Historic Structures

Sears Department Store Building, Washington DC

The Sears, Roebuck & Company department store, designed and built in 1940-41, is highly significant to the architectural and cultural heritage of the nation's capital. Designed by the Sears company's chief architect John Stokes Redden and store planner John G. Raben. It is among Washington's earliest and most significant examples of modern commercial architecture, illustrating the revolutionary impact of the Modernist design philosophy of functional expressionism on the historicism that constituted Washington's dominant architectural idiom; in conception and execution, the building anticipated the modern revolution which transformed the city after the war. It embodies significant innovations made by an influential national retailer in the development of modern department store design, including a windowless and upside down layout--a major customer entry from roof parking. The Sears department store also exemplifies significant national trends in the development of modern merchandising, including the decentralization of major retail centers to suburban locations, the integration of automobile parking and services into shopping facility design, the reformulation of department store layout to accommodate modern climate control systems and merchandising techniques, and the expression of practical modernity as a basis for customer appeal. This Sears building ranks among the most innovative stores realized during the seminal period of development by a company that has had significant impact on twentieth century retailing practices in the United States. By the mid-1920s, Sears had expanded beyond its mail-order beginnings to enter the retail market, guided by retired General Robert E. Wood, a veteran of Army supply operations. The company's initial outlets resembled warehouses, but by the early 1930s, Sears began to develop a more sophisticated national merchandising strategy. Stores were classified according to market size, with corresponding facilities and selections of merchandise. Sears first commissioned outside architects, but by the end of the 1930s, its own in-house planning and construction departments created complete new prototypes of modern store layout and design.

Falling Water - Frank Lloyd Wright House, Mill Run Pennsylvania

Fallingwater on Bear Run is a summer house built for Pittsburgh millionaire Edgar J. Kaufmann and designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Wayne Andrews has called it the most famous modern house in the world while Vincent Scully proclaimed it one of the complete masterpieces of twentieth-century art. The house, cantilevered over a waterfall, has come to be one of America's most renowned buildings, appealing not only to architects, but to the general public as well. Kaufmann, a Pittsburgh department store owner, gave Wright the commission for a retreat, a beautiful home, elevated over a waterfall, its wings reaching out into the air, as part of the natural landscape. Its relationship to its surroundings is like that of a tree house, a made thing that is utterly natural. Wright himself writing in Architectural Forum (1938) stated that this house has no limitations as to form. Fallingwater is almost impossible to describe and very difficult to photograph, the site is spectacular, the house changes from different vantage points and the scale is elusive.

Montgomery Union Station, Montgomery Alabama

Montgomery's Union Station, one of the largest and most elaborate railway stations still standing in the State, is an excellent example of late 19th century commercial architecture. Situated on the Alabama River, not far from the city wharf, it served as the focal point of transportation into the city until the advent of commercial air travel, Its size, the ambitiousness of the design and the opulence of its materials make it a monument to the importance of rail transportation in the early 20th century.

Godlington Manor, Chestertown Maryland

The old house on Godlington Manor, patented to Thomas Godlington, a London merchant, in 1659, is significant as a tract of land, originally 1,000 acres, owned at the end of the seventeenth century by Michael Miller, a large landowner, whose lineal descendants still owned and lived on the property in the 1970s. Godlington's gambrel roof section constructed in the late eighteenth century was one of several houses on the manor tract. It is doubtful that Michael Miller or his son, Arthur, or grandson, Arthur, lived in the extant house. In 1747 the land on which the house stands was rented to John Jordan and then to Bartus Wilkins, a ship carpenter. After 1768 when the land returned to Arthur Miller's possession the same tract (although ten acres smaller) was conveyed to his daughter Sarah Miller Merritt and to her daughter Mary Ann Merritt who later married Robert Anderson. After Sarah Merritt, the mother, died in 1783, the tract, according to the terms of the original deed, would have become the property of her daughter, Mary Ann. A 1799 land transaction indicates the possibility that Mary Ann Merritt Anderson, Arthur Miller's granddaughter, lived in the extant house. She and her husband by 1799 residents of Chestertown sold the tract and the old house to her brother Samuel Merritt, son of Sarah Miller Merritt, who already owned the remainder of the Godlington Manor tract which he had inherited from his grandfather, Arthur Miller, in 1790.

