President, Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company
Centurion, 1892–1926
Born 14 April 1839 in Osnabrück, Germany
Died 6 August 1926 in Newburgh, New York
Buried Canarsie Cemetery
, Canarsie, New York
Proposed by Gustav H. Schwab, Alfred Roelker, and Hugo Wesendonck
Elected 3 December 1892 at age fifty-three
Seconder of:
Century Memorial
Albrecht Pagenstecher had been a member of the Century for thirty-four years; he was a frequent visitor at the Club. His business career was chiefly associated with the substitution of wood pulp for the old “rag basis” in the making of newsprint paper. This innovation, for which Pagenstecher was chiefly responsible in this country, has presented many divergent considerations. Some are a matter of regret, affecting as they do on the one hand the devastation of forests under the insatiable demand of the wood pulp manufacturers and the newspaper publishers, on the other the rapid deterioration of the printed news sheet, so that a New York newspaper of 1900 is far less durable and legible on the files than a copy of the London Times of 1800. Yet it is difficult to conceive how the increasing scope and circulation of the present-day newspaper would have been possible without the new material on which to print it.
Alexander Dana Noyes
1927 Century Association Yearbook