This Raincoat Factory has been Abandoned since the 1990s

Alligator Oil Clothing Company Building, St. Louis Missouri

Date added: October 30, 2023 Categories:

With burgeoning rail access to southern and southwestern cotton markets, St. Louis thrived as a center of garment manufacturing after the Civil War. By the early twentieth century, the city had a diversified garment industry that included manufacturers of dresses, suits, coats, and uniforms as well as related shoe and millinery concerns. Yet among the producers of garments, none in St. Louis specialized in rain-repellent outerwear until the Ferguson Waterproof Company was incorporated before 1911. The company was located on the riverfront at Second and Trudeau Streets.

Waterproof clothing was a relatively new item of mass production. In 1877, Norwegian Captain Helly Juell Hansen first soaked coarse linen in linseed oil to produce waterproof clothing suitable for maritime work. Hansen's invention won acclaim at the 1878 Paris Exposition and led to the global development of oil-treated clothing, known by the common fabric names oilskin and oilcloth. While early fabric was used by sailors, railroad workers and others exposed to long periods outdoors in wet conditions, by the early 20^th Century garment makers were mass-producing oil-treated clothing for general wear. Of course, raincoats were the chief product.

The Ferguson Waterproof Company reorganized as the Alligator Oil Clothing Company in 1916. From 1916 through 1918, the company's manufacturing took place in a two-story factory at 1118 S. Grand. At incorporation, Forrest Ferguson served as president and David M. Flournoy as vice president. World War I provided the impetus for major corporate expansion. The United States Army purchased some three million Alligator raincoats for soldiers, according to an Alligator advertisement. All of these coats were made in St. Louis, and led to the company's decision to relocate to a large, modern facility with sufficient capacity for large demand.

Alligator purchased land in the new Bingham's Estate Addition, located along the Missouri Pacific Railroad line that crosses through south St. Louis. The site chosen by the company was located in an area where Gravois and Meramec Avenues along with the railroad line diagonally cross the street grid to create oddly-shaped lots. Peerless Coal and Coke Company had already located here, and other industries would follow as companies sought to build new rail-served fireproof buildings outside of the riverfront and central corridor areas. Between 1910 and 1940, many St. Louis companies moved along rail lines in the north and south city to develop large, fireproof manufacturing facilities directly served by rail.

The new plant at 4171 Bingham Avenue was a spacious, four-floor fire-proof concrete building served by its own rail spur. Its architect was Leonard Haeger, whose recent Pevely Dairy Company building (1916) had garnered favorable local attention for its superior efficiency and plant layout. The company's new facility led to boastful advertising touting its wartime production and the assertion that Alligator's coats were the only union-made rain gear in the nation.

Around the time of completion of the Bingham plant, the Alligator Company purchased additional land and built two Haeger-designed factory buildings next door. The intent of this construction, which included a spacious office, is uncertain. Upon completion, Alligator leased both buildings to the new P.D. George Company, a maker of varnishes, paints and wire coatings. Founded by Pericles D. George that same year, the company may have been incorporated to capitalize on the potential co-production at the Bingham facility. The oils needed for Alligator's waterproof clothing were also necessary for paint and varnish production, and byproducts generated by the clothing operation could be used to make waterproof varnishes that the P.D. George Company produced.

In 1921, the Alligator Oil Clothing Company changed its name to the Alligator Company. On August 15^th, 1921 the United States Patent Office granted the company an official trademark for its "Rain-Queen" line of clothing. The company already held a trademark for "Rain-King." Advertisements for Alligator's rain gear regularly appeared in railroad magazines throughout this period, showing that the company was focused on marketing its utilitarian work clothing. These advertisements boasted that Alligator's wares were union-made. The company dared periodical readers: "If your dealer does not handle Alligator oiled clothing, send us his name and yours."

