Survey and Research
Report
on the
Standard Oil of New
Jersey Company Complex
and the
Southern
Spindle and Flyer Company Building
Emily Ramsey and
Lara Ramsey
November 2003
1.
Name and location of the property: The property known as
the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey Complex is located at 907 W. 1st
Street in Charlotte, North Carolina. The property known as the
Southern Spindle & Flyer Company Building is located at 801 W. 1st
Street in Charlotte, North Carolina.
2.
Name and address of the current owner(s) of the property:
The current owner of
the Standard Oil Company Complex is:
The Charlotte Rescue Mission, Inc.
907 W. 1st Street
Charlotte, NC 28202
The current owner of
the Southern Spindle & Flyer Co. Building is:
Christian Rehabilitation Center, Inc.
907 W. 1st Street
Charlotte, NC 28202-1103
3.
Representative photographs of the property: This report
contains representative photographs of the property.
4.
A
map depicting the location of the property: This report contains a
map depicting the location of the property.
5.
Current deed book reference to the property: The most recent
deed to the Standard Oil Company Complex can be found in Mecklenburg
County Deed Book 2121, page 357. The most recent deed to the Southern
Spindle & Flyer Company Building can be found in Mecklenburg County
Deed Book 4187, page 625. The property is zoned MUDD.
6.
A brief historical sketch of the property: This report
contains a brief historical sketch of the property prepared by Emily
Ramsey.
7.
A brief architectural description of the property: This
report contains a brief architectural description of the property
prepared by Lara Ramsey.
8.
Documentation of why and in what ways the property meets the
criteria for designation set forth in N.C.G.S. 160A-400.5.
a.
Special significance in terms of its history, architecture,
and/or cultural importance. The
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission judges that the
Standard Oil Company Complex and the Southern Spindle & Flyer Company
Building possess special significance in terms of
Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The Commission bases its judgment on the
following considerations:
1.
The Standard Oil Company Complex and the adjacent Southern
Spindle & Flyer Company Building are physical reminders of Charlotte’s
burgeoning cotton economy, and are representative of the wide variety
of industries supported by the region’s textile mills.
2.
The Standard Oil Company Complex served as the district office
and plant for the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (later the Esso
Standard Oil Company) from 1913-1957, providing lubricating oils and
other products for the region’s textile mills and manufacturing
facilities. The plant also served as a major distribution center for a
wide variety of Standard Oil of New Jersey petroleum products,
including kerosene, gasoline, axel grease, and fuel oils, at a time
when Charlotte was just emerging as a major distribution center.
3.
The Southern Spindle & Flyer Company, “the only makers of
flyers pressers in the South,” manufactured and repaired spindles,
flyers and rollers for the region’s textile mills from its 1st
Street plant.
4.
Architecturally, the Standard Oil Company Complex and the
Southern Spindle & Flyer Company Building illustrate the move towards
more modern industrial fireproof construction methods during the early
twentieth century. Although Standard Oil’s steel-frame 1915 office
building was structurally more advanced than the wood and brick
construction of Southern Spindle & Flyer, both retained the
conservative revivalistic designs seen in countless industrial
buildings throughout the city. The Standard Oil warehouse took
the innovation a step further, utilizing steel and concrete in its
construction and presenting an almost unadorned, more modern
exterior.
b.
Integrity of design, workmanship, materials, feeling, and
association.
The Commission
contends that the architectural description prepared by Lara Ramsey
demonstrates that the Standard Oil Company Complex and the Southern
Spindle & Flyer Company Building meet this criterion.
9.
Ad Valorem Tax Appraisal: The Commission is aware that
designation would allow the owner to apply for an automatic deferral
of 50% of the Ad Valorem taxes on all or any portion of the property
that becomes a designated “historic landmark.” The current appraised
value of the Standard Oil Company Complex is $1,485,000—$585,000 for
the buildings, and $900,000 for the land. The Southern Spindle and
Flyer Company has a current appraised value of $425,900—$78,400 for
the building and other features, and $346,000 for the land.
