Brooklyn Union Gas Company

Product Details

Historical Context

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The Brooklyn Union Gas Company was originally established in 1825 as the Brooklyn Gas Light Company.

In the face of low profits because of price wars and stiff competition from electric light, Brooklyn, Fulton, and five other gas companies combined to form the Brooklyn Union Gas Company. Incorporated in 1895, the new company, which served 106,650 customers in Brooklyn and 1,400 in Queens, also included Citizens Gas Light Co., Metropolitan Gas Light Co., Nassau Gas Light Co., Peoples Gas Light Co., and Williamsburg Gas Light Co.

In the early 1900s the New York State legislature created the New York Public Service Commission, which began regulating rates. In 1906 the Public Service Commission established the “80-Cent Gas Law” which reduced the price of gas by 20 percent. Brooklyn Union Gas fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court but lost—regulation was there to stay. The 80-Cent Gas Law was followed by the Dollar Gas Law in 1923 and by other regulated rates in subsequent years.

Between 1910 and 1926 business virtually doubled. To meet the demand, Brooklyn Union Gas constructed a vast new coal-gasification plant at Greenpoint. Opened in 1928, the new Greenpoint Works replaced five older plants at 60 percent of the cost. Built on 115 acres of land on Newtown Creek, the Greenpoint Works used both the coke-oven method and the water-gas method to produce new supplies.

Later, to supplement what it could manufacture at Greenpoint and other plants, Brooklyn Union and other area utilities helped finance the Transcontinental Pipeline, which began in Texas in 1948 and ended 1,840 miles and two years later in Brooklyn.

In 1998, the Brooklyn Union Gas Company merged with the Long Island Lighting Company to form MarketSpan, which quickly became KeySpan.

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