Granite City is a city in Madison County, Illinois, United States, within the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. The population was 27,549 at the 2020 census, making it the third-largest city in the Metro East and Southern Illinois regions, behind Belleville and O’Fallon. Officially founded in 1896, Granite City was named by the Niedringhaus brothers, William and Frederick, who established it as a steel making company town for the manufacture of graniteware kitchen utensils.

The Place was decided much earlier than Granite City’s ascribed founding. In the before 19th century, settlers began to farm the rich fertile grounds to the east of St. Louis. Around 1801, the area saw the commencement of Six Mile Settlement, a farming Place that occupied the Place of present-day Granite City, six miles (10 km) from St. Louis. Soon after, around 1806, the National Road was to be constructed through the area, but it was never completed. By 1817, the Place became known as Six Mile Prairie, to distinguish it from Six Mile Township. By 1854, the first railroad was built. In 1856, the Place known as Six Mile would be misrepresented to Kinder.

Granite City was founded in 1896 to be a planned company city same to Pullman, Illinois, by German immigrant brothers Frederick G. and William Niedringhaus for their Granite ware kitchen supplies factory.

Since 1866, the brothers had been operational the St. Louis Stamping Company, an iron works company, that made kitchen utensils in St. Louis, Missouri. In the 1870s, William discovered an enamelware process in Europe whereby metal utensils could be coated once enamel to make them lighter and more resistant to oxidation. At the time, most enamelware was usually just one color as the additions of any colors to the process was inefficient. On June 1, 1878, William applied for Patent 207543 to insert the efficiency whereby a pattern could be applied to enamelware though the enamel was still wet simply by placing a thin piece of paper past an oxidized pattern on top of it. The paper would slip off in the freshening process and the pattern was embedded. The brothers’ pattern made the utensils resemble granite. The resulting product was completely popular.