Seneca Glass Company, Morgantown West Virginia

Seneca Glass Company was founded by a group of immigrant German glassblowers. Natives of the district of Baden in southern Germany, many of these men had previously been employed at the North Cumberland Glass Company in Cumberland, Maryland. In 1891, they met in Cumberland to form their own corporation and subsequently purchased, for $10,000, the plant of the Fostoria Glass Company, at Fostoria, Ohio (Fostoria Glass had moved to Moundsville, West Virginia). The new company flourished from the beginning but was soon faced with the threat of a fuel shortage. In 1896, the directors decided to relocate their plant near a plentiful supply of natural gas and decided upon Morgantown. The new plant began production in January 1897 and continued until the companys bankrupcy in 1983. The plant operated using essentially the same machinery and process with which it began in 1897 until it closed. The glass was still produced from the original 14-pot furnace by shops or teams of men in much the same manner as it was in 1897. Senenca Glass was the first company to locate in Morgantown. At the turn of the century, when transportation facilities were only crudely developed, the discovery of the nearby Mannington oil and gas field was of considerable importance in attracting new industries. In the 16 years following the move of Seneca, nine other glass plants located in Morgantown. These developments (along with that of the coal industry in the area) brought industrial processes with all their social and economic ramifications to what had been primarily an agricultural region.

Mad River Glen Ski Lift, Fayston Vermont

The Mad River Glen Cooperative in Fayston, Vermont, is the home of the Single Chair Ski Lift, also known as Chair #1. The longest operating single chair ski lift still in its original location in North America, it is a historical treasure for the ski industry. The ski area is located on the northeast slope of General Stark Mountain in central Vermont. The tramway division of the American Steel and Wire Company designed and installed the Single Chair Ski Lift, a patented aerial ski tramway, in 1947. At the base of the ski lift is a bottom Drive Terminal (1600' elevation) that drives a wire rope up the mountain to a top Tension Terminal (3570' elevation). The bottom Drive Terminal features a large 10' diameter cast iron bullwheel that pulls the 1 1/8 diameter steel cable. An Allis-Chalmers diesel engine, located in the Vault Motor Room in the basement, drives the bullwheel. The Vault Motor Room is a reinforced concrete and steel structure built into a slope directly below an open, wood frame structure that houses the drive bullwheel assembly. This room contains an Allis-Chalmers diesel engine, a secondary General Motors diesel engine, a belt drive system, reduction gear shafting, a vertical drive shaft set into beveled gears, and a disc brake system, as well as a concrete counterweight connected to an hydraulic brake system located in the rear of the Vault Motor Room. The Operator's Room is a two-story, wood frame structure located at ground level above the Vault Motor Room, on the south side of the Drive Terminal. The main upstairs Operator's Room contains several instruments used for running the lift drive system. To engage the diesel engine, there is an upper throttle and torque converter switch on the south wall (facing the lift line), which connects to a wire that runs through a magnetic solenoid that can stop the throttle through the emergency brake (e-brake). To run the chairlift, the operator first starts the diesel engine in the Vault Motor Room. He then puts the lift in drive by engaging the torque converter upstairs, and then pulls down the upper throttle, which activates the throttle on the motor.

