Men's Journal

In a Brooklyn warehouse, a trove of architectural history you can own

-
By Corey Seymour

-
The Red Hook Works, E.R. Butler & Co.’s century-old 143,000-square-foot red-brick Brooklyn warehouse, is what Willy Wonka would have created had his tastes run toward mercury-glass doorknobs instead of chocolate. The place is ostensibly the headquarters of Rhett Butler’s — yes, his real name — empire of architectural hardware. (Butler owns a group of companies with pedigrees back into the 19th century and also designs and makes his own work.) If you needed, say, a hand-oxidized ladder for your library and had $500,000 to spend, he’d be your man.

A quick tour of the former can-making factory, though, reveals a wealth of other details — the world’s largest collection of antique hardware catalogs, a 14-foot-tall assaying scale from the Denver Mint, old coining presses, a couple of rare Savannah cats.

There are also a few boxes labeled paddles; whips, crops, & floggers; and mechanical vibrators. (Butler manufactures black-onyx restraining chains and other “instruments of pleasure” for erotica boutique Kiki de Montparnasse.) And if there’s any connection whatsoever there with Mr. Wonka, frankly, we don’t want to know (erbutler.com).
-
-
Click on any image below to start a slideshow.

—-

This article originally appeared in the April 2010 issue of Men’s Journal.