Building History

The San Francisco architectural partnership of Weeks and Day designed this five-story warehouse for the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company, a company formed from nine others amalgamated in 1899. At this time, many trusts--in meat-packing, oil, banking--were forming through the rapid consolidation of smaller manufacturers into huge manufacturing concerns. The company, orignally headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, (and later New York, NY), was headed by Theodore Ahrens, Jr., (1877-1957) until 1934, and became a dominant producer of bathroom fixtures. The Building Review, a San Francisco architecture and construction publication, posted a notice of its impending construction in 1923: “A five-story warehouse to cost $300,000 will be built at Ninth and Brannan Streets immediately by the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company. Architects Week & Day are in charge.” (See “$300,000 San Francisco Plant To Be Built,” The Building Review, vol. XXIV, no. 5, 11/1923. p. 58.)

PCAD id: 23481