"[3] During the 1870s, with the coming of the electrical age, Nichols put every bit of his ability and resources into producing high-grade copper on a large scale.
[2] Sometime during 1872, the company purchased land and built buildings in the Laurel Hill (now Maspeth) neighborhood in Queens, New York on Newtown Creek.
[1] This site offered good fishing, and it afforded convenient water and rail transportation to move their raw and finished material.
[4] From the 1870s to the 1880s, the sulfuric acid produced by the company from the mineral brimstone was stronger than the industry standard, thus upsetting their competition, and greatly increasing their market share.
[1] The 1880s were the decades in which both G. H. Nichols and Company and adjoining landowner Samuel Schifflin purchased and filled in a portion of Newtown Creek.
[1] Additionally, the company developed and installed a special burner at the plant to produce sulfuric acid from pyrites, a cheaper raw material with a stable price.
[5] The plants of these component companies, located near the industrial centers of Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, and in eastern Canada, produced and offered 33 products: sulfuric acid was the most important, while other principal chemicals included muriatic, nitric, acetic, and hydrofluoric acids, sulfate of alumina and related alums, and sulfate of soda (crude salt cake and refined Glauber's salt).
[6] In 1928, it was agreed that Nichols' capital would be increased and the stock issued to finance a proposed new plant in El Paso, Texas.
The construction of the El Paso refinery was covered by Phelps Dodge and Calmat Arizona purchases of Nichols' Stock.
[3] In February 1984, the company closed the El Paso refinery permanently due to high costs and changing markets.
[1] Ten years later, the postal service sued the company in response to how they did not sufficiently clean up the site; the court then ordered the Phelps Dodge Corporation to buy back the property.