Date of preparation of this report:
November 1, 2003
Prepared by:
Emily Ramsey and Lara Ramsey
2436 North Albany Avenue, Apt. 1
Chicago, IL 60647
Statement of Significance
Standard Oil Company Complex
and
the
Southern Spindle & Flyer Company Building
Summary
The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey Complex and the Southern
Spindle & Flyer Company Building, constructed during the 1910s and
1920s, are properties that possess local historic significance as
physical reminders of Charlotte’s burgeoning cotton economy and as
representative examples of the wide variety of industries supported by
the region’s textile mills. With the coming of the railroads in 1852,
Charlotte began its transformation from a small inland trading village
to a modern industrial New South city. Business and civic leaders in
Charlotte and Mecklenburg County answered the call of New South
industrialists to “bring the mills to the cotton.”[1]
By 1910, Charlotte was the largest city in North Carolina and the
heart of a large and profitable textile region covering North and
South Carolina as well as large parts of Tennessee and Georgia. By
1915, Mecklenburg County was home to twenty-two textile mills, the
success of which spurred a boom in cotton- and textile-related
industries.[2]
The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the Southern Spindle &
Flyer Company were among the industries drawn to Charlotte during the
early decades of the twentieth century. The two companies could not
have been more different. The name Standard Oil epitomized big
business at the turn of the century, and became the subject of one of
the country’s most famous antitrust cases. Even after the
court-ordered breakup of the Standard Oil holding company in 1911,
the Baltimore division of Standard Oil of New Jersey alone employed
1259 people at 439 bulk distribution stations across the south by
1917.[3]
Southern Spindle & Flyer, in contrast, was a modest, locally owned and
operated company that began as a machine shop. Yet, both companies
located in Charlotte during the early 1900s to serve and profit from
the booming textile industry.
Architecturally, the Standard Oil Company Complex and the Southern
Spindle & Flyer Company Building are significant as representative
examples of early twentieth-century industrial construction and
design. Together, the buildings illustrate the move that some
companies were making towards more modern industrial fireproof
construction methods. Although Standard Oil’s steel-frame 1915 office
building was structurally more advanced than the wood and brick
construction of Southern Spindle & Flyer, both retained the
conservative revivalistic designs seen in countless industrial
buildings throughout the city. The Standard Oil warehouse took
the innovation a step further, utilizing steel and concrete in its
construction and presenting an almost unadorned, more modern exterior.
Located in what was originally a dense concentration of industrial
buildings along South Cedar Street and the Piedmont and Northern
Railroad, the Standard Oil Company Complex and the Southern Spindle &
Flyer Building remain as tangible reminders of Charlotte’s industrial
past.
 |
|
Southern Spindle &
Flyer is in the foreground. |
Historical
Background Statement
The post-bellum history of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County is
intimately connected to the development of the southern cotton textile
industry. After the Civil War, Charlotte was poised to enter a period
of growth and prosperity spurred by industrialization. With four rail
lines intersecting in the city by 1860, Charlotte had already
developed a strong economy through trade in cotton. These rail lines,
which remained operable after the Civil War, and Mecklenburg County’s
emergence as the leading cotton producer in the state, gave Charlotte
distinct advantages over other towns in the region. New South
entrepreneurs like D. A. Tompkins began urging Charlotte business and
civic leaders to use the city’s advantageous position and “Bring the
Mills to the Cotton.” By the turn of the century, Charlotte and the
surrounding region were literally covered with textile mills. By 1902,
just twenty-two years after the establishment of Charlotte’s first
mill, the Charlotte Cotton Mill, three hundred mills had been built
within one hundred miles of Charlotte, representing over half of the
looms and spindles operating in the entire South. By 1915, twenty-two
cotton textile mills were operating within the city limits.
[4]
The strength of Charlotte’s textile economy attracted a diverse array
of industries; a 1926 Greater Charlotte Guide Book boasted that
Charlotte was “the commercial and distributing center of the
Carolinas,” with over 250 industrial and manufacturing plants.[5]
Industrial businesses in Charlotte were producing “everything from
chemicals and window sash to ice cream and caskets.”[6]
Much more common than ice cream and casket producers were industries
directly related to textiles. Textile mills needed electricity, fuel
and lubricating oils, suppliers and skilled mechanics for specialized
equipment and machinery, and warehouses in which to store raw cotton
and other materials. The Standard Oil Company and the Southern Spindle
& Flyer Company provided textile mills with products they needed to
run smoothly and efficiently.