Labrot and Grahams Oscar Pepper - Old Crow - Distillery, Versailles Kentucky

Born about 1775 in Fauquier, Virginia, Elijah Pepper followed his family to Kentucky in 1797. He first established a distillery with his brother-in-law at the Big Spring behind the Woodford County Courthouse in Versailles. Bourbon County tax records and the census of 1810 show that he moved there for a three year period before returning to Woodford County. Elijah and his wife Sarah were between the ages 26 and 45 in 1810, and they had seven children (four boys) and nine black slaves. By 1812 Elijah was paying tax on 200 acres of property along Glenn's Creek where he established his grist mill and distillery. Clear title to the property was not established until 1821 and the deed recorded the following year. He selected the Grassy Springs Branch of the Creek for its waterway through limestone cliffs and three springs that bubbled out of the banks of the creek. Census records of 1820 confirm that the Pepper family are living in Woodford County and both are over 45 years old. Their family has not grown but their slave holdings have increased to 12. Five members of the household are involved with agriculture. Ten years later the 1830 census confirms the success of Pepper's farmstead by the documentation of 13 male and 12 female slaves. Before March 20, 1831 Elijah Pepper died. The extent of his agricultural and distilling business is clarified by his inventory that lists hemp on hand and 8 acres ready to break, flax and flax seed, wheat, rye, 41 barrels of whiskey (1560 gallons), 6 stills, 74 mash tubs, kegs, stands, 22 horses, 113 hogs, 95 sheep, 30 lambs, and over 30 different types of cattle. Farming and timbering equipment is numerous. Household possessions include carpeting, silver, and furnishings that show wealth. No details of the interior of the house or out buildings are provided. The list of possessions sold show that his wife Sarah purchased much farm and distillery equipment, including stills and tubs etc. in still house. Since Sarah inherited the property, she presumably continued the business with the help of her eldest son Oscar, who eventually took it over.

Boston Beer Company (Original), Boston Massachusetts

The Boston Beer Company (not associated with the company founded in 1985 that produces Sam Adams) has been associated with the present site since the company was chartered in 1828. In August 1828, Benjamin Thaxter conveyed to the Boston Beer Company a parcel of land, which Thaxter had acquired in July and August of 1828. It was explained in the deed that Baxter had purchased this land with money provided by a group of subscribers who established a fund for erecting and carrying on a brewery of malt liquors at South Boston. Thaxter was to hold the land until such time as they were incorporated, at which time Thaxter would convey the land to the subscribers in their corporate capacity. The subscribers, including Gamaliel Bradford, Nathan Rice, Benjamin Thaxter and Elijah Loring, had been incorporated as The Boston Beer Company on February 1, 1828 for the purpose of manufacturing malt liquors in all their varieties, in the City of Boston. They were authorized to hold real estate not to exceed $50,000 in value and personal estate not to exceed $100,000. The parcel conveyed by Thaxter included two lots, one of which comprises the eastern portion of the present site at the corner of Second and D streets in South Boston. The first was a rectangular lot, which extended west 186 feet from the corner of Second and D Streets and was 90 feet deep. The second lot extended north from the first, running across Second Street and out to the sea. This lot presently runs between West Second and West First streets and is occupied by trailers. Two additional adjoining lots are part of the present Boston Beer Company parcel. One lot purchased in 1828 extended the parcel 27 feet to the west and added 10 feet to the depth of the lot along the south border so that it increased from 90 to 100 feet in depth. An additional lot acquired in 1845 expanded the parcel 30 feet to the west. No deeds were located that would indicate that the property was sold at any time between 1800 and 1899, suggesting that the Boston Beer Company was the continuous owner of this parcel from 1828 until 1957. Peter Stott's research indicated that the first brewery built on this site was built circa 1851 for Henry F. Cox & Co. brewery. (Stott) In the 1851 directory, Henry F. Cox & Co. is listed under brewers at 2d near D Street and James L. Phipps is listed next to the company name, suggesting he was the manager or a partner of the company. Henry Cox's involvement was short lived, and by 1856, J.L. Phipps & Co. is listed under brewers at 147 2nd Street. By 1858, the address had changed to 149 2nd Street. Phipps & Co. appears at this address through 1860, but in 1861, Henry Souther (Phipps' brother-in-law) is listed under brewers at 149 2nd Street and must have taken over the company. However, by 1863, Souther had apparently moved his operation to 2nd cor. H Street (later 528 2nd Street) where he remained into the 1870s. That company continued under several names including Bay State Brewery, Jones, Johnson & Co., Jones, Cook & Co., and finally Frank Jones Brewing Company until it closed in 1903.

