Father Pitt

Tag: Warehouses

  • Pittsburgh Gage & Supply Co., Strip

    Pittsburgh Gage & Supply Co.

    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.

    Pittsburgh Gage & Supply Co. in 1913
    Pittsburgh Gage & Supply Co. Blue Book of Supplies, 1913.

    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.

    Entrance
    Tower
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    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.

    Gainaday washer-wringer brochure
    From a 1920 brochure for the Gainaday Electric Washer-Wringer.

    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.

    Advertisement attributing Pittsburgh Gage and Supply Company building to the William G. Wilkins Co.
    From Modern Sanitation, February, 1902.

    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.

    Pittsburg Gage and Supply Company.

    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.

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  • Stone Schwartz Building, Allegheny West

    Sony Alpha 3000.

    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.

    Composite of three pictures from a Canon PowerShot A540.

  • Pittsburgh Tag Co. Building, North Side

    Allen Kirkpatrick & Co. building

    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.

    Pittsburgh Tag Co. ghost sign
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    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.

  • Allegheny Auto Spring Co., North Side

    Allegheny Auto Spring Co.

    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.

    End of the building
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    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.

  • McKinney Manufacturing Company Warehouse, Chateau

    View of the warehouse from the corner of Preble Avenue and Liverpool Street

    The Hunting-Davis Company was a versatile firm, but its specialty was industrial architecture. The McKinney Manufacturing Company warehouse was noted as an innovation in reinforced-concrete construction when it went up in 1914, and it still stands in very close to its original form, giving us a good look at the ultra-modern industrial architecture of the early twentieth century. We note that even such a utilitarian structure as a warehouse was not allowed to go up without some elegant Art Nouveau ornamentation:

    Ornamentation on the corner of the warehouse

    Here is the architects’ Liverpool Street elevation as it appeared in an article in the Construction Record for February 7, 1914:

    And here is the same building today:

    McKinney Manufacturing Co. warehouse, Preble Avenue side

    This is the Preble Avenue side, which is shorter by one bay but otherwise similar. Old Pa Pitt would have preferred to duplicate the architects’ drawing as closely as possible, but Liverpool Street no longer exists in that block: it has been filled in with lower buildings.

    Here is the text of the article, which will be of interest to students of architecture and construction:

    Last week the contract for building the warehouse for the McKinney Manufacturing Company, Northside, Pittsburgh, was placed with the Henry Shenk Company, Pittsburgh. The building as designed by the Hunting-Davis Company, Century building, Pittsburgh, will be approximately 105×120 feet, six stories high with basement. It will be of reinforced concrete throughout. There will be no steel beams or girders used in the construction work except those for the outside lintels and elevator framing.

    In order that the reinforced concrete work may be properly constructed, thus eliminating any possibility of poor workmanship and accidents, it is agreed that superintendent of five years experience on reinforced concrete building must remain on the work at all times. The mixture of the concrete will be one part cement, two parts sand and four parts gravel. All columns will have a one to two cement and sand mortar placed to a depth of three inches before the concrete is placed. The columns will be cast a day ahead of the beams and slabs. Care is to be exercised in removing the forms so that no board marks or imperfections on the exterior of the building are noticeable.

    The building will be one of the heaviest loaded flat slab buildings ever designed in the country. A four-way diagonal reinforcement will be used in the slab construction. The columns will have hoop-reinforced concrete. All ceilings will be flat. The floor loads per square foot will be as follows: First floor, 800 pounds; second floor, 1,200 pounds; third floor, 650 pounds; fourth floor, 450 pounds; fifth and sixth floors, 300 pounds. The basement floor and walls will be reinforced to take care of flood water pressure with flood gates on basement windows.

    The design carries with the proposed work the building of a tunnel to connect with the present plant and the construction of a bridge to connect up with the second floor. Solid steel sash will be used on all windows. A sprinkler system will be installed. All floors in the basement tunnel and pent houses will have a granolithic finish.