The relationship between Alligator and the P.D. George Company was especially fruitful throughout the 1930s, when the Alligator Company obtained one patent per year in a three-year period. In 1931, P.D. George's son John E. George secured for Alligator United States Patent later, George obtained U.S. Patent #1877394, assigned to the Alligator Company. This patent protected George's development of a method of waterproofing balloon cloth. These patents were preceded in 1930 by U.S. Patent #1785029, secured by Alligator engineer A.H. Hessler for his invention of a fixed-belt raincoat.

The P.D. George Company operated production at 4153 Bingham Avenue until 1943, when it terminated its lease and moved to a new facility at 5200 N. 2^nd Street. The Bingham Avenue facility continued to house the company research laboratory. The National Research Council's 1946 Guide Industrial Research Laboratories of the United States reports that the P.D. George Company maintained a laboratory at the Bingham site, with its research activities including wire enamels, coatings for insulation and electrical industries, adhesives, industrial paints, lacquers, varnishes and "specialties."

By the 1940s, Alligator's advertisements regularly appeared in Time and other national magazines, and their products ranged from waterproof clothing for railroad workers to raincoats for consumers. In 1943, Alligator expanded the plant by connecting both its original factory and the buildings vacated by the P.D. George Company. Alligator's growth led to New York and Los Angeles branch offices. During World War II, Alligator enjoyed substantial success as both a military and civilian supplier. Plant expansion continued in 1953 and 1959. In 1966, clothing giant BVD, Inc. acquired Alligator, continuing production at the Bingham Avenue plant until 1971. In 1971, BVD sold the factory complex to Multiplex, Inc., a manufacturer of beverage dispensing equipment and water treatment systems for the food service industry. Multiplex left the plant by the late 1990s, and the buildings have been vacant since then.

Reinforced Concrete Industrial Architecture in St. Louis

Reinforced concrete frame construction appeared in St. Louis by 1900, used first for cold storage warehouse construction, but its use was not widespread until after 1905. Throughout the first decades of the use of reinforced concrete for industrial architecture, full display of the concrete structure on the exterior was rare, possibly due to the influence of the local brick industry. Yet local architects were quick to take advantage of rapid early advances in reinforced concrete technology in American architectural engineering.

Engineer and architect Ernest Ransome pioneered reinforced concrete structural systems for industrial architecture in the 1880s and 1890s. When a terrible fire in 1902 left his concrete-framed Pacific Coast Borax Refinery in Bayonne, New Jersey (1897) largely unscathed, interest in using reinforced concrete for the construction of fire-prone industrial buildings grew. Ransome's United Shoe Machinery Plant in Beverly, Massachusetts (1903) was the largest reinforced concrete industrial building built to date. By then, engineer Julius Kahn of Detroit had already developed a modular structural system of concrete columns and beams, patented in 1902. Kahn's brother, noted architect Albert Kahn, employed the "Kahn system" throughout his career to design dozens of American factories. Kahn used the system to maximize widths between columns and increase the size of window openings in the outer envelopes of factories and warehouses to allow for consistent, ample natural light. Kahn's design for the Brown-Lipe Chaplin Factory in Syracuse, New York (1908) may be the first fully-realized "daylight factory" plan in American architecture. The Brown-Lipe Chaplin Factory set some standards in daylight factory design: low height, here five stories; minimal or no use of masonry cladding; use of ornament only at entrances, cornices and piers; and use of ribbons of multi-pane steel sash windows with hopper windows to maximize daylight and allow ventilation.

Engineer C.A.P. Turner developed a slab and column concrete structural system that eliminated the need for beams altogether. First employed in Turner's Johnson-Bovey Building in Minneapolis (1906), Turner's system was called the "mushroom cap system" due to the appearance of the caps Turner designed for his rounded columns. Turner patented his system in 1908. Turner's system allowed for faster construction of fireproof industrial and commercial buildings, and also made it easier for non-architects in the building trades to design these buildings (saving even more money). According to architectural historian Amy Slaton, most American reinforced concrete industrial buildings that avoided masonry cladding built between 1900 and 1930 were designed by engineers without the participation of trained architects. In St. Louis, however, well-known trained architects like Albert B. Groves, the principals of Mauran, Russell & Garden, Tom P. Barnett and Leonhard Haeger would produce the bulk of early functionalist reinforced concrete design.