Murphys Hotel - Mitchler Hotel, Murphys California

Original Murphys hotel built in 1855-56 and known as Sperry and Perry hotel and was called a fire proof building. Stage stop enroute to Calaveras Big Trees, the hotel was built to accomodate that traffic after the trees discovery. Although thought to be fireproof, burned in the fire of 1859. Front part of building was of stone and iron doors separated this part from the wooden dining room in the rear. Work was started immediately after the fire on a new building which was completed for opening the following year in spring. New walls were entirely of stone. The hotel never again burned in subsequent fires. In the fire of 1874 the stone walls saved it from fire. Also in 1893 there was a tremendous explosion and fire. The hotel was saved except for warping of iron doors and shutters.

St. George Hotel, Winchester Kentucky

This hotel was erected by the George brothers, prominent local businessmen, and stands on the site of the old Winchester Hotel, a two-story wood frame hotel and business block. Because of its location near the train station, this hotel catered to railroad travelers. The structure is an unusual combination of Queen Anne and Neocolonial architecture which functioned as a major hotel in town since it opened in 1904. For one year it was the finest hotel in town but was superceded by the larger Brown-Proctor when that hotel opened in 1905.

Scotland Mansion, Frankfort Kentucky

The imposing Greek Revival mansion, located off Versailles Road, five miles east of Frankfort, was built between 1845 and 1847 by Robert Wilmot Scott, a prominent lawyer, politician, and innovative farmer and stock raiser. He as?as ais© instrumental in establishing the Kentucky public school and constructed the first common school in the State on his estate. The land on which the house was built had been the estate of Martin D. Hardin (1780-1823), another eminent lawyer and politician. Later owners of the property include Horatio P. Mason, a famous contractor and engineer; and Colonel J. Swigert Taylor, a respected Frankfort distiller and thoroughbred horse breeder. Scotland, as it is now called, is the largest Greek Revival house in Franklin County, and one of the largest in Kentucky. Its imposing bulk is well-known to motorists driving on Interstate Route 64, the present main connector between Louisville at the Falls of the Ohio River and Lexington in the heart of the Bluegrass region of Central Kentucky. The house, surrounded by aged trees, lies at the top of a knoll several hundred feet south of the highway just east of the Frankfort interchange. The extensive property is entered off the road between Frankfort and Versailles, Woodford County, where it passes under I-64 half-a-mile west of the house. The present rear of the property abuts on the Old Frankfort Pike, a narrow scenic road now seldom used but once a major thoroughfare linking the State capital with Lexington, the Athens of the West. Before I-64 was routed across the north side of the property, the house was approached from the old Leestown Road (now 421), which has, however, changed its course several times in the last century-and-a-half. By the mid-19th century, the early L & N Railroad had already been located between the house at the Leestown Road. Thus the mansion has always faced at least one major transportation route and the property has been defined by others; the apparently unfortunate proximity of I-64 is, therefore, only an extension of a feature in fact boasted about by Robert Wilmot Scott, the builder of the house, in an advertisement for the sale of the property, he personally prepared in 1871. The Louisville and Lexington Railroad, and the State road from Frankfort to Lexington, pass through it, under the same lines of fence affording a commanding front view of the principal dwelling-house and adjacent grounds; the Frankfort and Versailles Turnpike is on the western boundary; Ducker Depot is within a mile and a half, and thus easy access is had, from all directions, it being five miles from Frankfort, nineteen from Lexington, and seventy from Louisville.

Schoenhofen Brewery - Edelweiss Beer, Chicago Illinois

The Schoenhofen Brewery, long known as the producers of Edelweis Beer, was one of the largest and most elaborate breweries ever constructed in Chicago. The Brewery was established in the early 1860's and continued to function until Prohibition. The Schoenhofen Brewery is a fifteen building complex covering about seven acres, two miles south of Chicago's downtown. The first buildings were erected in 1862, when Peter Schoenhofen moved his business eight blocks south and west, from Jefferson and 12th Streets, to Canalport and 18th. None of these first buildings remain. The oldest building in the complex was probably built about 1867, five years after the founding of the brewery on the 18th and Canalport site. In the process of growth from 600 barrel capacity in 1860 to 1,200,000 barrel capacity in 1910, older buildings were remodeled or demolished and replaced by larger structures.

