Industrial Building Design and Economic Context: The Railway Freighthouse in Chicago, 1850–1925

Abstract

The rapidly increasing scale and broadening scope of railway freight operations in Chicago between 1850 and 1925 offer a unique opportunity to study the impact of factors affecting North American freighthouse design. Early freighthouses were small, single-storey brick and mill buildings designed to handle the straightforward exchange of freight shipments, while later freighthouses were large, multi-storey, concrete and steel structures featuring mechanised freight handling systems. A simple analytical framework for studying factors infl uential in freighthouse size, function and design is provided. Market factors include developments in the railway freight marketplace, notably freight traffi c growth and the need to offer storage and warehousing services. Supply factors include those factors that limited or facilitated changes in design resulting from changes in the marketplace, notably local freight delivery costs, increases in land values, advances in construction materials and labour-saving freight handling technologies.Tim Allison is an economist with Argonne National Laboratory, located near Chicago. His interests include the role of economics, building, and process technologies in building design in the transportation, warehousing, and manufacturing industries.

Freight-Handling Technologies and Industrial Building Design: Freighthouse and Warehouse Facilities of the Chicago Junction Railway, 1900–30

“…1921 map; courtesy of CMD Realty Investors data from the CJR experience, has not been forthcoming. 8 The remainder of this article is in three parts: limits on the design of CJR freighthouses brought about by the use of hand trucks are described in the next section, followed by a discussion of freight-handling methods employed by the CJR in single-storey freighthouses with the advent of the electric truck. More flexible forms of building design -large multi-storey buildings featuring complex freighthouse functions complimented by warehousing activities, facilitated by the use of the electric truck and elevator -are then discussed.…”