By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
With the ceremonial push of a shovel, ground has been broken for the construction of a warehouse and distribution center for a furniture manufacturing company on Wyckoff Mills Road.
Modway Furniture plans to build a 634,000-square-foot building at 329-359 Wyckoff Mills Road, on the site of the former National Lead Co. The company is relocating from sites in South Brunswick and Cranbury townships.
Modway Furniture’s move will create about 150 new jobs, according to East Windsor Township officials. It will generate significant tax revenue and transform a long-time eyesore into a modern commercial center, officials said.
The project is expected to be completed and occupied during the first half of 2018.
The National Lead Co. property and an adjacent property had been designated as "an area in need of redevelopment" by the Planning Board and Township Council in 2015, clearing the way to find new uses for the land.
The National Lead Co., which was best known for its Dutch Boy line of house paints, moved its research and development operation from Brooklyn, N.Y., to East Windsor Township in 1961, according to the Hightstown-East Windsor Historical Society.
The company built a research and development building and a water tower, which was painted with the Dutch Boy logo – a blond-haired boy, sometimes holding a paint brush – on it. The water tower became a landmark on the New Jersey Turnpike, one mile north of the Hightstown exit.
The first building, which was occupied in 1962, was soon joined by a second research and development building after the National Lead Co. brought its titanium products division to East Windsor Township, according to the historical society.
Titanium oxide began to replace lead, which was a prime ingredient in paint. The goal was to increase the "whiteness" in white paint, as the company began to phase out the use of lead for that purpose. Lead had begun to be viewed as a hazardous material.
Lead was banned in the production of interior paints in 1971, and banned in exterior paints in 1978. Lead was removed from gasoline in 1974. The National Lead Co. sold its Dutch Boy paint division and changed its name to NL Industries.
The newly renamed NL Industries shifted its focus to providing support services to the oil industry. The company began to downsize its research and development staff in the 1970s, and finally closed its Hightstown laboratories in 1980.
