Abandoned printing company in Indiana

Fort Wayne Printing Company Building, Fort Wayne Indiana

Date added: May 09, 2023 Categories: Indiana Industrial

The Fort Wayne Printing Building is located on the north side of Washington Street, in the middle of the block between Calhoun and Harrison Streets, in downtown Fort Wayne. Washington Street was a residential area until about 1910, when the downtown commercial area centered along Calhoun Street began to grow to the east and west of that street. Today Washington Street is one of the city's main thoroughfares.

The Fort Wayne Printing Building is a four-story 1911 Neo-classical style commercial structure. The building's red-pressed brick facade is trimmed in white terra cotta, which is used for the window sills and lintels, as well as the decorative panels of festoon motifs that adorn the spandrels. Though it is now covered by a modern wood cladding, a terra cotta spandrel with similar panels also runs along the top of the first floor, as shown in the architect's original rendering; the return of this band is visible on the side (west) elevation. Both the rendering and another early sketch show that a bracketed modillion cornice once extended across the top of the facade, beneath the existing paneled parapet. The cornice's former location is now visible as a band of parging. A set of four major piers divide the facade into three major bays, each containing three bays of one-over-one double-hung windows on each upper floor of the facade. The first floor facade has modern display windows, installed in 1947, on either side of a center-bay entrance. In 1982 a brick wall was added to the face of the recessed center bay to create an entrance vestibule. The early views noted above show an original first-floor facade with a center bay entrance, flanked by show windows with paneled aprons; all three bays had transom panels made of leaded prism glass tiles.

The west elevation is punctured by a series of window and door openings. Three large window openings on the ground floor have been bricked in leaving only one window of the four-light steel sash used above. The upper floors each have windows with the same sash which pivots horizontally at the meeting rail. These openings with stone sills are set at different heights.

The north elevation's fenestration pattern is more regular being composed of fine openings on each floor. Only the center opening of paired, pivoting steel sash does not match the fenestration on the west facade.

The regular fenestration pattern on the east facade has been interrupted by a modern metal-clad enclosed bridge on the third-floor level that connects with the third floor of the Hutner Building to the east.

The building is covered by a flat, asphalt roof over a concrete deck. The low parapet wall that surrounds the roof is capped by a tile coping.

The interior of the building consists of a single large space on each of the four floors and the full basement. Two files of seven columns each extend the depth of the building behind the center piers seen on the facade. The entire structural system consists of poured-in-place reinforced concrete columns and slabs, with steel pipe columns used above the second floor.

On the first floor, the original space has been subdivided at its front (south) end by a series of modern office partitions. Inspection above the modern ceiling reveals plain plastered columns and ceiling. A stairs and passenger elevator added to the building in 1925 are located at the front (southwest) corner, just inside the display windows. Though they have been enclosed in a gypsum firewall, the open base of the otherwise enclosed platform stairway has retained its first-floor railing, a set of plain, blunt-topped square steel newels and a wooden handrail supported by wrought iron Spanish Colonial Revival style balusters. In the open area at the rear of the first floor, an open stair located in the center of the next-to-last bay descends to the basement. Both this stairway and the platform stairs to the second floor, located in the northwest rear corner appear to be original. Both stairs are trimmed with plain square wooden newels and balusters and a molded handrail. Just to the south of the rear stairs, a large freight elevator is placed with its longest width perpendicular to the side (west) wall.

The basement is a large space with a boiler area and a vault originally used to store printing plates partitioned with clay tile walls midway along the length of the west wall.

The large upper-floor areas are distinguished from one another primarily by differences in detail and the presence of modern partitions in some areas. The second floor has square concrete columns, beams, and an exposed concrete ceiling. On the front wall, the second-floor windows have plain plaster reveals trimmed with wooden sills and picture molding. The third and fourth floors each have a large area broken up only by the elevator, stairway, and restroom enclosures along the west wall. On the fourth floor, the stairway has an open landing with a steel pipe handrail. The walls and ceilings of the upper floors all show traces of paint, and oak flooring has been laid over the concrete floor slabs. The windows in the side and rear walls of the upper floors are steel units set in plain reveals; those on the second and third floors are placed with their sills five feet above the floors, presumably for the sake of originally providing clearance for storage units or work benches. The sills of the fourth-floor rear windows are two and a half feet above the floor. All of the steel windows are glazed with translucent wire glass.