Abandoned clothing factory in Ohio
Richman Brothers Company, Cleveland Ohio
The Richman Brothers Company building on E. 55th Street in Cleveland, Ohio housed the Richman Brothers Company administrative offices, production facility, warehouse, and distribution centers for the retail and mail order segments of the business, as well as a cafeteria, hospital, recreation rooms and locker rooms for employees. The Richman brothers, Nathan G. Richman (1868-1941), Charles L. Richman (1872-1936), and Henry C. Richman (1876-1934), assumed the leadership of the company when their father retired in 1904. It was under the brothers' leadership that the company began to grow and continued to prosper, resulting in the need for a new building. Ground was broken at the E. 55th Street site in 1915, and the Richman Brothers Company occupied the new building from 1916 until 1992 when the company was liquidated. None of the Richman brothers ever married or had children, so when Nathan, the last surviving brother died in 1941, company leadership was passed to a long-time employee and a distant cousin. The company continued to grow and expand over the next four decades, all managed from the E. 55th Street building.
As early as 1860 the manufacture of ready-to-wear clothing became one of Cleveland's leading industries. The garment industry probably reached its peak during the 1920s, when Cleveland ranked close to New York as one of the country's leading centers for garment production. During the Depression and continuing after World War II, the garment industry in Cleveland declined. Scores of plants moved out of the area, were sold, or closed their doors. Local factors certainly played their part but the rise of the ready-to-wear industry in Cleveland, as well as its decline, paralleled the growth and decline of the industry nationwide. In the early 19th century clothing was still handmade, produced for the family by women in the household or custom-made for the more well-to-do by tailors and seamstresses. The ready-to-wear industry grew enormously from the 1860s to the 1880s for a variety of reasons. Increasing mechanization, systems for sizing developed based on millions of measurements obtained by the U.S. Army during the Civil War, the Depression of 1873 made buying off-the-rack garments more acceptable and a less costly alternative to custom-made clothing, but the biggest factors were expansive urbanization and rapid growth during the great wave of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Most immigrants from 1830-70 came from the German states, Great Britain, and, particularly Ireland, with the city attracting substantial representation from each of these groups. The most substantial and diverse migration to Cleveland occurred from 1870-1914, the period of the "new immigration," in which many Southern and Eastern Europeans came to the U.S. This large exodus was fostered by shortages of land in the home countries, more liberal immigration policies, increased military conscription, and, particularly for the Jews, persecutions. Industrial cities such as Cleveland also experienced rapid growth, and it was during this period that Cleveland's ready-to-wear clothing industry blossomed. At the turn of the 20th century, Cleveland ranked fourth amongst cities vying for supremacy in the garment industry. New York City dominated with Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and others trailing behind in terms of total employment numbers. In Cleveland, the garment industry provided a significant percentage of employment opportunities and was only second to iron and steel in terms of total employment numbers. By 1910, 80% of Cleveland's approximately 10,000 apparel workers were employed in large and well-equipped factories.
Until 1893 more Germans arrived annually in Cleveland than did any other national group. By 1900 the city's German population of 40,648 was larger than that of any other foreign-born community. The early entrepreneurs of the clothing industry in Cleveland were often Jews of German or Austro-Hungarian extraction. Their previous experience in retailing prepared them for the transition to manufacturing and wholesaling ready-to-wear clothing. By 1900 Cleveland's largely Jewish-owned garment industry was among the most important in America. "Within dynamically expanding Cleveland, its Jews held a distinctive place, just as did the other ethnic and religious groups of the city. In 1910 the Jewish economic position was summed up: "The Jews of Cleveland are engaged in many different commercial pursuits, being important factors in industrial and commercial enterprises, particularly in the manufacture of cloaks and clothing and all kindred garment industries..... They conduct the leading department stores and are among the most skillful garment workers...."
