Entrepreneur found success in Brooklyn’s once-thriving umbrella manufacturing business. Funds at The Trust support treatment and research of children’s diseases.
John U. Burt (1877-1956)
Minnie M. Burt (1883-1970)
If you paused at the crossroads of Nostrand and Flatbush avenues in Brooklyn during the summer of 2023 and looked up, you’d see a colorful canopy of 250 umbrellas, the first “Umbrella Sky Project” in the metropolitan area. The installation, meant to reflect cultural diversity, is even more appropriate than the artists probably imagine: A century ago, Brooklyn was the center of America’s umbrella industry, and John U. Burt was in the midst of it, crafting and selling fine umbrellas.
Burt and his partner, William Rich, manufactured umbrellas at a factory on Pacific Street in Brooklyn and sold them at a large store at 416 Broadway in Manhattan. The July 1911 issue of Trunks, Leather Goods & Umbrellas, a monthly trade journal, noted sales were up because of frequent rains, and the company was offering common stock at $1.20 a share.
“Invest your money where you may keep in touch with it,” read an ad in the Brooklyn Eagle touting the John Burt & William Rich & Son stock. “We prefer a large number of small investors because we believe that every shareholder is a live advertisement for our merchandise.”
As an indication of just how important umbrellas sales were to Brooklyn manufacturers and Manhattan retailers in the early 1900s, the trade journal devoted 16 pages to ads and “New York Umbrella News,” including the latest in “magic folding” umbrellas, pocket umbrellas, telescoping umbrellas, intricately designed handles, and fashionable parasols. A 1919 chart shows 44 percent of all umbrellas made in this country were produced in Brooklyn.
John U. Burt was born June 26, 1877, in Amity, New York. His father, George Washington Burt, was a farmhand, and his mother was the former Mary Briggs. John’s future wife, Minnie, was born in Canada to John and Sarah Vincent. Her parents died when she was young, and she and her two little sisters were placed in an orphanage in Sage, Michigan.
John married Minnie in 1897, and they lived for many years in Brooklyn. After they moved to Baldwin, Long Island, he started the Jub Umbrella Manufacturing Company there, and he and Minnie spent winters at their riverfront home in Stuart, Florida.
He died in 1956 at age 79. Minnie died 14 years later, at age 87.
The couple never had children, but they established two funds in The New York Community Trust to support treatment and research of children’s diseases.