A decade in review: New Era Cap closes Buffalo factory, moves headquarters downtown

New Era Cap Co., one of the world's leading manufacturers of baseball caps, phases out its Buffalo factory at 540 Seneca in 2004, citing the plant's excess production capacity and outmoded layout.

  
The last of 550 production workers employed at the factory are laid off or consolidated into the company's facilities at Derby, New York. The historic, 400,000 sq. ft. factory complex, constructed from 1901 to 1927 in phases by the F. N. Burt Co., is mothballed by New Era Cap. It remains vacant in 2010, awaiting a creative reuse.

 
In 2006, New Era Cap makes economic development headlines when it moves its world headquarters from Derby to new digs in downtown Buffalo at the former Federal Reserve Bank at 120 Delaware Avenue. Bringing 300 jobs to the downtown core, New Era Cap finds the right fit in the city where it started business 86 years earlier.