Ebenezer Butterick (29 May 1826 – 31 March 1903) was an American inventor, manufacturer, and fashion business executive, born in Sterling, Massachusetts. Regarded as the inventor, together with his wife Ellen Augusta Pollard Butterick, of tissue paper dress patterns, also known as graded sewing patterns, which the couple began selling in 1863. The discovery revolutionized home sewing. The premise of graded sewing patterns reportedly came from Mrs. Butterick's frustration with design which came in only one size, which almost always necessitated manual grading of the design using wax chalk on the fabric before sewing could commence - this was a laborious and frustrating process. Different-sized, or graded, designs would eliminate the need for such extensive pre-work, and Ebenezer began work on the templates, ultimately settling for tissue paper templates which could be easily folded and shipped across the country. The Buttericks' graded templates for home sewers became massively popular, as they made modern fashions and styles accessible to people that were too poor to buy pre-made new clothing, but could afford fabrics or modified old clothes to fit the templates. The Butterick family began selling their patterns from their Sterling, Massachusetts home, in 1863, and the business expanded so quickly that, in one year, they had a factory at 192 Broadway Street in New York City. At first producing only boy's and men's clothing patterns, the Buttericks expanded to dresses and women's clothes in 1866.
In the 1867, Butterick began publishing with the magazine, Ladies Quarterly of Broadway Fashions, and followed with the introduction, in 1868, of the monthly Metropolitan. Both magazines offered fashion news and advice, as well as mail order services for Butterick's designs. In 1873, E. Butterick & Co. began publishing The Delineator, which, by the turn of the century, became the premiere women's fashion magazine in the US. Mrs. Butterick died in 1871. By 1876, E. Butterick & Co. had 100 branch offices and 1,000 agencies throughout the United States and Canada, and was becoming steadily more popular internationally, especially in Europe. In 1881, the company reorganized as Butterick Publishing Company, and Ebenezer became its secretary, serving in this role until 1894. In 1903, the Butterick building was designed and constructed on Spring Street and MacDougal Street in downtown Manhattan, and is still the home of the company. The same year, Ebenezer Butterick died in Brooklyn, New York, aged 76. On June 30, 1907, the New York Times published a story concerning the electric sign on the western side of the Butterick Building: "[T]he Butterick Company has been moved to announce that the sign really is the largest in the world and to give some interesting facts about it. The initial B is 68 feet high, about the height of an ordinary five-story building. The smaller letters are 50 feet high and 5 feet wide. About 1,400 electric lights are used for the illumination. It practically requires all the time of the one man to watch the sign and replace burned out lights."