Garment production was often categorized depending on whether the firm produced men's or women's garments. In 1916, Cleveland ranked fourth in the production of women's garments. It had many successful firms devoted to this area of production, including H. Black & Co., Printz-Biederman, and Bobbie Brooks. In Ohio, Cleveland ranked first in terms of employment at women's garment firms, but was ranked second behind Cincinnati in the men's sector. This was unusual because more than sixty percent of the national garment industry labor force was employed in the production of men's clothing. Though fewer firms were engaged in the men's clothing sector in Cleveland, two firms, the Joseph & Feiss Company, and the Richman Brothers Company, became nationally-known men's clothing brands.
As noted in The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, garment manufacturing started in the Flats area along the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland but by the early 20th century was concentrated in what is now called the Warehouse District, an area bounded by West 6th and West 9th streets and Lakeside and Superior avenues. As the garment industry spread to other areas of the city, the Cleveland Worsted Mills dominated the skyline on Broadway near East 55th Street, producing fabric for Cleveland manufacturers, as well as other garment manufacturers in other parts of the country. During the first three decades of the 20th century, the garment industry spread from downtown to the east side-Bobbie Brooks on Perkins Avenue, the Dalton Co. at East 66th and Euclid, Printz-Biederman Co. on East 61st near Euclid, Bamberger-Reinthal Co. on East 61st at Kinsman, and the Richman Brothers Company on East. 55th.
In 1853, Joseph Lehman and Henry Richman founded The Lehman-Richman Company in Portsmouth, Ohio where they supplied clothes to ironworkers and the iron furnace industry in southeastern Ohio and West Virginia. Both men were immigrants of German-Jewish descent, with Richman hailing from Bavaria. As an outgrowth of that early business the company became a men's clothing manufacturer and wholesaler. In 1879, the partners moved their small company to Cleveland, Ohio, setting up in a factory building on Water Street. To manufacture their suits, fabric was cut using patterns and then the fabric pieces ("piecework") were given to outside contractors who sewed the suits together and bought them back to the factory. The Lehman-Richman Company struggled using this business model and in 1890, Henry Richman cashed in his life insurance policy to keep the company solvent. Henry Richman's three sons, Nathan G. Richman (1868-1941), Charles L. Richman (1872-1936), and Henry C. Richman, Jr. (1876-1934), grew up in Cleveland, and while all attended school until they were sixteen, it was understood that each would work in the family business. They started working part-time after school and then joined the business full-time when they graduated, Nathan in 1884, Charles in 1888, and Henry, Jr. in 1892.
When the Great Panic of 1893 ended in 1897, the company was heavily in debt. Joseph Lehman retired and the company was renamed the Henry Richman Company. It should be noted that in the Richman Brothers Company records and history, the founding date of the Richman Brothers Company is always considered to be 1879 when the business was moved to Cleveland. This is perhaps due, in part, to the source of the records, the leadership and financial infusion provided by Henry Richman over the years, and the presence of the Richman brothers as employees. In 1899, the Henry Richman Company opened a retail store in the Seaman Hotel on West 9th and was producing about 50 suits per week.
By 1904, the company was back on sound financial footing and Henry Richman retired, turning his business over to his sons. Nathan became Chairman of the Board, Charles was made President, and Henry, Jr. the Secretary/Treasurer. With their past part-time and full-time employment, the brothers had thorough understanding of the operation, each having worked in every aspect of the company. All were well prepared to assume their leadership positions and grow the company.
The Henry Richman Company continued to manufacture men's suits, selling them directly to customers from their retail store. The company was the first clothier to do so. It was a sales model that eliminated the "middleman" and one that would guide the company's business plan for the better part of the 20th century. Between 1904 and 1909, the name of the company changed from the Henry Richman Company, to N. G. Richman and Company, and then to United Clothes before permanently being named the Richman Brothers Company. However, for a period of time after that, the names United Clothes and the Richman Brothers Company names were used together in advertising. The Richman brothers established their first retail store in 1906 in Cincinnati, Ohio, banking on the public's readiness to buy good quality suits without paying for the middleman's profit. The venture was successful and was followed a year later by a second store in Cleveland and one in Louisville, Kentucky.
