Now known as the Brass Building, this is a well-preserved example of high-class industrial architecture from the turn of the twentieth century.
By good luck, space was available when the building was converted for an addition to house elevators and stairwells.
This was a warehouse, with offices and showrooms, built in 1907 for a company that sold a wide variety of products, from ball-bearing grinders to home appliances. (Note, by the way, that its owners were among the many stubborn Pittsburghers who kept the H at the end of the city’s name through the dark days when it was officially banned.) Its 1913 catalogue is more than two thousand pages, and the title page shows us why so much effort went into making this industrial building attractive: because it had to look good in the engraving.
This picture—which is probably the architects’ rendering, since the same picture shows up in other sources even before the building was completed—shows the building before it was expanded. The architects were the William G. Wilkins Co., designers of numerous warehouses and industrial buildings in Pittsburgh, including the Frick & Lindsey Co. warehouse, now the Andy Warhol Museum. The addition to the left of the building was built in 1919 or 1920; the same architects supervised it, so it matches the rest very neatly. William Glyde Wilkins was an engineer; to do the architecting in his firm, he had the very capable Joseph F. Kuntz, who loved terra-cotta decoration.
One important line the company sold was the Gainaday brand of home appliances. In the early part of the twentieth century, middle-class families were learning to live without servants. It meant the housewife had to do the work previously done by maids and housekeepers. But this was the mechanical age: a machine could take the place of a servant. It was so efficient, in fact, that you could gain a day over the course of your week of housewifely duties.
The building was promoted as a “model warehouse,” a shining example of what could be done with this sort of building, and Pittsburgh’s Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company, the biggest name in toilets (which later merged with American Radiator to form American-Standard), took out a full-page ad in a journal of the toilet trade to boast that the plumbing fixtures were all Standard brand.
The magazine Rock Products for November 22, 1907, gave a detailed description of the building as it was going up, with—once again—the same illustration.
The immense building now being erected by the Pittsburg Gage and Supply Company at Thirtieth Street and Liberty Avenue, Pittsburg, Pa., is constructed of steel, brick and concrete fireproofing, equipped with automatic sprinklers throughout, and when completed will be the largest, most modern and thoroughly equipped supply house in the world.
For the concrete work Lehigh Portland cement was used throughout. The W. G. Wilkins Company, Westinghouse Building, were the architects, and the George Hogg Company the contractors.
The first floor will be used as a general salesroom; the second floor will be taken up by the offices and shipping departments of the company. All the other floors and the basement will be used as storage space for their mammoth stock. A notable feature of the main building is the central_tower rising more than forty feet above the roof. In this tower will be located water tanks holding 65,000 gallons, which will be used for the house supply and the automatic sprinkler system.
In connection with the building there is being erected a six-story fireproof building, in which will be manufactured the Pittsburg steam specialties. It will also contain a thoroughly modern brass foundry and pipe shop. Electric cranes are to be used throughout, and all machinery, elevators, etc., will be electric-motor-driven.
A joint siding of the Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Ohio and Pittsburg Junction railroads will afford excellent shipping facilities. Adjoining this siding they are constructing a large iron, steel and pipe warehouse, in which will be carried the largest stock in Pittsburg, if not in the Central States. Adjoining this building there is a vacant frontage of almost 100 feet, which will be used for storage and switching purposes.
The present stores and warehouses of the Pittsburg Gage and Supply Company are located at 309-321 Water Street, and its manufacturing plant at Thirty-first Street. The officers are: W. L. Rodgers, president; J. Lee Rodgers, secretary; R. F. Ramsey, treasurer; A. F. Maxwell, assistant treasurer; M. R. Porter, sales manager, and H. E. Haller, superintendent.
The Pittsburgh Meter Company building was put up at some time between 1910 and 1923, right beside the Brushton railroad yard, with a siding to serve the factory. It has been beautifully restored as the Sarah B. Campbell Enterprise Center, and it is filled with artists’ studios. One of the wonders of the big city is that we can find many buildings this size filled with artists’ studios; it reminds us why the word “civilization” means life in cities.
In the days when this building went up, it was usual for companies like this to make their main factory buildings as attractive as possible. The building itself was one of the chief advertisements for the firm, and an engraving of the building—sometimes exaggerated if the building was not as impressive as the company would like—appeared in advertisements and brochures as a guarantee that this was a solid and respectable business. Thus the entrance and the corners of this building are decorated with up-to-the-minute Art Nouveau geometric patterns in terra cotta.
This tidy little building in the back streets of the near South Side was built as the office for the Pittsburgh Foundry plant. The style brings a bit of Arts-and-Crafts to the usual industrial Romanesque. Note the patterned bricks.
The best preserved of the old factories on the South Side, this was acquired, soon after the large corner building was built, by the United States Glass Co. It now belongs to the Salvation Army, which has kept the exterior beautifully.
