You may have stumbled across the pharmaceutical company Pfizer in the news lately because of its $68 billion acquisition of the company Wyeth. You may also be familiar with the Pfizer label from its best-selling products Zoloft, Diflucan, and… ahem, Viagra. What you may not know is that the multi-billion dollar company started right here in Brooklyn.

In 1849, German chemist Charles Pfizer and his cousin Charles Erhart, a confectioner, started a chemical business out of a building in Williamsburg with a mere $2,500, which they borrowed from Pfizer’s father. The cousins combined their talents and had quick success with an antiseptic used to treat intestinal worms that they flavored with toffee, figuring a spoonful of sugar would help the medicine go down…

The business grew rapidly during the Civil War, when the Union Army was much in need of morphine, iodine, chloroform and camphor, all of which Pfizer provided. In 1868, Pfizer moved the company headquarters to lower Manhattan, though a plant in Brooklyn was maintained for 158 years, until 2007.

Though the company moved across the river, Charles Pfizer lived in Brooklyn, and was one of many wealthy Brooklyn industrialists to build a grand mansion on Washington Avenue in Clinton Hill. It was while he and his family lived there, that they posed for the photo above in 1870.

Pfizer’s partner Erhart passed away in 1891, and Pfizer took full control of the company. The company’s astronomic growth continued in the late 19th century when it became the leading producer of citric acid, a key ingredient in soft drinks.

In the first half of the 20th century, Pfizer would go on to pioneer the mass production of citric acid from sugar through mold fermentation, become the world’s leading producer of vitamin C, and be the first company to mass produce the “miracle drug� penicillin.

In 1941, Emile Pfizer, Charles Pfizer’s youngest son, stepped down as president, and a year later shares in the company were offered to the public for the first time. Emile was the last family member to be actively involved with running the company.

In the 1950s, Pfizer embarked on its proprietary brand as a pharmaceutical label and has been researching and producing pharmaceuticals ever since, with labs and offices all over the world, from Japan to Brazil to Canada, though their headquarters remain in Manhattan.

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2009 All materials posted on BrooklynEagle.com are protected by United States copyright law. Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues. So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net