In 1912-13, the Richman Brothers Company started a mail-order business and also began direct-selling through traveling salesmen. The goal was to sell high-quality products direct from the factory to the customer, again, eliminating the middleman's profit, and keeping prices down. The mail-order department was set up within the factory and orders were filled. Salesmen sold door-to-door (or house-to-house as it was referred to in company records), and some sold from Richman Brothers Company trucks that toured towns. The trucks advertised the Richman Brothers Company (and United Clothes) and were fitted with lighted, glass cases holding actual suits on forms; customers could view the latest Richman Brothers fashions and order a suit or topcoat to meet their needs. The trucks and other advertising touted "No Middleman's Profit" which was the company's mantra for decades. By 1930, the Richman Brothers had 1,000 "house-to-house" salesmen selling directly to customers across the country. Richman Brothers' house-to-house sales and mail-order business operated until 1942, when the company closed the mail-order division due to the limited availability of fabric and patterns during World War II.
By the end of the 19th century, the practice of contracting fabric out to home sewers who then returned the piece goods to the factory for final assembly was generally superseded by factory production. With a growing customer pool, the population of Cleveland grew from 381,768 in 1900 to 560,663 in 1910 to 796,841 in 1920 and 900,429 in 1930, the Richman Brothers began moving away from the reliance on outside contractors to assemble piecework. The need for more in-house production space, a growing mail order business, and a desire to upgrade factory facilities led the Richman Brothers Company to acquire land for a new headquarters at 1600 East 55th Street.
The company engaged the architectural firm of Christian, Schwarzenburg, & Gaede to design the new building. Christian, Schwarzenburg and Gaede was founded in 1913. The firm specialized in warehouse and industrial structures. The partners were Charles Christian (1884 - 1968), Louis Schwarzenburg (1888 - 1954), and Oscar Gaede (1885 - 1933). The business became Christian & Klopper in 1970. The name of the firm was recently changed in 2010 to Neville Architects. Other buildings in Cleveland designed by the firm include the Federal Knitting Mills Co., Samsel Rope, Grabler Manufacturing, Wolf Envelope Building, L.N. Gross Building, Atlas Brass Manufacturing Co., Monarch Brass, Hiram Rivitz Co., Lion Knitting Mills, Neal Storage, Standard Envelope, and Rose Iron Works. They also were responsible for the Standard Oil Plant in Cincinnati in 1917. Dana Clark, an architect with the Cleveland firm of Walker and Weeks from 1912 until his retirement in 1947, was added to the project team to design the intricacies of the brick and terra cotta on the exterior of the original building. The Commercial-style building features a variety of brick and terra cotta in different shapes and sizes to create decorative panels on the vertical brick piers and the horizontal bands between the windows. Stone sills further emphasize the horizontal banding the windows create. Above the fourth-floor windows, brick and square terra cotta tiles that match the brick create a horizontal band that is further decorated with square blue and green terra cotta tiles. The blue terra cotta tiles are inlaid in panels of eight at the top of each brick pier; corner piers also have a green tile turned 45 degrees in the field of blue. Single blue tiles turned 45 degrees are regularly spaced between the panels. While not all design details were repeated on the subsequent additions, Clark's design set the tone for the remainder of the construction campaigns producing a large unified building to house all the company functions under one roof in 17 acres of floor space. It is not clear which firm was responsible for the abundance of large industrial steel sash windows within the design of the exterior elevations, but the element was repeated throughout the building in every addition, giving visual rhythm and composition to the elevations.
