Overview

This warehouse constructed for the giant food processing company, Libby, McNeill and Libby, was one of many built south of Pioneer Square to serve the industrial storage needs of Seattle. The Sears, Roebuck and Company, Catalog Distribution Center (1912) was one of the largest and most prominent warehouses built in this area. Over time, new technologies became used to erect the lowest-cost storage facilities. This building was typical of its time, when the "tilt-up" method of concrete construction was used to build quickly and inexpensively.

Building History

The engineering firm of Frankfurther, Harstad and Associates produced the design for this warehouse that occupied a 40,500-square-foot site. The firm configured two rectangular boxes, one, for storage use, was larger and taller, to which a glass-and-steel office wing was appended. According to a Seattle Times article from 1960: "The warehouse will be built of tip-up concrete walls, with a concrete floor at truck-bed height. The office will be of glass and weld-aluminum siding on wood framing with acoustical ceilings." (See "Food Firm to Build New Plant Here," Seattle Times, 09/04/1960, p. 22.) Offices housed Libby, McNeill and Libby's branch manager, Milton N. Peterson, the manager of the salmon division, D.H. Zeiger, and the frozen-foods-division manager, R.S. Olson. Like many warehouses in the "SODO" section of Seattle, proximity to railroad tracks was a key siting requirement. In this case, the Libby, McNeill and Libby Warehouse stood next to Great Norther Railway tracks. The Hugh S. Ferguson Company served as the Building Contractor.

PCAD id: 19552