Computer that was dubbed a “miracle of electronics” because it could run three different programs at the same time.  One of the things it did was run the quality control system, which became a standard for the Company and earned Johnson & Johnson a late 1960s recognition by the American Quality Control Association as a leader in the quality control field.

Part of the Chicago facility in 1968 – home to a “miracle of electronics” computer!

At its height, the Chicago operations occupied eleven buildings producing 492 products, with a major Midwestern shipping center for the Company.  It was the site of many developments in engineering, operations, and quality assurance programs for Johnson & Johnson and it pioneered electronic records keeping for the Company – something we take for granted today, but which was new when it was introduced in Chicago over four decades ago  — with those room-sized computers.

This July marks the third anniversary of the Kilmer House blog.  The first post went up on July 12, 2006 – the first-ever blog post on the first-ever blog for Johnson & Johnson.  And now, three years later, to celebrate that milestone, I thought I’d take you on a behind the scenes tour of some Johnson & Johnson history that’s hidden in plain sight…if you know where to look.  So in honor of three years of Kilmer House, here’s my first video post:

I also want to say a huge thank you to the Kilmer House community – all of you worldwide who read the blog, and everyone who has written in with comments, questions and shared their stories from their own and from Johnson & Johnson history.  I hope you keep reading!

What did Johnson & Johnson have in common with Robert Livingston, one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence?

Give up?  They both ran steamboats on the Raritan River in New Brunswick.  And here’s another fact:  Livingston’s tenure as U.S. Minister to France from 1801 to 1804 would have an impact on Johnson & Johnson over 80 years later.  How, you ask?  Because Livingston teamed up with inventor Robert Fulton to invent…you guessed it:  the first working steamboat in Paris.

So…what was Johnson & Johnson doing with steamboats?  Wasn’t it enough that we had our own power plant, our own water filtration system and our own glassblowers? Apparently not, because we had our own steamboats too.  And what did we use them for?  The steamboats were used to transport Johnson & Johnson products to the ports in New York for distribution to places in the U.S. and around the world.

Steamboat Robert W. Johnson docked in front of Johnson & Johnson

A much earlier Kilmer House post pointed out that, although it was a fortunate coincidence that Johnson & Johnson came to be located in New Brunswick, the city turned out to be a very good place for a new business because of the railroad and the river.  Johnson & Johnson shipped its product by rail, but it turned out that water was a faster way to get our goods to the ships in New York that would take them to more distant markets in the U.S. and around the world.  The city of New Brunswick already had steamship docks due to shipping businesses that started with Robert Livingston and steamboat inventor Robert Fulton, and continued with Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.  So with the river right there, it was natural for Johnson & Johnson to use boats in distributing its products.  Because many of the products Johnson & Johnson made were essential items like sterile dressings and sutures, the Company wanted to ensure their constant availability.  This was especially true during World War I when the Company was producing bandages and surgical dressings around the clock to meet demand.  Having its own steamboats was a way for Johnson & Johnson to make sure that it could quickly and reliably get huge quantities of products to the ports in New York.  Having its own steamboats reduced shipping times to same-day instead of more than a day.

Steamboat James W. Johnson on the Raritan River, 1915

A 1908 edition of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER explained:

“For the most part all goods shipped from the Johnson & Johnson factories at New Brunswick are transported by the steamer ‘Robert W. Johnson,’ which navigates the Raritan River and Bay.  The steamer landing in New Brunswick being directly on the factory grounds.  New Brunswick is situated on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad between New York and Philadelphia, thus in shipping by rail there is often a delay in their trans-shipment at connection points. The Steamer ‘Robert W. Johnson’ leaves the factory of Johnson & Johnson every morning and arrives in New York in less than four hours…this method obviates the numerous handlings of the goods with the constant danger of damage and insures prompt transportation.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER Vol. I, No. 3, July 1908, pp. 30-31]

The Company’s Steamboats Docked on the Icy Raritan, Winter of 1917

The steamboats were owned and operated by a subsidiary called the Middlesex Transportation Company.  Many of New Brunswick’s other industries such as wallpaper manufacturers Janeway and Carpender (alert blog readers may remember them as the former owners of the first Johnson & Johnson building), also relied on our steamboats to transport their goods.  The steamboats also brought raw materials like cotton to Johnson & Johnson to be made into products. Because the Company was so reliable, the story goes that the Johnson & Johnson steamboats also were asked to carry U.S. mail to New York as well.