Two of the earliest industrial buildings in St. Louis to employ modern reinforced concrete structures came from the prolific firm Mauran, Russell & Garden. The firm designed both the Butler Brothers Building at 1701 Olive Street and the Lesan-Gould Building at 1322-24 Washington Avenue for wholesale warehousing, which required fireproof construction and floors that could handle heavy loads. The giant five-story Butler Brothers Building occupied an entire city block and utilized a structure of reinforced concrete columns, beams and slabs, all poured in place using wooden forms. The exterior, however, was given lavish masonry treatment with polychrome brown brick and sumptuous red terra cotta. Nonetheless, The Realty Record and Builder proclaimed that the building was "the largest monolithic reinforced concrete building in the world." On the other hand, the Lesan-Gould Building occupied a narrow site, and its two-bay-wide form emphasized verticality. Mauran, Russell & Garden employed Julius Kahn's concrete structural system here, leaving it fully exposed on the side and street-facing elevations with brick infill in the bay openings. The stark utilitarian form is softened by Arts and Crafts elements like copper-clad, bracketed cornices and polychromatic enamel brick knee walls and first-floor cladding.

Railroad freight depots also embraced advances in fireproof concrete construction.

The Missouri, Kansas and Texas completed a massive freight depot at 1600 N. Broadway in 1910. The reinforced concrete structural grid was hidden underneath walls that emphasized the masonry cladding and ornament used. Yet three years later the St. Louis and Southwestern Railroad (the "Cotton Belt Route") completed a nearly avant-garde concrete freight depot near the Missouri, Kansas and Texas depot. Designed by O.D. Schmidt, the five-story Cotton Belt Freight Depot was functionally designed and expressed. The building's exterior was completely concrete, with cladding showing both the aggregate composition of the material and the imprints of the 40'6"-long, one-story-high wooden form used to guide the pouring of the walls. Yet the building was not as structurally honest as it may have appeared, despite its early aesthetic statement: the Cotton Belt Freight Depot's structure consisted of steel columns, beams and joists clad in concrete to make them fireproof.

In 1914, the Ford Motor Company completed the first section of a five-story reinforced concrete factory at 4100 Forest Park Boulevard. The company expanded the factory in 1916. Designed by Clymer & Drischler of St. Louis with an addition by Albert Kahn, the plant followed a traditional daylight factory plan. Wide column spacing, window openings nearly the full height and width of bay openings, steel sash windows and austere exterior design make this a very modern building. The original building employed a single-column cap form, event for the exterior columns, so that column caps protrude through the brick exterior cladding. However, the Ford factory only shows reinforced concrete on its exterior away from public streets. The street-facing east and north elevations are clad in face brick with relief pattern work and terra cotta ornament. Overall, the Ford Motor Company Building cloaks a modern fireproof form under a fairly traditional masonry grid. The Ford factory compares to the earlier Koken Barber Supply Building at 2528 Texas Avenue (1912), which was a five-story reinforced concrete factory utilizing the Turner system while exhibiting a brick Classical Revival exterior.

Not every architect in St. Louis was hesitant to explore the extensive use of reinforced concrete. According to architectural historian Lynn Josse, Frederick C. Bonsack's Luyties Homeopathic Pharmaceutical Building at 4200 Laclede Avenue (1915) is the first known building in the city to use poured concrete for almost every aspect of its structure and its decorative program. Although the Turner-derived structural system of the building was hardly innovative for its time, the use of concrete for the entire exterior of the building was preceded only by the Cotton Belt Freight Depot. Bonsack's design applies Classical Revival elements like a trabeated entrance and a projecting cornice with tall supporting consoles, but all of these are poured concrete. The fully-expressed structural grid compares to the Lesan-Gould Company Building, but it avoids brick infill entirely.