This Romanesque warehouse appears from old maps to have been built around the turn of the twentieth century for the Allegheny Transfer Company. It later belonged to Donaldson Transfer, as a ghost sign at the top of the building testifies (enlarge the picture to examine it closely). It has been a few things since then, and it was for sale when old Pa Pitt visited it. If you want a distinctive commercial or even residential space in one of our most pleasant neighborhoods, here is your opportunity.
A few years ago, Father Pitt took a picture of this building in sunset light, but it looks as though he never published it. So here it is now.
This building seems to have been put up for Allen Kirkpatrick & Co., but for years it was the home of the Pittsburgh Tag Co., as this ghost sign tells us. It has been vacant for some time.
The Pittsburgh Tag Company was founded in 1927, as we find in the Paper Trade Journal, December 15, 1927:
Pittsburgh, Pa.—The Pittsburgh Tag Company, care of Charles F. C. Arensberg, 834 Amberson street, Pittsburgh, recently organized with a capital of $50,000, plans the operation of a local plant for the manufacture of paper tags and kindred specialties. Mr. Arensberg will be treasurer of the new company; James M. Graham and Jonathan S. Green will be directors.
You might think this was a building that had been abandoned a century ago and somehow pickled in an unusually intact state (though a few bricks have crumbled off the top). But in fact the Allegheny Auto Spring Co. is still in business, still serving the people who need auto springs and need them done well. The painted signs are legible, so why replace them? Thus we have a glimpse of the Pittsburgh of the early automobile age surviving into the twenty-first century.
The building itself predates the current business. It was probably built in the 1890s; in the early 1900s it appears on old maps marked “Wisconsin Granite Co. Lessee”; in 1910 it is marked “Paint Whs.”; and in 1923 “Thompson & Co.” Old Pa Pitt does not know when the Allegheny Auto Spring Co. moved in, but it has to have been a couple of generations ago at the latest.
Is there a household in America that does not keep a stock of AA batteries? Or AAA, C, D? These are reliable power sources that we just drop into electrically powered devices without a moment’s thought.
You owe that convenience to the Hipwell Manufacturing Company of North Avenue. It was Hipwell that invented the unit-cell battery (see this ad-laden page and this PDF history), thus taming the demon electricity and even giving him a goofy smile.
Until a few years ago, this building still had old advertising posters in the windows, which luckily Father Pitt recorded before they disappeared.
This buff-brick building also belonged to the Hipwell Manufacturing Co, and it was featured as the Hipwell factory in company advertising—but in a form we can only call fictionalized.
The distinctive alternating round and flattened arches are there, but there are twice as many of them. The building was never this size, nor was there ever a railroad siding where boxcars were stuffed with Hipco flashlights and batteries.
The old Hipwell factory kept turning out flashlights until 2005, which accounts for its fortunate state of preservation. It is now an event venue called Hip at the Flashlight Factory.
Old Pa Pitt knew absolutely nothing earlier this morning about the C. S. Hixson Candy Company, but neither does the rest of the Internet. This article, therefore, immediately becomes the Internet’s leading and only source of information on the subject.
The building was put up in 1917, to judge by listings in the American Contractor. Excavations had begun by April 28:
Factory: $25,000. 4 sty. 59×96. Adams & Fulton sts, Priv. plans. Owner C. S. Hixson Candy Co., 1024 Vickroy st. Gen. Contr. C. E. Murphy & Sons, 516 Federal st. Carp. & conc. work by gen, contr. Brk. mas, to C. B. Lovatt, 1203 Federal st. Plmg, to Walter Gangloff, 2471 Perrysvilie av. Excav.
Brick work had started by June 9.
The company, however, did not prosper long. Its charter as a Delaware corporation was repealed in 1921 for failure to pay taxes. In 1926, The International Confectioner reported that “There will be a meeting of the stockholders of the C. S. Hixson Candy Co., Pittsburgh, Pa., Jan. 17, to consider the question of selling or leasing the business, or to liquidate it and close up.”
And there you have everything Father Pitt was able to find out in twenty minutes, which is twenty minutes more than anyone else on the Internet has ever devoted to the subject.
This old industrial building is tumbling to bits, and if the neighborhood were more valuable it would have been gone years ago. It is not a work of outstanding architecture; the construction listings specified “private plans,” which probably means “We can do without an architect.” The borders of the Manchester Historic District were carefully drawn to exclude it while including the modest Italianate houses next to it. The work going on at the top may be part of a demolition; at any rate, the cornice was intact a few years ago. But it is an interesting little bit of history, and it preserves a record of its original owner on the eastern face of the building.
The old painted sign is still visible, and nearly legible with the help of some heavy manipulation. This is what it appears to say:
C. S. HIXSON
CANDY CO.
MANUFACTURES [sic] OF
HIGH GRADE
CHOCOLATES
