- August 1, 2024
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A blacksmith's forge might seem an odd establishment to find on a property near the runway of Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.
After all, in the past, the airport has called in with safety concerns due to smoke in the air, when the forge's furnace was running on coal power, one of its multiple fuel options.
However, the Kreissle Forge and its industrial zoning are a relic of the past, just like the craft it was built to serve.
At the historic site, now part of the office of the forge's current owner, Kingston Realty, you can find a variety of relics from the days the forge provided for locations like the Ca' d’Zan and Church of the Redeemer.
“I love that every time I walk in there, it’s like a historical time-lapse,” said Ashton Hoehne, who manages the forge. “It's like, every time you walk in there, you walk into the 1940s.”
As the facility has faded into relative obscurity, so has the craft of blacksmithing.
According to Peter Kreissle, a member of the youngest generation to work in the forge, finding an individual to carry on the work today may be challenging.
“It's a viable business, certainly, but it's really labor intensive, and I think, in the U.S. in general, a lot of those businesses are falling by the wayside that were profitable, but where the owner had to be there hands-on to make it happen,” he said.
George Kreissle Sr. founded Kreissle Forge and Hand Wrought Iron Co. in 1946, according to the National Register of Historic Places. Until the sale of the forge in 2009, it provided metalwork for many Sarasota-area sites.
In 2009 the forge was sold to Marty Haas. It was purchased by Kingston Realty in 2019, according to Manatee County property records.
“We got customers all over the country that came through Sarasota,” said George Kreissle Jr., Peter Kreissle’s father.
Ralph Hoehne, owner of Kingston Realty, said he has no plans to shut down the forge, due to the difficulty of purchasing quality metals today.
Currently, it is used by the company for fixing items like the metal tools, trailers and excavator it uses to maintain its properties.
Despite the lack of a dedicated blacksmith, it still has plenty to offer in its inventory, which is for sale to the public and, like the forge, viewable by appointment.
Hoehne said the items of the forge have a durability and resistance to rust not found in metal items today, indicating a light fixture, with its copper surface and brass screws, both of which do not rust, as an example.
“Every part of this thing, from A to Z, when they put it together, has been thought about to weather the weather,” he said.
However, he said it isn't just anyone who can learn to create such items.
“This is not just welding, it's art, so you have to have somebody that's got artistic abilities, that can weld, and that also understands that they have to build these things with the parts that are going to endure through salt weather conditions," he said.
In the past, knowing the trade was often simply a part of one's upbringing.
Born in 1934, George Kreissle Jr. recalls working in the shop from the time he started in the sixth grade at Bay Haven School of Basics Plus.
“I was always at the shop,” he said. “The school bus would drop me off in the front of the shop, and I would work in there.”
He first started blacksmith work in first grade, and by high school, was working in the shop every day. Having attended art school in Massapequa, New York, he also came to draw and design the items he created.
The history of blacksmithing in the family goes back to about 1700 in southern Germany.
That is where George Kreissle Sr., the last member of the family formally apprenticed. He was born there in 1908 before immigrating to New York in 1927 and starting a blacksmith shop on Long Island in the 1930s.
There, he became connected with William J. Levitt, who is widely considered the father of modern American suburbia, creating many thousands of stair railings for Levitt’s homes in Long Island.
The railings kept him aloft during the Great Depression, said George Kreissle Jr., noting that back then, each railing sold for a mere $33.
By World War II, Kreissle had 50 to 70 employees, and continued to see success, producing components like shackles and keels for use by the United States Navy.
Eventually, he sold the shop and headed to Florida, seeking a warmer climate due to his wife Pia Kreissle’s arthritis.
“The story I always heard was that the car ran out of gas by the airport, and that's how he picked that property,” Peter Kreissle said.
At that time, the runway had yet to expand to the area.
George Kreissle Sr. worked there into the 1990s, but the forge was always a family effort.
For instance, Pia Kreissle worked in the office from 1947 to 1990, while Peter Kreissle's mother Mecky Kreissle worked there from 1960-2004, serving in the office, applying gold leaf and also driving truckloads of iron work to Tampa to be galvanized.
Peter Kreissle himself had conflicting experiences with the craft.
“As a kid, I was always given repetitious stuff, so it was horribly monotonous,” he said.
He said the work varied in difficulty, but one aspect that truly felt like physical labor was running the furnace, when it was lit every number of months.
“When you got within eight feet of it, you ran up to it, grabbed your part with the tongs and dragged it out. ... You felt like you were going to go on fire,” he said.
Particularly trying, he said, were paint days. Items that weren’t galvanized received a primer paint, sprayed through a garden hose.
His father also chimed in regarding those days.
“It sprays all over … and the paint goes all over you and the floor, and it gets slipperier and slipperier,” George Kreissle Jr. recalled. “And then you’ve got a customer comes in and wants to see the boss, but the boss is unavailable on paint days.”
“We were very lucky,” George Kreissle Jr. said, noting the forge was able to provide for many needs including his home.
Around Sarasota, and even beyond, remnants of the forge's work can still be seen.
George Kreissle Sr. frequently performed work for churches, with Church of the Redeemer receiving a majority of the pieces, among them lighting fixtures, gates and railings.
Others for which he provided included St. Martha Catholic Church in Sarasota, and St. Mary Star of the Sea on Longboat Key.
To the Bishop Museum in Bradenton, he contributed many large gates, handrailings and light fixtures.
During the restoration of the Ca' d’Zan, the forge provided two large window grills created by Peter Kreissle’s brother Joey Kreissle, now deceased, while in the 1950s, it provided the handrail on the main stair made by George Kreissle Jr.
Among its many regular customers was Columbia Restaurant, including its location at St. Armands Circle.
Anyone who has been to the city of St. Augustine may have even seen the many lights from the forge that hang there today.
Will it continue to supply these artistic creations in the future?
"We don't want to run it,” Hoehne said. “We don’t have the time to run it. But if we could get people that would come in, and somebody that would know how to do stuff ... they would have an incredible craft.”