During World War I, around the time that the Alligator Oil Clothing Company Buildings were built, the nation witnessed the construction of the largest functionalist concrete industrial complex built between 1900 and 1920. In March 1918, the United States Army commissioned architect Cass Gilbert to design a massive military depot and supply base in Brooklyn, New York. Gilbert's design for the five million square foot complex turned reinforced concrete into both an expedient construction method and an aesthetic principle. Constructed of girderless, steel-reinforced concrete slabs, the Brooklyn Army Terminal buildings were clad in a concrete envelope. Although Gilbert made use of vertical piers, traditional window bays and other elements that were somewhat traditional, he embraced the expression of concrete on the exterior. Gilbert wrote of the complex: "There is something very fine about a great gray mass of building, all one color, all one tone, yet modified by the sunlight or shadow of pearly gray of wonderful delicacy."

In St. Louis, however, such open display of reinforced concrete structures remained unusual even as World War I limited steel availability. The steel shortage during World War I led the developers of the downtown Arcade Building to have architect Tom P. Barnett substitute reinforced concrete for steel when construction started in 1917. Barnett's Gothic Revival design, however, remained unchanged, and the building was completed in 1919 clad in terra cotta with its structural form hidden. Even industrial buildings avoided full exposure of structure. The Rexall Company Building at 3901 N. Kingshighway Boulevard (1920, Harry M. Hope Engineering Company) and the Emerson Electric Company Building at 2012-18 Washington (1920, Albert Groves) have a structural honesty inherent in the wide, tall window openings, but avoid display of the concrete structures save on their rear and side elevations. One of largest reinforced concrete daylight factory buildings erected in St. Louis was the Bevo Bottling Plant at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery (1919, Klipstein & Rathmann and Widmann, Walsh & Boisselier). The Bevo Bottling Plant not only is clad in brown brick and buff terra cotta, but it uses masonry fill in bay openings to artistic effect, so that the structure of the plant is only selectively displayed.

Despite the conservative architectural treatment of the form, the reinforced concrete daylight factory received positive local press. A 1918 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on the proposed Pedigo-Weber Shoe Factory at Theresa and Locust Streets, designed by Albert B. Groves, extols the building's fireproof structural system and points out that the large window openings would allow the "maximum amount of daylight" to reach the factory inside. Of course, the building was clad in red brick. One work from the World War I era that seems consonant with the Alligator factory is Groves' McElroy-Sloan Shoe Company Building at 2035 Washington Avenue (1919), a five-story building that mitigates its expressed functionalist concrete frame with Renaissance Revival elements including a projecting cornice. Novelty in reinforced concrete architecture arrived with the introduction of gunite, a mixture of concrete and sand sprayed onto steel forms that created buildings with fully concrete exteriors. The Post-Dispatch included a lengthy article on the construction of the National Lead Company's pottery plant at Manchester and Macklind avenues, the first all-gunite industrial building built in the city when completed in 1920.

In 1920, after completion of the Alligator Oil Clothing Company Buildings, the Crunden-Martin Manufacturing Company commissioned architect Tom P. Barnett to design a substantial addition to their factory on the south riverfront. This new six- and seven-story building was only the second factory building designed by Barnett. Yet the concrete form here is not dissimilar to Barnett's layout of the Arcade Building, despite the smaller scale. The difference between this building and any others designed by Barnett is not the use of reinforced concrete but the raw expression of the material as exterior finish. The walls, piers, crenellation and all other elements of the walls are finished concrete. Certainly, Barnett is a more significant architect than Haeger, and the Crunden-Martin Building exhibits a formal originality that identifies it as the work of a master.

In the 1920s and 1930s, reinforced concrete factories in St. Louis rarely exhibited the utilitarian "ferro-concrete style" displayed by the Alligator Oil Clothing Company buildings. A survey of major examples from the period shows continuation of the use of masonry cladding to either mask entire elevations or piers. The Ramsey Accessories Manufacturing Company Building at 3963 Forest Park Avenue (1923, C.G. Schoelch) has side walls of exposed concrete structure and brick infill, but its front elevation is brick-clad and even utilized one-over-one wooden windows in the office area. The J.C. Penney Company Warehouse Building at 400 S. 4^th Street (1927) is one of the most purely functionalist works of the period, but still used face brick to disguise its concrete grid on the north, west and south sides. Nearby, the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company Distribution Plant addition at 1132 Spruce Street (1924, Nolte & Naumann), the work of a firm considered to be capable of artistically progressive work, is even more decorated and even has an ornamental terra cotta entrance.

