Father Pitt

Now an office building poetically called 2100 Wharton Street, this enormous warehouse covers almost an entire block of the South Side. It was built for the Gimbels department store in the 1920s,⁽¹⁾ when it would have had rail access to the Pennsylvania Railroad spur that ran right down the middle of 21st Street.

Below we see it from the riverfront, looming over South Side rowhouses in the middle distance.

Addendum: The warehouse was built in about 1924; the architects and engineers were James P. Piper and Henry M. Kropff.⁽²⁾

Footnotes

1. Our source is the CBRE real-estate site. (↩)
2. Source: The American Contractor, September 22, 1923: “Warehouse: $700,000. 6 sty. & bas. 21st & Wharton sts. Archt. & Engr. James P. Piper & Henry M. Kropff, 2237 Oliver bldg. Owner The John Eichleay, Jr., Co., John P. Eichleay, 1st v. pres., S. 20th & Wharton sts. Brk. Sketches.” The John Eichleay, Jr., Company was a big engineering company known for, among many other things, moving whole buildings intact. (↩)

Share