Ground was broken in 1915 and construction was completed in 1916. In 1917, the building won the award for the best large factory built in Cleveland in 1916. The award was given by the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, which appears to have made awards in just two categories that year; one for the best commercial building and the one given to the Richman Brothers Company. Only one reference to these awards could be found in a 1917 newspaper article and no information was given about the other buildings under consideration for the award. At the time the new Richman Brothers Company facility was completed it was noted in the company records to be the first and the largest in the country to house all of its clothes-making operations under one roof. Richman Brothers hired 200 employees for the new factory, with its former outside contractors acting as in-house supervisors and instructors. Although Jewish workers played a prominent role, other immigrant groups such as Czechs, Poles, Germans and Italians were also employed in large numbers, and many of the garment factories were located in the ethnic neighborhoods from which they drew their workforce. The neighborhood around the Richman Brothers Company was one of the first Jewish neighborhoods in Cleveland and likely supplied many of the new factory workers for the company. Jewish population during the 1920s changed little, but neighborhoods shifted with unusual rapidity. East 55th Street was the main thoroughfare of the declining Jewish neighborhood in the mid-1920s, while the number of Jews around East 105th Street and Mount Pleasant-Kinsman was increasing. The East 55th Street neighborhood continued to be populated by Austrian, German, Polish and other Eastern European immigrants.
In 1917 when the United States entered World War I, the Richman Brothers Company turned over a large part of its garment production capacity to making military uniforms for the Army. Employees also enlisted and went to war. In 1918, Officials from the U. S. Surgeon General's Office toured the Richman Brothers factory looking for a suitable industrial building that could be easily converted to a 1000-bed hospital for the war wounded. It was thought that recovery would be quicker and much more successful if soldiers could recuperate near home. Despite the government's intent to pay a fair lease rate, the Richman brothers insisted on donating the use of their building to the war effort for one dollar for the duration of the war. The lease was signed and the Richmans began to look for another building that could house the company operations. Before the government could finish converting floor space into military hospital quarters, the armistice was signed in November 1918, and the building was turned back over to the Richman Brothers Company in 1919, the same year the company was incorporated in Ohio.
After the war, business was very good, more employees were hired, and more retail stores opened. The Richman brothers believed that the productivity of their workers depended on a good working environment that went beyond the working conditions offered in their award-winning factory. As noted in the company manuscript summary at the Western Reserve Historical Society, "Throughout its history, Richman Brothers Company maintained a policy of corporate paternalism. It considered and referred to its many employees as the Richman Family. When its E. 55th St. factory opened, employees kept track of their own time and piecework. In 1919, Richman Brothers was the first factory-retail organization to give its employees annual paid vacations: one week at Christmas and one week at July 4th, during which time the factory shut down. In 1949, paid vacation was increased to three weeks. By 1950, Richman Brothers employee benefits also included the following: free life insurance, hospital and surgery benefits, double indemnity and dismemberment insurance, childbirth benefits, loans without interest, pay for holidays, medical expenses reimbursement, sick benefits, and pensions for any employee working 15 years. Employees were also encouraged to become shareholders in the company; almost 100 percent of employees took advantage of this option.
In 1920, 1923, 1925, 1929 and 1936, employees were offered the opportunity to buy shares of stock in the company, each time at a price well below the market rate. Due to the Depression, for the 1936 stock offer, shares were sold to employees upon partial payment and employees could withdraw money anytime within four years if needed. As shareholders, each employee had a vested financial interest in working together as a family to consistently turn out quality garments at a fair price. "Every employee is part owner in the business, and considers it a privilege to be so. Each is backing the quality of the garments he makes with his own savings. And it is no extraordinary thing to find men and girls at the benches, who are worth $50,000-the fruit of their foresight in investing earnings in their own business." By 1925, the market value of the company's stock was more than $15 million.
When the employees were not engaged in work, they were afforded the use of a large recreation hall. There were basketball teams for both men and women, and baseball teams that practiced in the inner courtyards and played against other company teams. The Richman Family had an orchestra, a band, and held various shows and contests during many company-sponsored activities throughout the year, including the Miss Richman beauty pageant, talent shows, picnics at Euclid Beach, Thanksgiving dinner, and holiday parties.