The Steelcote Manufacturing Company Paint Factory at 801 Edwin Avenue (1922-29, Hellmuth & Hellmuth) includes a building that follows the utilitarian expression of concrete form shown by the Lesan-Gould, Alligator and Adler buildings. The five-story main building at the factory, first built as a three-story building in 1924 and expanded in 1929, exposes its concrete structure on all four sides and makes use of steel windows and inset brick knee walls similar to Alligator. A similar building completed in the same year is the Stix, Baer & Fuller Relay Station warehouse at 3717 Forest Park Avenue. Industrial buildings that displayed concrete structures would be intermittent in the following decades. The advent of the International Style, with its emphasis on clear material and structural expression and lack of ornamentation, would become a catalyst for later reinforced concrete industrial architecture. The now-demolished massive Falstaff Brewing Company Ice House at 20^th and Madison streets (1940) was a geometric concrete mass that exhibited International Style design and pure reinforced concrete exterior expression. This building's roots went back to earlier works including the Alligator Oil Clothing Company Factory.

Building Description

The Alligator Oil Clothing Company Buildings are located at 4153-71 Bingham Avenue in the southern portion of St. Louis, Missouri. The complex consists of four buildings and the ruins of a fifth building, situated on the western end of a large parcel. The east end of the parcel historically has been undeveloped, and today is divided between a lawn and a paved parking area. Chain link fencing surrounds the site on its west, north, east, and most of its south side. Due to a northward site slope, the buildings of the plant present different heights at the street face, on the high side of the slope, than at the rear. The main building of the Alligator Oil Clothing Company complex is a large, reinforced concrete factory building from 1918 on the west end of the site. This four-level building expresses its concrete grid on its exterior, and has a main elevation that presents a shaped concrete parapet, concrete grid, brick knee walls and steel sash windows. North of this building is a one-story flat-roofed support structure dating to c. 1960. To the east are Building 3, a two-story office and manufacturing building dating to 1919 that cloaks much of its concrete structural grid in a traditional brick face, and Building 4, a one-story warehouse dating to 1959. Connecting Buildings 1 and 3 are the ruins of a fire-damaged addition from 1943.

The Alligator Oil Clothing Company Buildings are located in what is now called the Bevo neighborhood of St. Louis. East of the plant, six-lane Gravois Avenue runs southwest-northeast through the neighborhood. At the northeast corner of the plant, Gravois runs in a cut beneath a truss that carries a railroad line. Gravois's current configuration dates to 1936. North of the plant are apartment buildings and commercial buildings facing Chippewa Avenue. To the east is the large, Art Deco, reinforced-concrete mass of the National Candy Company Factory at 4230 Gravois Road (1928, Klipstein & Rathmann). South and west of the plant, the character of the neighborhood is residential. Streets run on a grid with blocks having long east-west dimensions. The housing stock consists of a mix of frame and brick masonry housing built largely between 1890 and 1910. Much of this housing consists of one and one-and-half-story single dwellings of modest size. Just southwest of the Alligator Oil Clothing Company Buildings is the two-story Oak Hill School at 4300 Morganford Road (1907, William B. Ittner). Throughout the neighborhood, trees are planted in rear yards and in tree lawns. The street grid includes bisecting alleys on each block, although there is none running north of the Alligator plant.