Johnson & Johnson started using steamboats in 1902 and had them for 33 years, until the advent of highways and trucks reduced the time to get our products to New York from four hours by water to just one hour by highway, ending the age of the Johnson & Johnson steamboats at the beginning of 1936.

In 1934, Johnson & Johnson built a new plant in Central New Jersey for the Company’s newest affiliate company, Personal Products Company.  What did that plant have in common with the recently completed Empire State Building?  It certainly wasn’t height.  And it wasn’t part of the climax of a famous movie, either.    Give up?  The buildings had the same architect.  It was all part of Robert Wood Johnson’s “factories can be beautiful” plan. 

That architectural firm that built the plant was Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, who in 1934 had just completed the world’s tallest building, a building that’s still one of the major New York landmarks today.  Johnson’s engaging them raised quite a few eyebrows….including those of the architects, who were flummoxed when, after designing the world’s tallest building, they were asked to design a one-story building.  Johnson wanted the new plant to be expandable in four directions, and to use cutting-edge new building materials like aluminum and plastic.  He also wanted it to be on a huge, landscaped piece of land.  This building would clearly be a far cry from the typical late 19th century dingy, crowded, brick industrial buildings.

 One of the “Factories Can be Beautiful” Buildings in Central New Jersey

In the 1930s, much of American industry still manufactured goods in buildings that were drab, many decades out of date, frequently unsafe, and not very nice to look at.  So starting in the 1930s, Johnson & Johnson started designing and building plants like the one above that were sleek, modern and attractive, and would not look out of place in any community.  In fact, occasionally some of the sites were mistaken for modern college campuses.

Part of the Old Eastern Surgical Dressings Plant Complex

The typical manufacturing facility in the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies was low, often one story, with a light colored exterior, and lots of windows, and it was situated in the middle of a huge expanse of landscaped lawn and trees.  Some of the landmark “factories can be beautiful” buildings in New Jersey have distinctive blue-tinted glass windows…such as the original headquarters of Ethicon, Inc.

The original Ethicon, Inc. building…with its marble facade, terrace and distinctive windows. 

Others use design elements from local architecture, like the pointed archways on this one from 1971. 

These distinctive, beautiful and eye-catching plants and facilities that were built as part of this “factories can be beautiful” philosophy came to be a hallmark of Johnson & Johnson companies across the world.  The building’s facades were all different, and they were designed specifically so that workers could look out and see greenery and nature.  Manufacturing areas were bright and airy, and were often air-conditioned. 

Manufacturing area in one of the “Factories Can Be Beautiful” plants 

Inside the plant, machinery had specially-designed covers that matched the pastel-colored walls, and kept oil and other materials from soiling the white uniforms the manufacturing employees wore.  The lobbies and reception areas were plush and beautiful, and employees were encouraged to use the lobby entrances – not a back entrance — when they came to work in the morning, so that they would feel it was “their building.” 

The Lobby of one of the Factories Can Be Beautiful Buildings

Johnson & Johnson del Peru S.A., 1971, view of exterior with garden

When asked why he went to such great expense and effort to build these kind of plants, Robert Wood Johnson said that, in the long run, they were less expensive because employees took pride in their workplaces, had higher morale working in such a setting, and thus made better quality products.  Also, the beautiful plants were looked upon by communities as an asset.   

But because Johnson & Johnson has always operated on good business principles, the Company made sure that even though they were going the extra mile and creating something special with these buildings, it was still done in a responsible and cost-effective manner.  Here’s what Robert Wood Johnson said:

“It’s easy to plan a fine building, if you let your imagination run wild and send costs sky high; but it is far from easy to erect a good modern factory at a cost that will permit profits.  When you do that you make a real contribution, not only to your own company, but to industry as a whole.”  [Robert Johnson Talks it Over, Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ, 1949, p. 50]

Frederick Barnett Kilmer

Fred Kilmer, the Company’s Chief Scientific Officer from 1889 to 1934, took his role as a scientist, writer, guardian of public health and educator of the public very seriously.  But he was not against ever so subtly lightening things up a little bit every now and then.  Here’s an example from a 1914 issue of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER.  Sandwiched between articles on the importance of First Aid, advice for druggists on how to effectively decorate drugstore windows to increase their business, and the proper use of Synol Soap, the Company’s antibacterial soap, is a picture of…Fred Kilmer’s cat.