By 1929, Richman Brothers operated forty stores in thirty-eight cities (three in Cleveland), in addition to its Cleveland plant with 1200 employees. Despite the Depression of the 1930s, Richman Brothers remained in full operation, maintaining salaries and wages and even hiring new workers" while maintaining the company's high-quality standards. Between 1930 and 1933, twenty-three new stores were opened. Of these, only three operated at a loss. In the 1930s, an IBM punch card data processing system was installed to handle and inventory merchandising information. In 1934, the company reported that its minimum factory wage ($16 per week) was actually higher than that required by the Clothing Manufacturer's Code of National Recovery Act ($14.40 per week or 40 cents per hour). In 1932, Henry Richman, Nathan Richman, and Charles Richman eliminated their own salaries and established the Richman Foundation to give grants and interest-free loans to disabled, aged, or needy employees.
Henry Richman, Jr. died in 1934, followed by Charles in 1936, and Nathan in 1941. The three brothers had never married. The brothers "worked in perfect economic harmony to each other for honest values to their customers and economic justice to their employees; [eventually] they drew no salaries but worked unselfishly for their stockholders, who were 70% employees, and the dividends from their stock went largely toward building up a fund for needy employees." They created the Richman family, "together building a small business into a national company with a strong reputation for quality, service and civic responsibility, which would be their legacy." Frank C. Lewman, who had joined the company in 1914 as an accountant with the mail-order division, became president of the company following Charles' death. In 1950, he became chairman of the board, and George H. Richman, a distant cousin of the original three brothers who had changed his last name to Richman, became president. Lewman and George Richman served in those capacities until 1970, when Donald J. Gerstenberger became President and CEO. Under Gerstenberger's leadership, a computerized laser cutting system was developed that sized patterns, wasted little fabric, and cut out all parts of a suit in 90 seconds.
In the 1940s, Richman Brothers continued to grow, establishing its first West Coast stores. In the early 1940s the company began adding furnishing goods departments to some of its stores. It also took on war work, manufacturing uniforms for Army, Navy and Women's Army Corps. In early 1943, the company reported to its shareholders that 50 percent of its production had been devoted to military garments. By 1948, there were 2,500 office and factory workers at the E. 55th Street facility and another 1,300 employed in the retail stores. The success and growth of the Richman organization was the direct result of giving the customer the maximum value for his dollar, and this has been accomplished through quantity buying of materials and the use of machinery that is the last word in efficiency, not a little of it designed solely for the Richman plant. Great yardage in fine materials, both from American mills and from mills in Scotland, is purchased for the Cleveland plant, and is said without qualification that some of the finest fabrics in America are [made] into suits and overcoats that are worn by the business and professional men of the great territory served by the sixty-one retail stores and the thousand personal representatives. ....Richman's own designers-and they're among the country's most able-work winter and, summer, spring and fall working out the new models that will appear in the Richman show-windows all over the country.
In the men's clothing industry in Cleveland, 75 percent of the tailors were reported in 1918 to be Bohemian; probably some of them were Jewish. The industry was unionized in 1918 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and in 1920 the union signed a preferential shop agreement with the employers' association. The kaleidoscopic ethnicity of the labor force proved no obstacle. The union's general managers for Cleveland were Jews, as were five or six of the eighteen members of its executive. Major Jewish-owned firms like Joseph and Feiss, Lion Knitting, and Richman Brothers nevertheless held out against unionization throughout the 1920s with extensive systems of efficiency rewards, bonuses, and welfare plans. In the 1950s, the company's expansion continued, notably in the suburban markets and on the West Coast. During the same period the company also experienced union problems. Richman Brothers, a non-union shop, was a model of corporate paternalism almost from its inception. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), made overtures to Richman Brothers workers as early as 1939, but the company remained non-union. This was no doubt due to the family atmosphere create within the company and generous pay and benefits offered to each employee. Other garment factories had been unionized decades earlier, including the Joseph & Feiss Company, which was unionized in 1934. The unionization of the company resulted in a changed ethos and a shift in the company's operations from that of an independent manufacturer to one in which its employee's retained a stronger bargaining position via the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union. Beginning in 1950, a number of Richman Brothers stores were picketed by ACWA. The company responded by getting an injunction against the union's picketing from the Common Pleas Court. The depth of the company's union problems is alluded to in their shareholders reports, which document the court battles regarding this and similar injunctions throughout the 1950s. Richman Brother's battle with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers reached both the Ohio and U.S. Supreme Courts. Richman Brothers remained a non-union shop throughout its existence.