The original Alligator Oil Clothing Company Building, built in 1918, is a concrete-framed building with a low-pitched gabled roof. Due to the grade of the site, the front elevation facing Bingham Avenue reads as two stories tall while the rear elevation shows the building's four levels. The front elevation is divided into ten bays. The concrete piers and beams are exposed to frame the fenestration here. Each opening save the entrance features a brick knee wall topped by a slightly projecting rowlock sill course. Above these walls, the openings are glazed with steel sash currently covered by corrugated plastic sheets. The entrance is found in the third bay from right (east), where concrete frames a single door opening flanked by sidelights. Concrete brackets rise to support a projecting concrete hood over the entrance. This elevation is topped by a stepped concrete parapet. Every other pier rises through the parapet's segments, which have a slight rise. These piers support projecting consoles with stepped bases. The center segment of the parapet forms a gentle pediment. Each section's central area is recessed. There are two saw-tooth skylights, with reinforced concrete structures, running across the width of the building at the south end of the roof. The steel sash windows that once filled the openings on the north-facing skylights have been removed and the openings partly infilled with concrete block. There is a shed-roofed concrete elevator house on the east side of the building above the third bay from the north.

The side elevations are similarly arranged with exposed concrete piers and beams defining the openings. On the 12-bay east elevation, which appears as two stories on the south and four stories on the north, the fenestration matches that of the front elevation. This elevation reveals some former connections into the missing addition. In the sixth bay from the north on the third floor, the bay was completely open to the lost structure. It is now filled with plywood. On the second floor, the fourth bay from the north is covered with plywood while the fifth bay contains an opening with a steel overhead roll-up door. The first floor on this elevation has a blind concrete wall with a single opening containing an inset steel roll-up door toward the north corner. The west elevation is slightly different in that the fourth-floor openings are filled in with single steel windows at center. Most of the window openings on these elevations are covered in corrugated plastic sheets. The second floor is fenestrated five bays from north until it meets the slope. The fourth-floor bay openings are largely clad in brick around small openings with jack arches and rowlock sills at the center. These openings contain steel windows under corrugated plastic sheets. At this elevation, a smokestack stood until its demolition in 2011.

The 10-bay rear elevation has continuous fenestration with steel-sash windows on its third floor, and in the eastern half of its fourth floor. The western five bays of the fourth floor contain blind brick infill. On the second floor, the seventh and eighth bays from the east lack brick knee walls and window sash; one is covered in corrugated plaster while the other is covered by plywood. The other bays are fenestrated in the building's standard manner. At the first floor, fenestration is irregular corresponding to interior functions and loading openings. The easternmost bay has a recessed entrance inside, with brick piers to each side creating two flanking window openings containing steel windows. The other openings have openings high on the wall, with concrete walls beneath, with the exception of the fourth and sixth bays from the east. These are configured with full-height center openings (once covered with steel roll-up doors) set between concrete piers and flanking window openings. Some of the window openings on the first floor are filled with concrete block.

The size of the floor plates in Building 1 corresponds to the slope of the site. The first two stories are only half floors, and are built against a cut in the hill. The upper two stories are full floors.

On the first floor, concrete and clay tile partitions divide the level into functional spaces. The northwest corner is where the boiler room is located, adjacent to a series of equipment rooms that once housed elements of the fan drying system. To the east is a large open area. The second floor is largely open, except for an oil storage room in the northeast corner that has brick walls and a sliding steel fire door over its entrance. On the third floor, above the second-floor room, is an identical room where oil mixing once took place. There are bathroom stalls inside of partitions adjacent to these rooms, and there are other storage rooms on the perimeter of the north side of the second, third and fourth floors. Under the elevator house on the east side is the building's open wooden elevator, with an open concrete stair to its south. At the fourth floor, there is a mezzanine level in the northwest end of the building, constructed of reinforced concrete. The mezzanine begins at the north end of the high space formed by the northernmost skylight structure.

Throughout the interior spaces, the reinforced concrete structure is fully exposed. Most obvious is the grid of poured columns, which have slender round forms under tapering "mushroom" caps. On the lower floors, the caps support square concrete plates underneath the form-poured slab floors. On the fourth level, the caps directly support the low-sloped gabled roof. On the roof, where roofing material is missing, the concrete aggregate of the roof deck is close in composition and finish to the concrete composition of the building's exposed exterior concrete elements.

