What style would you call these buildings?

[Super Amputee Cat]

Need a little help on assinging a style for these warehouses. According to building permits, all were built as wholesale groceries during the 1910s and 1920s and are located in Toledo, Ohio. Any sources for determining styles of warehouses/industrial buildings would be helpful also. Thanks. Drew

Overmyer Co. Building - Wholesale Grocery - Built 1912 by H. J. Spieker Co.

R. A. Bartley Wholesale Grocery - Built 1913. Built by A. Bentley & Sons

Harnet & Hewitt Wholesale Grocery/Willis Day Building. Built 1924

Note: If you want to see the full size pictures, they can be viewed in the gallery under my Username.

 

[Cardinal]

I'm no expert in commercial vernacular architecture, but I would say the first three are "Chicago Style" and the last two are somewhat art-deco influenced. The third might also have a few art deco elements. There are a couple of architects and historic preservation posters here who will probably correct me, though.

 

[mendelman]

They are definitely Prairie style.

They look very similar to the industrial/wharehouse designs of Albert Kahn.

This is the old Model T Ford factory in Highland Park, MI designed by A. Kahn:

Your pictures look very similar in detailing and repetition of large glass windows.


BTW, those buidlings are amazing looking old wharehouses, would probably make great residential conversion, but please don't let anyone turn them into self-storage facilities. It would be such a waste.

 

[Rumpy Tunanator]

Nice pics. I'll have to take some pics of the warehouses around here once the sidewalks are clear.

What, if any, are the plans for some of the vacant buildings?

 

[BKM]

Great pictures. I've always had this really strange liking for early 20th/late 19th century industrial architecture. Used to beg my parents to "drive by the International Harvester plant-which if you've ever seen it is pretty spectacular,

Maybe because I've never had to work in a factory, so I can romaniticize the designs (although working in a restaurant kitchen was almost as bad! )

The City of Oakland has established a waterfront historic district with very similar buildings constructed for very similar uses (warehousing of food, sugar, bag manufacturing). The historicm district plaques identify the buildings based on detailing "classical revival" "art deco," etc, but the common nomenclature for many of them is "American Utilitarian." Which is what they were. Show's how far we've fallen.

 

[Zenith]

Super Amputee Cat:

The thing to remember with styles is that sometimes there are hybrids however...

Zooming in on particlar syles for your given buildings:

Cardinal was spot on for tagging the Overmyer Co. Building & R. A. Bartley Wholesale Grocery as Chicago Style. Chicagoesque buildings are characterised by their utiliterian, business-like character. Rectangle facade formatting suggests the expression of frame or skeleton construction or at least the maximising of the area of window voids.

Harnet & Hewitt Wholesale Grocery/Willis Day Building: This is known as (Inter-war) stripped classical: Symmetrical massing which creates a fundamentally classical composition with minimal use of classicl motifs/designs. Hence the art-deco like qualities.

I have a kink for warehouse architecture too ;-)

(BTW I would class the main example given by mendelman as purely functionalist: Progressive imaging appealing to dynamic commercial organisations. Simple geometric shapes, large glass areas and the fenestration often in horizontal bands, giving a 'streamlined' effect)