Despite their union troubles, Richman Brothers continued to expand. In 1959, it acquired ninety Stein's stores (men's clothing) in the South, and in 1966, Anderson-Little (men's and women's professional clothing) in New England, giving the company presence in new markets. The Stein's stores were almost all converted to Richman Brothers stores soon after their acquisition, while Anderson-Little stores continued to trade under their original name. In 1969, the F. W. Woolworth Co. bought out Richman Brothers, which continued to function as a wholly-owned subsidiary. In 1975, Richman Brothers operated 279 stores in thirty-nine states. In 1979, Harry P. Guinther took over as president and CEO; in 1983, William H. Gaudreau assumed these posts.
In 1986, Richman Brothers Company corporate headquarters was moved to Fall River, Massachusetts, the location of Anderson-Little's corporate office. In 1987, their accounting and data processing departments were merged into Woolworth's. About 100 employees were released. In 1989, Lee Sunderland became president and CEO of the company. In 1990, Richman Brothers' Cleveland manufacturing plant closed and was sold. In April 1992, Woolworth began liquidating Richman Brothers by closing the warehouse/distribution center and several retail stores. By December 31, 1992 Richman Brothers had been completely liquidated, with Richman-Brothers and Anderson-Little retail stores closed.
Building Description
In 1916 the Richman Brothers Company, a leading American manufacturer of men's clothing established in 1879, moved from Cleveland's old garment district to a new factory built for the company at 1600 East 55th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. This five- and six-story Commercial Style brick and reinforced concrete factory building began with an E-shaped, four-story building along E. 55th. Located on the west side of the street between Harlem Avenue to the south and Luther Avenue to the north, the main block of the Richman Brothers Company building is set back behind a grass lawn that fronts East 55th. The building abuts the sidewalk on the Harlem and Luther Avenue elevations. Assembled by the company over a decade, the Richman Brothers property extends west over a large city block to E. 49th Street. The building covers about two-thirds of the parcel with a paved, fenced parking lot in the rear.
Richman's success in operating direct-sell retail outlets stimulated enormous growth for the Richman operation, leading to five major additions between 1924 and 1929 and resulting in a building that has over 17 acres of floor space and measures 323 feet along E. 55th Street (east elevation), 621 feet along Luther Avenue (north elevation), 477 feet along Harlem Avenue (south elevation), and 276 feet across the rear (west) elevation. The additions created two large interior courtyards, which were partially infilled over the years with small, one-story additions.
The Richman Brothers Company building features large, regularly-spaced, industrial steel sash windows in most bays (some bays have been infilled over the years), brick of various shapes laid in decorative patterns, and inlaid terra cotta tiles. The slightly projecting main entrance is marked by brick and stone pilasters and a large stone cornice and balustrade. The building still retains a Richman sign.
At the time of construction in 1915-16, the immediate neighborhood was mostly small frame houses with a few brick institutional buildings that included churches, a school, and social halls. The surrounding neighborhood has experienced significant disinvestment over the years and today has many vacant lots and buildings.
The Richman Brothers Company building was designed by the architectural and engineering firm of Christian, Schwarzenburg & Gaede, a firm responsible for at least two dozen factory and manufacturing buildings in Cleveland between 1910 and 1929, including the Federal Knitting Mills on Detroit Avenue in Ohio City and the L. N. Gross Building in the Historic Warehouse District downtown. Also responsible for the four Richman Brothers Company additions (1924-1929), the firm was founded in 1913 and specialized in warehouse and industrial structures. The partners in the firm were Charles Christian (1884-1968), Louis Schwarzenburg (1888-1954), and Oscar Gaede (1885-1933). The firm name was changed to Christian & Klopper in 1970, and again to Neville Architects in 2010.
