Huyler's

John Seys Huyler was born in New York City on June 26, 1846, to David and Abigail Ann (née DeKlyn) Huyler. His father had a bakery and ice cream shop in Greenwich Village, probably on Jane Street. The family lived above the store. Huyler began working in his father's shop as a teenager. He began making a soft molasses candy and selling out of his father’s store.

John Huyler's first business was a shop on Broadway near 18th Street. It sold ice cream and candy. Huyler marketed his candy by placing a candy puller in the front store window, so that people walking by would stop and watch the candy being made. He saved the profit from the endeavor and put it back in his business, opening his first store in 1874. A few years later he opened three more stores in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Albany. In 1881 the company was incorporated and became known as Huyler’s, Inc. A factory was constructed at Eleventh and Bleecker Streets in New York City, to manufacture candy for sale in the various shops. This facility was quickly out-grown, and replaced around 1883 by a larger six-story factory and office located at 62-64 Irving Place and 18th Street. Huyler’s candies were manufactured in small batches, which cost more to produce, but allowed the company to monitor the quality of the products more carefully. While the main store was located at 863 Broadway, with a reputation for freshness and purity, by 1885 Huyler’s candies were sold in fashionable Newport, Rhode Island, and the resort communities of Saratoga, New York and Long Branch, New Jersey.

Milton S. Hershey arrived in New York in the spring of 1883 and worked employed at Huyler’s until 1885 when he returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to establish his own company.

Huyler made frequent trips to Europe to study new candy creations being developed in England, France, and Germany.

The six-story building at Irving Place sustained $70,000 worth of damage caused by a fire on June 18, 1889. The conflagration burned three floors of the structure completely. Another fire broke out at Huyler's on the night of January 27, 1917, in a brick building separated from the main part of the candy factory. Firemen struggled for more

than an hour to control the blaze which gutted a portion of the plant. One source believed the fire began because of defective insulation wires.

A Southern United States syndicate purchased Huyler's in December 1925.

In 1927, Huyler's candy and ice cream shops were owned by David A. Schulte, head of Schulte Stores. He envisioned opening five hundred stores within five years, to be operated by Huyler's Luncheonettes Inc. The new subsidiary maintained its offices at 110 East 13th Street.