Standard Oil produced an astounding range of petroleum products that
included lubricating oils, gasoline, fuel oil, axle grease, kerosene,
and sewing machine oil, in addition to its branded specialty products
like Marking Crayons, Handy Ironing Wax, Aladdin Security Oil, Eureka
Harness Oil, and Nujol, a medicinal oil.[7]
However, a good portion of the company’s early business in Charlotte
was in selling industrial oils and greases to textile mills and
textile industries. Kerosene, then a major household heating fuel, was
also a top selling product. Standard Oil came to Charlotte in 1886,
setting up a small “oil house” and office at 701 Johnson Ave.[8]
The modest plant was one of a cluster of industrial operations around
Smith Street and Johnson. Nearby operations included the Ada Cotton
Mill, Standard Ice and Fuel Company, and the N.C. Cotton Oil Company.[9]
At
the same time that Standard Oil was establishing its business in
Charlotte, the company was also battling accusations that the Standard
Oil Trust (organized in 1882 by president John D. Rockefeller)
constituted a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In
1892, the Supreme Court of Ohio ordered the dissolution of the trust.
Rockefeller responded by merely transferring the assets to a new
holding company, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. Public outcry
against the company reached a peak in 1906, when the Federal
government filed suit against Standard Oil. In 1911, the Supreme Court
ruled against the company and ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil
Company of New Jersey.[10]
The company was broken up by geographic location into 33 separate
corporations, which were all put up for sale. The Standard Oil Company
of New Jersey (known as the Jersey Company under the trust) retained
control of much of the east coast from New Jersey to South Carolina.
After the dissolution decree, the Charlotte plant remained one of over
400 bulk stations under the Baltimore district office, which was in
charge of distribution in Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North and
South Carolina, and the District of Columbia.[11]
That same year, 1911, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey moved its
Charlotte office downtown to the Realty Building, where special agent
John A. Fricker controlled marketing and sales. Sub agent C.C. Beasely
continued to supervise distribution at the Johnson Avenue plant.[12]
Standard Oil was doing well in Charlotte, and as business improved the
need for more space to expand operations kept the company moving.
In
1913, the company purchased the Fabrick Development Co. plant, a large
parcel with a moderately sized warehouse in the planned community of
McNinchville.[13]
Standard Oil’s new neighbors were the Armature Winding Company and the
Southern Spindle & Flyer Company—both companies that had come to
McNinchville around 1905. On August 25, 1914, Standard Oil obtained a
building permit for a $45,000 two-story brick building. Builder J. A.
Jones, who also maintained an office in the Realty Building, was
awarded the contract.[14]
The new building was completed by 1915, and housed the company office,
which faced 1st Street. Submerged holding tanks for
lubricating oils, industrial grease, kerosene and most likely gasoline
were located on the southern corner of the block, along with two tiny
pump houses. A railroad spur gave fuel cars easy access to the tanks.[15]
In
1919, Charlotte became a branch office for Standard Oil of New Jersey,
and construction began in 1920 on a new warehouse and garage adjacent
to the W. 1st Street Office. According to the September 1
building permit, the two-story brick, steel and concrete structure
would be 100 feet long and 150 deep, and cost $85,500. Standard Oil
Company was listed as owner, architect and builder.[16]
Branch manager Charles Byers and assistant branch manager Clarence
Motte replaced special agent John Fricker when the new branch office
complex was completed.[17]
As a branch office and plant, the Charlotte Standard Oil office
handled the sale and distribution of a wide variety of Standard Oil of
New Jersey products for the entire state. The office employed highly
specialized sales forces—one to solicit orders for specialty brands
directly from retailers, one to deal with individual consumers who
bought primarily kerosene and gasoline, and a cadre of “smokestack
salesmen” who handled the sale of over thirty industrial oils and
grease. The office also employed several tank-wagon drivers to deliver
bulk products directly to retailers and individual consumers, and a
full time mechanic to “advise on particular problems and assist the
salesmen.” Jersey branch offices were also in charge of selling
peripheral products like candles, wicks and burners, Perfection cook
stoves and heaters, and Rayo oil lamps to area retailers.[18]
The textile industry had drawn Standard Oil to Charlotte in the 1880s,
and the business had profited greatly from the booming textile economy
during the first decades of the twentieth century. By 1920 the office
had been transformed from modest industrial supplier to a major
distribution point for a wide variety of Standard Oil petroleum
products.