    For the connecting bridge the walls and roof will be constructed of self-centering material plastered with cement mortar. The walls will be two inches thick and finished smooth on both sides. The roof will be two and one-half inches thick and finished with a smooth under coat. Composition roofing will be used throughout all the work.

  • Pittsburgh Terminal Warehouse & Transfer Company, South Side

    Terminal Way

    Now called “The Highline,” the Pittsburgh Terminal Warehouse and Transfer Company was one of the largest commercial buildings in the world when it was finished in 1906. The architect was the prolific Charles Bickel, who gave us a very respectable version of Romanesque-classical commercial architecture on a huge scale.

    The building was planned in 1898, but it took several years of wrangling and special legislation to clear three city blocks and rearrange the streets to accommodate the enormous structure. Its most distinctive feature is a street, Terminal Way, that runs right down the middle of the building at the third-floor level: as you can see above, it has now been remade into a pleasant outdoor pedestrian space. You can’t tell from the picture above, but there is more building underneath the street.

    Pittsburgh Terminal Warehouse & Transfer Company from the river side

    The bridge coming out across the railroad tracks is the continuation of Terminal Way, which comes right to the edge of the Monongahela, where the power plant for the complex was built.

    The reason for the complex is more obvious from this angle. Railroad cars came right into the building on the lowest level to unload.

    Track No. 5

    It also had access to the river, and road access to Carson Street at the other end. Every form of transportation came together here for exchange and distribution.

    McKean Street

    McKean Street separates the main part of the complex from the Carson Street side; Terminal Way passes over it on a bridge.

    Fourth Street

    The Fourth Street side shows us the full height of the building. Fourth Street itself is still Belgian block.

    Terminal Way

    A view over the McKean Street bridge and down Terminal Way from the Carson Street end.

    Narrow outbuilding

    This absurdly narrow building is on the Carson Street side of the complex; it has usually housed a small restaurant of some sort. One suspects that this was the result of some kind of political wrangling that ended in a ridiculously small space on this side of Terminal Way between Carson and McKean Streets.

    Power plant

    The power plant for the complex, seen above from the Terminal Way bridge across the railroad. It could use some taking care of right now.

    Power plant
    Pittsburgh Terminal Warehouse & Transfer Company

    This view of the complex from the hill above Carson Street was published in 1911 as an advertisement for cork from the Armstrong Cork Company.

  • More Views of the Gimbels Warehouse, South Side

    Entrance to 2100 Wharton Street

    More views of the old Gimbels warehouse on the South Side, now called 2100 Wharton Street. We have a couple of other angles here.

    Gimbels warehouse
    Another view
    Eastern end of the Gimbels warehouse

    The building covers almost the entire block, but leaves a narrow space for one row of old houses at the eastern end on 22nd Street.

  • Gimbels Warehouse, South Side

    Gimbels Warehouse

    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, 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.

    2100 Wharton Street

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

  • Demmler Bros. Building

    Demmler Bros. Building

    Demmler Bros. (now Demmler Machinery) built its headquarters in the Romanesque style that was very popular for warehouses and industrial buildings; for other examples, see the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company Warehouse and the B. M. Kramer & Company Building. The company has moved to the suburbs, but ghost signs still betray the origin of the building.

  • Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company Warehouse

    Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company Warehouse

    A particularly elegant Romanesque warehouse built for the company that made bathroom plumbing fashion-conscious. Standard later merged with American Radiator to form American-Standard, still a leader in toilet technology today. The building is now luxurious offices under the name “Fort Pitt Commons.” According to the boundary-increase application for the Firstside Historic district, it was built 1900–1905; the architect is unknown, which is a pity, because it was obviously someone with a real sense of rhythm in architecture. (If you backed old Pa Pitt into a corner and asked him to guess the architect, he might say Charles Bickel, whose Reymer Brothers candy factory Uptown is very similar in many details, including the treatment of the arches.) Above, the side that faces Fort Pitt Boulevard and the Mon; below, the First Avenue side.