Father Pitt

Tag: Factories

  • Hipwell Mfg Co. (the Flashlight Factory)

    Hipwell Mfg. Co.

    This building is remarkably well preserved mostly because it belonged to a company that stayed in the same business until 2005 without ever outgrowing its limited premises. The Hipwell Maufacturing Company’s most famous products were metal HIPCO flashlights, the kind that used to be ubiquitous before plastics took over. But the company (according to this page) was an important innovator in the electrical business, inventing the single-cell batteries that power our flashlights and digital cameras and toys and a thousand other things we never think of until we have to buy batteries again. It was also involved in the early stages of telephones and electric toy trains.

    Today the building is lovingly preserved as—what else?—loft apartments, as well as a banquet hall called HIP at the Flashlight Factory.

    Hipco Dry Cell Batteries
    Hipco Flashlights for Safety
    Hipco Industrial, Commercial, Residential

  • Armstrong Cork Factory from the River

    Frederick Osterling, one of Pittsburgh’s most interesting architects, designed the Armstrong Cork Company buildings, a masterpiece of functional yet attractive industrial architecture. They have now been turned into expensive loft apartments. You can see the buildings from a different angle here.

  • Heinz Factory

    Some of the old Heinz factory buildings have been turned into loft apartments, and some are still awaiting their next use. The H. J. Heinz Company was a kind of workers’ paradise when old H. J. himself ran it—there was never a strike, never a wage reduction; medical care was free; there was a library and a gymnasium, free concerts for everyone in the auditorium, and even free manicures for the women. Heinz was also notorious for pushing for federal food regulations when the rest of the food industry was fighting them tooth and nail. It was probably just the way old H. J. was constituted, but it was also priceless publicity: would you rather buy food from the company that fights federal oversight or the company that flings wide the doors and welcomes the inspectors?

  • H. J. Heinz Factory

    KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

    This photograph from Frank Curto Park, across the Allegheny, reminded Father Pitt of the old sepia gravure factory prints of a hundred years ago. So why not offer it in sepia tones? Much of the old Heinz complex is now loft apartments, but the buildings are remarkably intact, and on the National Register of Historic Places.