 |
The Southern Spindle & Flyer Company had been operating in
McNinchville for almost a decade when Standard Oil moved its
operations to 1st Street. The company had incorporated in
1905 with the intent to “manufacture, overhaul, adapt, and repair
cotton mill and other machinery.”[19]
Company president Thomas Costello and vice-president William Monty
transferred title to a parcel of land on the southern corner of 1st
and Clarkson Streets to the company in September 1905. By 1906,
Southern Spindle & Flyer was producing spindles, rollers, and flyers
for textile companies out of a one-story frame machine shop with a
tiny corner office, located on the southern end of their 50’ by 150’
lot.[20]
Brisk business allowed the company to gradually acquire the
surrounding lots in four separate purchases during the 1910s, and in
1918 Southern Spindle & Flyer began construction of a small one-story
brick warehouse on the corner of 1st and Clarkson.[21]
William Monty was president and treasurer of the company, assisted by
vice-president and secretary W. H. Hutchins. By the late 1920s, the
company had expanded its rear machine shop and connected it to the
1918 warehouse with a one-story addition. The warehouse was converted
to a front office. The Southern Spindle & Flyer Company served textile
mills in the Charlotte region and throughout the South. A 1917
advertisement for the company boasted that the Southern Spindle &
Flyer Company was “the only flyer presser maker in the South.” The
company manufactured and repaired all varieties of steel rollers,
flyer pressers, card room spindles, lifting rods, and cylinder
heaters.[22]
The Southern Spindle and Flyer Company both benefited from and
contributed to Charlotte’s emergence as a booming textile
manufacturing center.
Both Standard Oil and Southern Spindle & Flyer continued to operate on
W. 1st Street well into the post-World War II period. By
the 1940s, the Standard Oil complex had evolved from a distribution
center to divisional sales department, and main office. This
shift was probably due to the changing nature of distribution in
Charlotte and Mecklenburg County—while products like lubricating oil
and kerosene were originally transported by rail to holding tanks at
West 1st Street and then distributed locally, the advent of
better roads and large transfer trucks allowed the company to
distribute goods from farther afield.[23]
Standard Oil became the Esso Standard Oil Company in 1948, and the
company sold its complex in 1959 to the Charlotte Rescue Mission, a
non-profit organization.[24]
Southern Spindle & Flyer opened a new plant at 1906 N. Brevard in the
late 1940s. In 1961, Southern Spindle & Flyer Company president Albert
M. Guillet, Jr. officially changed the name of the company to the
Almalet Corporation.[25]
Five years later, the company finally sold the small operation on W. 1st
Street to William and Mary Holbrook. In 1979, the Christian
Rehabilitation Center, Inc. (affiliated with the Charlotte Rescue
Mission) took over the property.
 |
Architectural Context Statement
The Standard Oil Company complex and the Southern Spindle and Flyer
Company building represent the evolving construction methods used on
Mecklenburg County industrial buildings during the first decades of
the twentieth century. Perhaps because of the sheer dominance of
cotton textile manufacturers in the industrial landscape of Charlotte
and Mecklenburg County in the late nineteenth century, many of the
city’s other industries—many of which were related to or in some way
supported the cotton textile mills—used some of the same designs and
methods of construction used in cotton mills. These standards
had, in turn, been taken from the criteria for “slow burning”
construction developed by New England manufacturers and insurance
companies, and had been recommended by leading New South
industrialists like D.A. Tompkins and Stuart Cramer for North Carolina
mills.[26]
Mills were to be built of brick, with wall thickness at the top floor
of at least 13" and increasing for each lower floor. Other
elements like brick firewalls and sprinkler systems were meant to
protect the mills from fire, a real danger with the presence of highly
combustible cotton. Though the walls were brick, thick wood
timbers usually made up the framing of the mill buildings.
