The Bingham Company Warehouse is a historic warehouse located in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. It was designed by the noted local firm of Walker and Weeks for the W. Bingham Company, and is one of the architectural firm's few utilitarian commercial buildings. For many years, W. Bingham Co. was the Midwest's largest hardware manufacturer and wholesaler. The W. Bingham Co. went out of business in 1961, and the warehouse was sold to a succession of owners over the years. The warehouse was sold to private investors in 2001, who converted it into apartments, known today as The Bingham.
About the building Construction Cleveland entrepreneurs William Bingham and Henry C. Blossom purchased the Clark & Murfey hardware store in 1841, and incorporated it as the W. Bingham Co. in 1888.
In April 1913, the W. Bingham Co. announced it would construct a new building in the city's Warehouse District as its new headquarters. Intended to be the largest warehouse in Cleveland, the cost of the building and land were estimated at $1 million ($ in dollars). At the time of the announcement, the company had already completed the purchase of the land at a cost of about $400,000 ($ in dollars), and its architect, the noted Cleveland firm of Walker & Weeks, had finished preliminary designs for the building. The architects drew heavily on Knox & Elliott's 1905 Rockefeller Building as well as their own 1912 Renkert Building for inspiration, The warehouse, which was anticipated to be of steel and concrete construction, was designed to have a spur from the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway (the "Big Four") run into its basement. The architects hoped to have as many as 17 truck loading docks on the building's northwest side, with a truck parking garage in one of the three basements. Another basement would be used for the storage of the heaviest goods. Elevators were intended to be located in the center of the building, so they could be reached quickly and efficiently by all points on each floor. At some point in 1913 or 1914, Christian, Schwarzenberg & Gaede, a local structural engineering firm, was hired to assist with the plans.
By June 1914, work on the architectural plans had advanced to the point where W. Bingham Co. was ready to place an order for up to of structural steel and rebar. But city officials had extensive concerns about the architectural design, and extensive (if unreported) changes to the plans were under way in July 1914. At the end of July, W. Bingham Co. awarded the contract for the general contractor's job to the Cleveland construction firm Crowell-Lundoff-Little. Although the city was still withholding final approval for the architectural plans and building permit, enough of the design had won approval for the contractor to advise steel companies that it was interested in purchasing about of shaped steel. Although the design controversy continued, the McClintic-Marshall Corp. received the contract for of shaped steel in early August 1914, the Ayer & Lord Tie Co. of Chicago won the contract for of flooring and Carnegie Steel received the contract for of rebar in reinforcing bars in late August.
Final approval of the architectural plans must have been close by the beginning of August 1914, because excavation at the site began. Plans now showed 10 above-ground floors (each of reinforced concrete) and three basement levels. At a total estimated cost of land and construction at $1 million ($ in dollars), it was reportedly the largest warehouse in the United States. The Fred R. Jones Company did the excavation work. The work was extremely difficult. The excavation site was , a large existing building abutted the southwest side of the site, and there was a very steep change in grade from the northeast to southwest. A steam shovel was used to remove the of earth, and steel sheet pilings were rammed into the soil to prevent cave-ins along the sides. These pilings were left in place to support the combined slab and pier foundation and freestanding retaining wall. Both the Big Four and the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (the "Nickel Plate") ran a joint spur onto the site, then hauled the earth several miles to Kingsbury Run (where it was used as landfill). Excavation was complete in mid-October.
The city issued a permit for construction of the foundation about the time the excavation was complete. The foundation used a combination of piers, slab, footings, and retaining walls. The total cost of the foundation was originally estimated to be about $50,000 ($ in dollars). Soil tests revealed a hard bluish clay about below the surface, and the piers rested on this clay. Cantilevered retaining walls with buttresses were built to hold back the surrounding earth, and two-way reinforced spread footings poured to support the walls. The William Edwards Co. building on the southwest side of the new warehouse left insufficient space for regular footings and a buttressed retaining wall to be used. Instead, Lackawanna sheet pilings were used to reinforce the wall, and two separate footings were built. As construction of the foundation proceeded, numerous pockets of quicksand were found in the soil. Further investigation revealed that pockets of quicksand lay beneath almost all the footings on the building's northeast side. A test pit was dug, and soil engineers discovered a solid clay further down. Light sheet pilings were used to create caissons. These were excavated, and the footings carried down to the firm clay.
The city issued a building permit in late February or early March 1915. Work on the basement floors and walls proceeded very slowly. Enormous coal and ash bins and long steel rails for the moving of heavy items were designed to hang from ceiling beams in these areas. This required the use of shaped steel pieces which had to be perfectly joined, and the pouring of concrete around them. Once the basements were complete, the rest of the building rose very swiftly. Upper floors were poured at a rate of three floors a day, and the exterior brick walls rose at the rate of one floor every two days.
