6.2.22 - Opened during WWII, Bristol Myers in Syracuse was the world’s biggest penicillin maker by 1950
'Standing in front of officials from the Army, local politicians, and other dignitaries on the morning of Dec. 9, 1943, Lee Bristol, vice president of Bristol Myers, could not help feeling some hometown pride.
While dedicating and laying the cornerstone of his company’s penicillin plant on Thompson Road in East Syracuse, he declared:
“As one who was born in this city, I take special pride in the fact that penicillin, the wonder drug of modern science, is to be made here.”
With World War II raging across Europe and the Pacific, increased production of the life-saving antibiotic, first discovered by Alexander Fleming in London in 1928, was desperately needed.
Syracuse was ready to answer the call.
During his remarks that day, Bristol said that the production of penicillin would be the city’s “brilliant crown of achievement in the war effort.”
Within months, the Syracuse facility had made enough penicillin to treat all of the Allied soldiers wounded during the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
By the end of the decade, the Syracuse plant was generally considered the world’s largest producer of penicillin.
Bristol Myers’ roots in Central New York began well before 1943.
William Bristol and John Myers founded the company in 1887 as the Clinton Pharmaceutical Company in the Oneida County village of Clinton.
It had a staff of nine people, a weekly payroll of $32 and somehow made more than 3,000 products.
The company grew quickly and moved to Syracuse in 1889 to take advantage of the city’s burgeoning railroad system. After moving to Brooklyn in 1898, it changed its name to Bristol Myers.
When Bristol Myers purchased the small Cheplin Laboratories on Syracuse’s West Taylor Street in the spring of 1943, the news made barely a ripple in local newspapers.
“Bristol-Myers Company today announced its purchase of Cheplin Biological Laboratories at Syracuse,” the Herald-Journal reported on the 12th page of its April 8, 1943 edition. “Present policies of the laboratories will be continued without change.” '
Read Full Syracuse.com Article Here