Tompkins recommended similar materials for warehouse buildings.
[27]
With the emphasis placed upon economy and safety, relatively little
consideration was given to the aesthetics of mill buildings.
Decoration was kept to a minimum, and usually consisted of corbelling
around entrances and doors.
The methods used in mill construction were perfectly suited for other
types of industries burgeoning alongside the textile manufacturers.
“Slow burn” construction made sense for most manufacturers, even if
their shops were not filled with cotton. D.A. Tompkins’s Machine
Shop at 1900 South Boulevard (1904-5) and the Cole Manufacturing
Company (1909) at 1318 Central Avenue utilized masonry construction
like that seen in the county’s textile mills; the Textile Mill Supply
company, built in 1922 and located at 1300 S. Mint Street, is a later
example of this type of industrial construction, with pine posts and
beams creating a frame around brick exterior walls.[28]
 |
The Southern Spindle and Flyer Company, constructed in 1918, is
typical of this early type of mill construction so popular with
industries in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. The company’s
first building on West 1st Street was a one-story,
rectangular, frame building with a shed roof, located in the
southwestern corner of block and facing South Clarkson. In 1918,
the company built a second building at the northwest corner of the
block. This building, a 30-by-50 foot, one story structure, was
to be used as a warehouse.[29]
Constructed of a frame of 4-inch wood studs with brick exterior walls,
the small storehouse was, like so many other mills and industrial
buildings in the county, a “slow burning” building.
Ornamentation on the warehouse was kept to a minimum, and limited to
its façade (north elevation). This simple, symmetrical façade,
decorated with a bracketed metal cornice, shed portico, and stepped
brick parapet, is illustrative of the rather austere, conservative
exteriors of Charlotte’s industrial buildings.
Although “slow burning” construction methods continued to be used
through the 1930s in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, new methods and
materials began to change the way in which industrial buildings were
built. Through the 1910s and early 1920s, load-bearing masonry walls
and timber posts gave way to steel and concrete frames, eventually
evolving into the concrete-frame, brick curtain wall warehouses built
in the late 1920s. These warehouses—Carolina Transfer and
Storage, Coca Cola Bottling Company, and Union Storage and Warehouse
among them—were virtually fireproof, and the new construction methods
allowed for larger expanses of storage space.[30]
The Standard Oil Company buildings are both early examples of this
move toward more modern construction methods and materials. The
company, wanting to consolidate its sales office in the Realty
Building (later Independence Building) and its distribution center on Johnson Avenue, first moved to
West 1st Street in 1913 and commenced construction of
its first building there the following year. The two-story
office building exhibits the load-bearing brick walls recommended by
D.A. Tompkins and Stewart Cramer, measuring 13 inches at the second
story, 17 inches at the first, and 21 inches at the basement
level. However, steel I-beams were used to carry the floors,
something not seen in earlier mill complexes and industrial buildings.[31]
Even though the structure itself was slightly more modern than other
industrial buildings of its time, the design of the exterior was not.
With its central pedimented entrance and tall, regularly spaced
windows topped with flat arches, the classically inspired façade of
this first building reflects the use of stripped-down historicism
common in most of Charlotte’s industrial buildings.
In
1920, Standard Oil built a two-story warehouse just east of the office
building on 1st Street. According to the building
permit, the warehouse was constructed of brick, steel, and cement,
with two-foot-six-inch foundation walls and chimneys lined with
fireproof clay.
[32]
Although the permit does not describe in detail how the materials were
used in construction, the building was probably built with a steel
frame, brick exterior walls, and cement floors and roof. While
not quite as advanced as the brick curtain wall warehouses of the late
1920s, Standard Oil’s 1920 warehouse showed that some companies were
beginning to use more modern methods of constructing their buildings.
Unlike the 1914
office building, the warehouse was not ornamented with classically
inspired architectural details. The façade and side elevations
of the warehouse were very simply punctuated with a series of large,
slightly horizontal windows set inside of rectangular brick insets.