To the north of Building 1 is a narrow, one-story, flat-roofed red brick building. No building permit corresponding to its construction exists. The building sits on a reinforced concrete slab. The north, east and west walls are blind. At the east end, there is an open area with a concrete corner column and concrete roof slab. The southern face presents three sets of double-leaf steel doors in jack-arch entrances interspersed with seven boarded window openings with jack arches and brick sills. The building does not appear on Sanborn fire insurance maps until 1964, when it is indicated as a "varnish and color department." This building is divided into three rooms accessible from the exterior entrances.

Building 3, built in 1919, is a two-story concrete-framed building with a low-pitched gable roof. All window and door openings currently are clad in plywood. Here the site slope exposes the lower story partially on the sides and fully at the rear. The front elevation is clad in red brick and divided into four bays. The second bay from the right (east) is the entrance. In this bay, a door opening is to the right (east) of a window opening. Surrounding the bay, piers project outward and rise to support a pediment. In the recessed tympanum is an area clad with painted stucco. White terra cotta trim adorns and caps the piers and the pediment. A soldier course runs across the bay above. The other three bays are arranged the same: the wall plane is recessed between the piers, with the wall stepping up to meet the plane at the top. On the recessed sections are large window openings with soldier headers. All window openings have rowlock sills. Above these window bays is a terra cotta cornice supported by long brackets. The parapet above, which rises slightly at each pier, has terra cotta coping.

Brick cladding wraps one bay back on both the east and west elevations; these bays are arranged as the window bays on the front elevation. The eastern elevation then has four bays defined by exposed concrete piers and beams above a concrete foundation. In these bays are brick walls with rowlock sill courses. under tall, wide window openings. The western elevation is similar except that at the third bay from the south, a tower wing rises to a height of one story above the building. The tower has exposed concrete framing with inset brick knee walls with projecting rowlock sill courses under its window openings. The rear elevation shows the gable pitch as well as a painted area marking the location of the 1943 connector addition. This elevation has a tall concrete foundation under a section with exposed concrete framing infilled with brick. Only a few door openings penetrate the wall.

The interior of Building 3 is different on each level. The basement level is largely open, with partitions forming a small room near the elevator tower. The main level historically was open, but contains some partitions added over the years to form private offices. Overall, the interiors substantially reflect historic appearance. The building once was connected to other buildings to the north built around the time of its own construction, but those buildings were subsumed by the 1943 addition. After much of that addition was demolished in 1999, Building 3 was reduced to its original footprint.

Adjoining Building 3 but not interconnected is the low, flat-roofed one-story Building 4 from 1959. Building 4 is constructed on a concrete slab and partial basement, and has a structure consisting of steel columns, trusses, and roof decking, with brick exterior cladding. This building obscures part of the eastern elevation of Building 3. The exterior of Building 4 consists of a nearly continuous ribbon of steel windows (all boarded over with plywood) with brick knee walls below. At the rear (north) elevation, the site slope reveals concrete foundation piers infilled with concrete block; under this addition is a basement area. On the east elevation, there is an entrance toward the south containing double-leaf steel slab doors. Toward the north on that elevation is a concrete loading dock with a large steel crane. Off the dock is a tall, wide entrance now boarded. On the western side, Building 4 once was built against the now-wrecked 1943 connector section. The interior of Building 4 is open, with no partitions.

There are ruins of the addition that once connected Building 1 and Building 3. A 1999 fire damaged the addition, and it was partially demolished afterward. The reinforced concrete foundation and basement level remain in place, with a concrete floor slab above. Due to the slope of the site, at the north end, only the low concrete base of the now-lost north elevation is evident, but at the south side, the concrete wall of the basement is fully exposed. The floor slab retains one opening to the basement level, but access is not possible. At the east side of the structure are several traces of the addition. Two bays of two-story reinforced concrete building structure remain, complete with a low-pitched gable roof slab. There is a wall running between this component and Building 3 that retains three jack-arch openings containing steel window sash at the second level.