Tom Rutgers, with a “Don’t Mess with Me” look

As everyone who’s ever put together a publication knows, you need to fill up the empty spaces on the page.  Kilmer, as editor of the MESSENGER and its sister publication for doctors and surgeons, RED CROSS NOTES, often included small ads for Johnson & Johnson products, photographs of pharmacies proudly sent in by pharmacists throughout the U.S. and the world, and pictures sent in by parents of their babies and toddlers playing with JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder tins.

Occasionally the reader of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER would find a photograph of a dog whose coat was kept clean and healthy with Lister’s Dog Soap (yes, that was a Johnson & Johnson product) or a famous athlete or actress of the day who used one of our products.

Kilmer was a thorough professional and in THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, he was dedicated to educating retail druggists about the importance of pharmacy as a profession, about how to increase their business (and by extension, the Company’s sales) and on the Company’s philosophy and the science behind Johnson & Johnson products.  But very rarely, he let something more personal show through.  In one issue, he ran a short poem by his son Joyce Kilmer.  In another issue, it was a picture of his cat.

Of course, Kilmer, being the devoted writer and educator that he was, couldn’t just run a picture of his cat by itself.  Just as Kilmer’s son Joyce had helped his father by writing articles for Johnson & Johnson publications, Tom Rutgers the cat also lent a hand (or a paw) in service of Kilmer’s educational goals.  Kilmer accompanied Tom’s photo with a short article, “The Drug Store Cat,” which traced the earliest origins of medicine and pharmacy all the way back through the ages to alchemy and magic, which were of course were associated with…cats, and black cats, specifically.  (Alert blog readers will note from the picture above that Tom Rutgers was a black cat.)  Kilmer went so far as to say:

“A cat is a most useful adjunct of a well appointed drug store.  Reputed as the embodiment of wisdom and mystery, a black cat might, with propriety, be chosen as one of the symbols of pharmacy.”  [THE RED CROSS MESSENGER, Vol. VI, No. 12, May 1914, p. 711]

Another reason cats were probably such a “useful adjunct of a well appointed drug store” in the late 1800s and early 1900s was the fact that they kept mice away.  So why the name Tom Rutgers?   It could have been for any number of reasons, such as the proximity of Kilmer’s College Avenue house to Rutgers (his address was listed as 147 College Avenue by the 1906 Yearbook of the American Pharmaceutical Association)…or the fact that Kilmer’s son Joyce went to Rutgers Prep, and then to Rutgers College before finishing his education at Columbia University….or it could have been something else entirely.  Only Tom Rutgers, the feline symbol of pharmacy, and Fred Kilmer, the former retail pharmacist, knew the answer.

By the way, it’s remarkable how many of the people in the early history of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies started as clerks in retail pharmacies:  Robert Wood Johnson the first, Fred Kilmer, Alexander Lewis, the Company’s early corporate secretary and head of sales; the McNeil brothers and Revra DePuy, who founded the first-ever orthopaedics Company. Here’s a picture of Fred Kilmer (left) and Alexander Lewis (right), posing for an early ad:

Hmmm…it seems Kilmer House is back to the water theme this week.  So, here goes:

How did a serious water shortage in the Nineteen-teens end up benefiting the residents of New Brunswick?  And what did Johnson & Johnson have to do with that?

In the Nineteen-teens, the City of New Brunswick faced a problem.  The city got its water supply from a local brook, and the brook was going dry.  The only other water source nearby – the river — was too muddy to use without treating the water first….and anyway, it would take too much time to build a filtration plant to do any good in the face of an immediate shortage.  But there already was a city resident with its own water treatment plant, and New Brunswick turned to that resident for help.  Who was that resident?  It was Johnson & Johnson.