Berry Hill Mansion - Juniper Hills, Frankfort Kentucky

The house which George F. Berry constructed in 1900 incorporated all the elements that the bourbon edifice demanded. From its very beginnings Berry Hill, as it has become popularly known, was a venture into the high style architecture that reflected all the aspects demanded by the bourbon aristocracy within the area. George Berry purchased the property during the last decade of the 19th century. He named the estate Juniper Hill due to the large amount of red cedars that were growing upon the property. Upon the land he commissioned the construction of a massive stone Colonial Revival structure.

Louisville, Henderson, and St. Louis Railroad Depot, Fordsville Kentucky

The Louisville, Henderson, and St. Louis Depot in Fordsville was built in 1916 to replace the original 1890 depot built when the railroad was first operational. The Fordsville Depot is the only major depot remaining in Ohio County and one of the few in the surrounding area. Fordsville, a small town in northeastern Ohio County, has a present population of about 580 (1980 census), considerably less than its early 20th century high of about 900. Ohio County, established in 1798, was very sparsely settled through the first half of the 19th century. Its citizens relied almost exclusively on agriculture, hunting and fishing, and its huge timber reserves for their living. Only Hartford, the county seat located approximately fifteen miles southwest of Fordsville, was a town of any size.

Red River Iron Furnace - Fitchburg Furnace, Fitchburg Kentucky

Designed by Fred Fitch and built by Sam Worthley in 1868, it is unique in that it consists of two furnaces in a single structure. It was built of carefully cut stone and is 65 feet high and 115 feet long. It operated from 1870 to 1874 and employed 1000 men. In 1870, this furnace produced 10,000 tons of pig iron valued at more than $60,000. The production of pig iron was one of Kentucky's earliest industries. A major producer of iron since 1791, Kentucky ranked third in the U.S. in the 1830's and 11th in 1865.

Roselawn - Owsley House, Danville Kentucky

Roselawn was the last home for William Owsley, Congressman, Governor of Kentucky, and Associate Justice on the State Court of Appeals. Owsley, born in Virginia in 1782, came to Lincoln County, Kentucky, as a child. He studied law under Chief Justice of the State Court of Appeals John Boyle and, after obtaining his license, began to practice law in Garrard County. He was elected to the State Legislature and shortly thereafter (1812) was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Governor Scott. In 1828 Owsley retired from the Court and returned to his home in Garrard County, Pleasant Retreat (listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1975), to practice law. He sold the house and moved to Frankfort in 1837. The next year he purchased the property on which Roselawn was to be built, and established his son-in-law, Clifton Rodes, and family there. There was apparently a dwelling on the property at the time Owsley bought it, but neither this fact nor the nature of the dwelling can be substantiated. The existing dwelling reputedly burned in 1847, and the Rodes family moved to Danville. In the meantime, Owsley won the 1844 election for the Governor of Kentucky. He moved to Roselawn, built for his retirement, when his term ended in 1848 and lived there until he died in 1862. Roselawn is a two-story, five-bay, brick house situated in the gently rolling terrain of the Bluegrass Region in northeastern Boyle County, Kentucky. It is located about a mile and a half northwest of Danville on the east side of U.S. 127 (Harrodsburg Road), and about two miles from the Mercer County line. The house, which faces southward, is set back from the highway lying to its west and sits on the northern edge of a broad, flattened knoll amidst a grove of mature trees.

Rochester-Cecil House - Melrose, Danville Kentucky

Robinson House - Quietdale, Huntsville Alabama

The house was erected for Mrs. Caroline Moore Robinson, widow of Madison County sheriff William (Black Bill) Robinson. A Virginia-born planter and speculator, Robinson had accumulated vast landholdings in Alabama and Mississippi by the time of his death in 1852, at the premature age of forty-four. Documentary evidence hints that the noted Huntsville architect George Steele or his son, Matthew W. Steele, may be responsible for the design and construction of Quietdale. The younger Steele, though never to achieve a reputation comparable to that of his father, intermittently practiced as an architect in Huntsville during the 1850s. George Steele himself died in the fall of 1854. But a note among his estate papers refers to a debt of $1131.66 due from the Estate of Wm Robinson for the bal[ance] of work furnished by M.W.S. Executor, payable on January 1, 1856. Certainly the original plan of the house followed George Steele's predilection for separating the formal interior spaces from the more intimate family living area Thus a forty-two foot long drawingroom suite lay to the right of an entrance vertibule; to the left was a series of smaller and more informally disposed rooms extending into a rear ell. Directly behind the foyer, two stairhalls with parallel stairways led to completely separate bedroom suites on the upper floor. Why the upper floor was partitioned is not entirely clear: whether to isolate the guest chambers, or in deference to the custom observed in far more primitive Alabama houses of the period, of carefully separating the boys' and girls' sleeping quarters.

