Trico Plant No. 1
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Trico Plant No. 1
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Trico Plant No. 1, December 2009
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| Location | 817 Washington St., Buffalo, New York |
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| Coordinates | 42°53′42″N 78°52′10″W / 42.89500°N 78.86944°WCoordinates: 42°53′42″N 78°52′10″W / 42.89500°N 78.86944°W |
| Area | 580,000 square feet |
| Architect | Plummer and Mann; Burton and Ellicott |
| Architectural style | Daylight Factory |
| NRHP Reference # | 01000053 |
| Added to NRHP | February 02, 2001 |
Trico Plant No. 1 is a historic windshield wiper factory building located in Buffalo, New York. It is an example of a style of architecture sometimes referred to as the daylight factory - a style for which Buffalo is well known. The building was mostly constructed in the 1920s and 1930s of reinforced concrete and features curtain walls of metal sash windows and brick spandrels, although a portion of the plant incorporates an historic brewery building from the 1890s. It was the original home of Trico Products Corporation, the first manufacturer of windshield wipers, and was an important factory during a period when Trico was the largest employer in the city of Buffalo. The building is also known for once being the office of John R. Oishei (1886-1968), the company's founder and an industrialist who went on to become one of the most important philanthropists in the Buffalo Niagara Region.
The Trico business continued to operate at the building until 1998, when, after having transferred most of its manufacturing facilities to Texas and Mexico, the company moved out of the building. In 2003, plans were developed and conditionally approved by the New York State Historic Preservation Office to reuse the building as a mixed residential and commercial structure. That developer subsequently died, and in 2007 the property was purchased by the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC). After sitting dormant for another four years, it was reported that BNMC planned demolition of about 95% of the building beginning on April 15, 2012 (saving only the brewery building). Meanwhile, community groups have called attention to BNMC's refusal to conduct an adaptive reuse study or evaluation process prior to demolition to assess the feasibility of building reuse.
Trico Plant No. 1 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
The Trico Plant No. 1 was the first factory built by Trico, which went on to become a major manufacturer of windshield wipers. The company was founded by John R. Oishei, who in 1917 was the manager of the Teck Theater in Buffalo, when while driving in a heavy rain he struck a bicyclist with his car. This inspired Oishei to team up with John Jepson to market the windshield wiper blade Jepson had invented. The business first rented manufacturing space in North Buffalo, but in 1919 the Pierce Arrow Motor Company contracted the manufacturer to supply manually operated wipers for its luxury cars, and in 1920 Cadillac, Packard, and Lincoln did the same. The growing business, now fully owned by Oishei, purchased and moved its operations to the former ice house of the Christian Weyand Brewery at 624 Ellicott Street, recently made vacant by Prohibition.
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