N.J. blacksmith shop opened in 1823. Its power hammers and anvils are still going strong.

Like the Temple of Hephaestus perched on the outskirts of Athens, the slightly less-ancient Blacksmith of Trenton shop sits in a remote corner of the city, well away from the State House and the rest of the Capital District.

And Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire and a blacksmith by trade, has some fundamental traits in common with his sooty descendants of the Garden State — not least of which are resilience and determination.

The earthly heroes at the Blacksmith of Trenton have demonstrated their own remarkable resilience by keeping the shop in business for the 200 years since it opened in 1823, making it one of the oldest continually operated establishments in the state, according to Alexander Parubchenko, the master blacksmith and longtime owner of the shop who started there in 1971.

“It’s the oldest one in New Jersey,” said Parubchenko, 82, known as Sasha, who grew up in Trenton, where he still lives.

Parubchenko was recruited as an apprentice by his father-in-law, who later bought the shop when its owner died and then passed it on to his son-in-law.

“I think there’s an older one in Boston and another one south of Washington, D.C. And the history of this is that it’s the only one that’s continually been working. Never closed down since 1823. Different owners came in, owned it, worked on it, and it’s still in business.”

For two full centuries, through civil and world wars, depression, recessions, and technological advances that might have rendered less resilient, less determined craftspeople obsolete, the blacksmiths of Trenton continue to forge ahead in the digital age using little more than fire and water, hammers and anvils, along with age-old ingenuity.

When people are surprised that a commercial blacksmith shop still exists in the 21st Century, Parbuchenko informs them of his work on some of the nation’s most iconic structures and locations, including forging replacement pieces for the Statue of Liberty’s torch, and historically accurate chain fences for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

“I say that’s where a blacksmith comes in, doing that kind of craft work,” Parubchenko said during a recent visit to the shop. “That’s my love. I fill in a little niche that exists almost nowhere in America.”

Parubchenko and the younger smiths at the shop do custom railings, sconces and other fixtures for private homes and businesses. But passers by the shop on Olden Street can purchase ready-made objects like barbecue grills, firewood holders, pokers, and decorative items like horseshoes fashioned into hearts.

“When I started in ‘71, people would occasionally would bring a horse, and I would shoe the horse. I’ve done that, I’ve done donkeys. Jackasses I won’t do,” he deadpans. “There’s too many in Trenton.”

Like many other smiths, Parubchenko is also a metal sculptor, and the nation’s main trade group is called the Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America, whose president, Leigh Morrell, estimated there were some 40,000 blacksmiths on the continent, ranging from full-time professionals to “weekend warriors or hobbyists.”

In the back of the Trenton shop there’s a pair of iron horses forged in a kind of rustic-punk style by Thomas Knezevich, 24, of Trenton, a ceramic artist, woodworker, and an apprentice at the shop who got into smithing for a change of media after the coronavirus pandemic began three years ago.

Watching the blacksmiths work is riveting, a spectacle combining the hypnotic glow of hot coals and metal with the clanging of hammer on iron, each strike sending yellow sparks arcing around the anvil like a tiny fireworks display. Despite modern ventilation — a concession to modern workplace health and safety rules — the dimly-lit shop has the earthy smell of a fireplace.

The shop’s more advanced technologies include an electric blower that replaced the old bellows to fan the flames of three brick forges built by Parubchenko. A Nazel power hammer patented in Philadelphia in 1905 pounds lengths of iron into flatter strips that can be fashioned into objects using a hand-held hammer and one of the three anvils dating from the late 19th century and weighing up to 250 pounds.

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