Southern Railway System Train Depot, Huntsville Alabama

The Memphis and Charleston Railroad Depot, built in 1860, is the oldest railway terminal standing in Alabama and one of the last surviving physical evidences of the South's most significant antebellum rail systems. During the Civil War the Depot was used as a temporary Federal prison. The Memphis and Charleston Railroad was the most important transportation line in the South, in addition to being the most potent factor in the commercial development of Northern Alabama. Originally incorporated under the laws of Tennessee on February 2, 1846, the railway embodied one of the early dreams of the south; to connect the Mississippi River at Memphis with the Atlantic Ocean at Charleston. The merchants and farmers of North Alabama had long suffered from the loss of their cargo in the treacherous Muscle Shoals of the Tennessee River. Thus when a railroad was planned, the citizens of Huntsville were determined to have the line go through their city. By 1849 the citizens had voted $50,000 toward the proposed railroad, and by 1850 it had been decided that the route would definitely go through Huntsville, which would also be the headquarters for the Eastern Division. On January 7, 1850, the company was chartered by the legislature of Alabama as the Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company.

Kildare Mansion - McCormick House, Huntsville Alabama

Kildare's builder Michael O'Shaughnessy was a northern capitalist who, with his brother James, was looking for investment and development situations in the South during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They settled on Huntsville, a town of 5,000 persons that had never revived following the Civil War, where they built and purchased homes and began buying large tracts of land and buildings. It was through the O'Shaughnessy's influence that additional wealthy outsiders were attracted to Huntsville as a town with great development potential. It was this group of northern investors and self-styled town builders, associated with prominent local businessmen, that provided the money, the connections, and the know-how to package and sell Huntsville as an industrial and resort site. Before the O'Shaughnessys moved on, they were chiefly responsible for the creation of Dallas Manufacturing Company and of East Huntsville Addition (a major suburb), the construction of the resort facility called Monte Sano Hotel, the refurbishing of the Huntsville Hotel, and the establishment of a large cotton seed oil plant. However, many of their colleagues remained in Huntsville and continued to establish or attract additional cotton textile mills and various other smaller industries, which created the economic basis for the town's postbellum recovery. The second owner of Kildare, Mary Virginia McCormick, was the daughter of Cyrus Hall McCormick of reaper fame. Although she spent only a few months in Huntsville each year, if at all, she was responsible for much philanthropic work in the town. She took a particular interest in the living conditions of the several mill villages that had grown up around the town (as a result of the O'Shaughnessy's initial efforts) and coerced the mill directors into providing better health care and recreation facilities for the operatives by offering matching funds for settlement houses and YMCA's.

Dunnavants Department Store Building, Huntsville Alabama

The Dunnavant's Building was erected by Terry Brothers and Rogers, a local dry goods company, in 1905 from a design by Huntsville architect Edgar Love. It was originally of brick and milled construction according to the Weekly Mercury which reported that carpenters are now placing the heavy timbers for the second floor. The building was extensively remodeled in 1927 by contractor Charles E. Baxter who had a force of men at work building an entire new front, besides the rearrangement of the interior. However, drawings and photographs of the building indicate that the only exterior changes ever made to the building were confined to the entrance and display windows on Washington Street. In 1940 a fire started in the paint department on the third floor and did considerable damage to this floor and the roof. At that time the roof was replaced and repairs were made throughout the structure. Three months after the fire Dunnavant's reopened for business. Terry Brothers and Rogers changed partnerships several times until P. S. Dunnavant gained control of the store in 1925. Dunnavant's was the premier department store in Huntsville for many years and remained in this downtown location even after opening a branch store. In 1975 after P. S. Dunnavant died, the downtown store was closed.