A concrete stringcourse and cornice were the only other elements added
to adorn the elevations, which were topped with a simple brick parapet
with concrete caps.
In
the Standard Oil buildings and the Southern Spindle & Flyer Company
building one can see the evolution of Charlotte’s industrial
buildings, from the wood posts and load bearing masonry of Southern
Spindle and Flyer’s modest warehouse to the steel and concrete of
Standard Oil’s structures. It seems appropriate that Standard
Oil of New Jersey, a large company with sales offices and bulk
stations in several states, should be among the first in Charlotte to
use modern construction methods and materials like steel and concrete,
while smaller companies like Southern Spindle & Flyer would stick to
tried and true construction methods.
Architectural
Description
Southern Spindle & Flyer Company
The Southern Spindle & Flyer Company building is located at the
southeast corner of West 1st Street and what was originally
Clarkson Street in what began as the planned development of
McNinchville. A spur of the Piedmont & Northern Railway runs
along the southern edge of the lot. The land slopes down
slightly toward the western side of the lot. To the east of the
building are several empty lots, leaving a large expanse of unoccupied
land that runs east to S. Cedar Street. To the west of the
property is the Standard Oil Company complex. A residential
development faces the property on the north side of West 1st
Street.
The building, which has a roughly “L” shaped footprint, was originally
two separate buildings. The first, a rectangular wood frame
machine shop with a sloping shed roof located near the southwest
corner of the lot, was built c. 1911. The second building, a
small brick warehouse, was completed seven years later, and was
constructed in the northwest corner of the property. Sometime
between 1918 and 1929, Southern Spindle & Flyer built a one-story
brick connector between the machine shop and warehouse.[33]
After the connector was built, the warehouse was converted into an
office for the company, and the connector was used for storage.
The façade of the building faces West 1st Street, running
east from the northwest corner of the lot approximately 50 feet.
The length of the building, extending south along the former S.
Clarkson Street, is approximately 200 feet. All three sections
of the building are single storied; the front office building and
connector are both topped with slightly sloping, almost flat roofs,
while the frame machine shop at the southern end of the combined
structure has a shed roof with a southern slope.
The façade of the building is the only elevation that contains any
decoration. The elevation is covered with deep red face brick laid in
common bond. This face brick extends around to what was originally the
west elevation (or secondary facade) of the 1918 warehouse/office
building, which faced S. Clarkson Street. A modest shed roof with
exposed rafter tails covers the central entrance. Two large wood
brackets that flank the entrance support the roof. Multi-pane
sidelights and a three-window, multi-pane transom surround the front
door, which has been replaced. A pair of large, multi-pane
windows are centered along the wall on either side of the
entrance—these four windows dominate the façade. Above the
entrance and windows, a metal cornice runs along the length of the
façade, continuing approximately two feet around the northwest and
northeast corners of the building. A series of small brackets
are located underneath the cornice; some of these brackets are
missing. Above the cornice, topping the façade, is a capped
brick parapet. The middle of the parapet is stepped, as are its
two corners.
The side elevations of the building, including the east and west
elevations of the 1918 warehouse and connector, are completely
unadorned, with the exception of flat, capped parapet wall. The
west elevation originally contained several windows, which have now
been bricked in. The east elevation has been partially covered
by a one-story addition that is flush with the façade, extending east
from the northern end of the east elevation. The frame,
shed-roof section of the building extends east along the south end of
the connector, continuing past its east wall. In the corner
created by the intersection of the frame building and the connector is
a small frame lean-to. Because the authors were not given
permission by the owners to go onto the property, the south elevation
and southern end of the west elevation (primarily the frame, shed-roof
portion of the building) cannot be completely described.
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey
Buildings
The complex of buildings formerly owned by the Standard Oil Company of
New Jersey is located along West 1st Street between what
was formerly S. Clarkson Street and McNinch Street. The Southern
Spindle & Flyer Company building is located on the lot to the east of
the property, and the Armature Winding Company to the west of the
property, across McNinch. A residential development along the
north side of West 1st Street faces the buildings. As
with Southern Spindle & Flyer, the Standard Oil property borders a
spur of the P & N Railroad along its southern border.