The W. Bingham Co. warehouse opened for business in February or March 1916.
Building characteristics The W. Bingham Co. warehouse building cost $600,000 ($ in dollars). It is largely constructed of brick, concrete, and steel. The slightly L-shaped building was wide on W. 9th Street and wide on W. 10th Street and had a total length of ( between the basement walls). On W. 9th Street, eight floors were visible and the building height was . On W. 10th Street, 11 floors were visible and the building height was . Each floor had of space, for a total building interior space of .
As viewed from W. 9th Street, the building had three basements. The rear (or southwest) wall of the third basement was actually a heavily reinforced slab and pier retaining wall high, giving the third basement a ceiling high. The third basement extended about under W. 9th Street, while the second and first basements only extended about under the street. There were originally only two large shipping doors, each roughly wide and high, in the rear wall of the third basement. To accommodate the doors, two exterior columns had to be omitted. In their place are two massive girders, each long and resting on a single massive pier between the doors. A railroad spur ran under the building's ell (along the line of the old Mandrake Avenue), and there were 24 truck loading docks on the structure's northwest side.
The superstructure of the building featured unusually heavy columns and floor slabs designed to permit on the floors of the first and second basement and the first and second floor, and on floors three and higher. In order to accommodate the weight of the boiler, coal bin, ash bin, and associated equipment at the rear of the second basement, a portion of this floor was designed to withstand . The octagonal, steel core-and-concrete columns in this area were tall, extending from the foundation up to the second floor. Four of the exterior wall columns as well as all interior columns in the three basements and first floor were also steel core-and-concrete, to support the stresses on the structure below-ground. Above the second floor, all columns were reinforced concrete. The bases of all the columns consisted of cast iron-and-two-way reinforced concrete. All column caps were reinforced with shelf angles attached to the flanges and core reinforcement plates, and all columns were topped with octagonal plates reinforced with stiffeners. Above the second floor, all column tops were flared to help support the floor slab above. Due to complications created by the William Edwards building next to it, there were fewer exterior and interior columns in the structure's southwest corner. Instead, cantilevers supported the exterior walls above the third floor.
The floors of the basements and upper floors were poured in slabs. These slabs were thick in the basements and on the first floor, and thick on all other floors. The roof was a slab. Spandrel beams were not used in the flooring system. The exception was on the fourth floor: With offices to be located on the third floor, the architects wanted to do away with column caps in order to provide space for lighting fixtures and to avoid light-scattering. Spandrels in the fourth floor were needed to compensate for the weaker support. Flooring throughout the structure was Kreolite, a creosote-impregnated wood block.
The exterior of the building was clad in paving brick rejects. Walker & Weeks had used uniformly-colored paving brick on the Renkert Building, which it had designed shortly before beginning work on the W. Bingham Co. warehouse. Architect Harry Weeks recommended paving brick for the Bingham building because it was strong, long-wearing, and inexpensive. "Seconds" (bricks which were not uniform in color due to chemical differences, miscasting, or after spending too much time curing in the kiln) were recommended by Weeks because they created an aesthetically pleasing "tapestry effect which might be assumed to have resulted from careful artistic design, rather than accident and economy." Windows in the building all had steel sashes and wire mesh glass. The roofline was a simple concave cavetto cornice.
The interior of the building, as befit a warehouse, was relatively spartan. Five elevators were grouped in the center of the structure, and a pneumatic tube network installed in the shafts as a space-saving measure. The building also featured several spiral package chutes, and an exterior surface parking lot.
The cost of the land and completed building was $1 million ($ in dollars). All told, of cast iron, of structural steel, of rebar, and of concrete were used in its construction. When completed, it was reportedly the largest single-unit warehouse in the world.
Architectural assessment The W. Bingham Co. warehouse building is widely considered one of the finest Commercial style buildings in Cleveland. It features extremely high-quality construction and design, which is unusual for a utilitarian building. It is also, according to the Ohio Historic Places Dictionary, an early example of "vertical rectangular construction of a building in a manner clearly appropriate to its function."
The structure is widely celebrated for the inspired use of paving brick seconds, which adds color and texture to the building. The exterior is considered unusually sophisticated, with "subtle refinements of proportion and detail". It has also won praise for the simple, repetitive piers that bring it to life.
History of the building With the completion of the warehouse, the W. Bingham Co. shifted from retail to wholesale-only operations. Over the years, changes to the interior reduced the available space to just .