Warehouses and Warehouse Districts in Mid-American Cities

Abstract

À la fin du XIXe siècle, la construction de quartiers réservés aux entrepôts devient un élément important de la croissance des villes en Amérique du Nord. Ce type de quartier constitue le centre d’activité des grossistes, principaux agents de l’expansion du commerce. Souvent, les entrepôts mêmes sont remarquables du point de vue architectural. De fait, l’entrepôt reste d’ordinaire, avec la gare de chemin de fer, le véritable monument de la ville nord-américaine. Le présent article examine la façon dont s’est formé le quartier du commerce de gros.In the late nineteenth century, the construction of warehouse districts became an important part of the building process in the North American city. These warehouse districts were the centres of activity for the wholesalers who were the key agents for the expansion of mercantile capitalism. The warehouses themselves were often structures of unusual architectural distinction. With the railroad station, the warehouse was ordinarily the true civic monument of the North American city. This article studies the process by which the wholesale district was formed

Concentration and decentralization: The new geography of freight distribution in US metropolitan areas

“…Generally speaking, most of the factors in the location of warehousing activity are similar to any other industry: ''proximity to customers/clients, reasonable real estate costs, access to interstate highways, availability of appropriately skilled workers, and reasonable costs of doing business" (Glasmeier and Kibler, 1996, p. 740). Historically within the US, this meant close proximity to the CBD, to other warehouses and industrial facilities, and to the pre-interstate transportation routes of rivers and rail (Eaton, 1982). As cities expanded outward, warehousing facilities have been thought to respond to these same factors.…”

“…While historical work has been done on the location of transportation and warehousing activity (Eaton, 1982;McKinnon, 1983), there has been little to document the most recent shifts. In particular, while decentralization has been theorized by a number of different scholars, ''empirical studies on the extent of this trend are rare" (Hesse, 2007, p. 6; see also Rodrigue, 2006b).…”