The two principal structures on the property, both built by Standard
Oil, are located along the northern edge of the block, facing West 1st
Street. The first, constructed in 1914, sits in the middle of
the north border of the property, and is set back slightly from the
property line. The brick building is a two-story rectangle, with
a basement that is partially revealed along the façade (north
elevation) and east elevation as the property slopes down.
Extending 50 feet from east to west and 80 feet from north to south,
the building was constructed as an office for the Charlotte sales
division of Standard Oil, which had originally been on Johnson Avenue.
The façade (north elevation) of the building is regular and
symmetrical, with classical detailing. A set of concrete steps
leads to a central entrance. The entrance is topped with a
portico supported by two decorative brackets. The doorway of the
entrance is recessed. A series of tall, slightly narrow windows
regularly punctuate the façade at the first and second floors.
Simple sills and flat-arch lintels (probably limestone or concrete
painted white) decorate the windows. Above the second story, a
plain metal stringcourse runs along the façade just below a projecting
metal cornice. An unadorned brick parapet rises above the
cornice. The composition of regularly spaced windows, metal
stringcourse and cornice are continued along the other elevations of
the building, creating a very uniform design. Although the
window openings and surrounds remain, all windows in the building have
been replaced with glass block.
The second building constructed for Standard Oil sits just to the east
of the 1914 building, in the northeast corner of the property.
Built in 1920, the building originally functioned as a warehouse and
garage. A much larger building, the warehouse extends 100
feet from east to west and 150 from north to south. The front
(north) section of the building is two stories tall (not including the
basement level), with a single-story rear (south) section. The
footprint of the building is a slightly modified rectangle—originally,
the northwest corner bay of the building was recessed. The
recessed portion of the façade contained the original entrance to the
warehouse. This recessed space has been filled with a one-story
entrance addition that replaced the original entrance.
Like the office building that stands beside it, the Standard Oil
warehouse exhibits the same kind of regular composition on its
elevations. The warehouse, however, does not contain the
classical details of the office. The dominant element of the
warehouse building is its windows—large, slightly horizontal windows
with simple, straight concrete sills and lintels line the first and
second floors of the building. These windows are set in pairs
within large recessed brick panels that mimic the shape of the windows
(the exception to this pattern occurs in the recessed northwest
corner, which has single windows within recessed panels). All of
the windows on the warehouse building have either been bricked in or
filled with glass brick. A thick concrete stringcourse runs between
the first and second floors on the two-story section of the building;
a concrete cornice identical to this stringcourse is located above the
second floor on this section of the building, and above the first on
the single-story rear section. Subtly decorative brick
corbelling lines the underside of the stringcourse and the cornice.
The parapet is one of the few architectural elements on the warehouse
that changes slightly from the façade to the other elevations.
The façade parapet is interrupted by a triangle that rises up in its
center, and is decorated with four plain, white crests regularly
placed along the length of the parapet wall. The other
elevations do not exhibit this center triangle. A brick connector
located between the first and second floors of both buildings links
the office building and warehouse. This connector was
constructed when the warehouse was built, and exhibits the same
architectural elements used on that building.
In
addition to the office and warehouse complex, several smaller
buildings also occupy the property. Most of these structures are
located along the west side of the block, facing McNinch. In the
southwest corner of the block stands a one-story, rectangular, brick
building with a stepped parapet and segmented arch windows.
North of this building, set approximately in the middle of the western
side of the block, is two-story brick structure, also with a simple
parapet and segmented arch windows that appear to have been bricked
in. The detailing on these two buildings suggest that they
pre-date the Standard Oil office and warehouse, and may have been part
of the Fabrick Development Company, which sold its parcel within the
block to Standard Oil.[34]
Other buildings located on the property include: a metal shed built
between the two early warehouse buildings in the early 1940s; a small
parking lot surrounded by a low concrete block wall in the northwest
corner of the block; and a one-story, irregularly shaped brick
building in the southeast corner of the property that was constructed
sometime between 1946 and 1958.
[35]