Dana Clark, an architect employed with the Cleveland architectural firm of Walker & Weeks from 1912 to 1947, collaborated with Christian, Schwarzenburg & Gaede on the design of the of the Richman Brothers Company. Clark was brought into the project to handle the design of the exterior shell. ".....Christian, Schwarzenburg & Gaede, engineers, who secured the services of Dana Clark, architect, to develop the aesthetic features of the structure. The result of this happy combination of professional training is a prize-winning structure." It appears that Clark only collaborated on the original building, which established the look and feel of the subsequent additions.
The Hunkin-Conkey Construction Company was the general contractor responsible for constructing the original building. The Sam W. Emerson Company of Cleveland was the general contractor that worked with Christian, Schwarzenburg & Gaede to build the five Richman additions. Henry Richman was involved in reviewing the design concepts and details for the new factory, just as he was with the many Richman Brothers Company retail stores where he typically selected the architects and altered and approved designs.
E-shaped in plan and completed in 1916, the original building had four stories, covered the building lot, and is 323 feet along East 55th and 195' down the side streets. The large court faces the street, which permits of a more interesting elevation and landscape effects in the ways of lawns and flower beds. This building takes its position splendidly in the locality in which it stands and the property upon which it is built is ample to give it a proper setting. The main entrance is centered on East 55th in the middle of the shallow center wing, which is three bays wide and two bays deep. The entrance is marked by a stone balustrade and large entablature supported by projecting stone and brick pilasters. The pilasters have panels of square terra cotta tiles that are similar in color to the brick. The double-leaf doors sit between brick and stone pilasters, which support a round stone arch over the doorway. The original eight-light wood doors have been replaced with aluminum doors. Originally, there was transom glass over the doors and a fanlight above within the stone arch; the frames remain in place but the glass is gone and the openings are boarded. Terra cotta tiles also cover the spandrels on either side of the stone arch. The center bay of this entrance wing is slightly wider than the flanking bays, which is visible when examining the windows above the entrance. Historically, awnings flanked the entrance bay on the adjacent first-floor windows. Large, regularly spaced industrial steel sash window openings between brick piers rise in regular patterns on all elevations to what is now the fifth floor. Where existing and depending on the size of the opening, the industrial steel sash windows feature a series four-light panels that would have pivoted horizontally to provide ventilation (this ventilation feature is used over the entire building and is visible in many of the historic photos. The industrial steel sash windows are in poor to fair condition.
The north and south wings are three bays wide, six bays deep, and extend to the sidewalk on East 55th. Historic photos and renderings show the three bays that front the East 55th Street sidewalk on each wing were originally finished with storefront windows with transoms and retractable awnings instead of the industrial steel windows. The display windows were used to show the latest Richman fashions to passersby and neighbors in the largely residential neighborhood. In the center bay of the south wing was a second entrance that provided access to the lunch room, coat rooms, restrooms, and the upper floors. The entrance is marked with a projecting brick surround and an inset doorway the originally had double-leaf wood doors and a large transom above. The openings have been boarded but the framing details remain. Originally, a flat canopy, which was suspended from the top of the projecting brick door surround, was located above the door and below the transom, across the face of the entrance opening. The storefront bays along with most of the other first-floor window openings have been infilled or boarded up over time for security purposes as the neighborhood declined. Windows on the upper stories appear to be in poor to fair condition, and have been boarded, covered or infilled in some bays. Where windows exist, it is likely the four-light ventilation panels used throughout the complex are corroded and not operable. Secondary entrances on the additions are treated similarly with the exception of the paired employee and shipping entrance on the north elevation, which features a large stone surround and entablature, stone pilasters, engaged stone columns with decorative capitals, and inset doorways. Granite replaces the original stone at the base of this assembly.
Slightly projecting brick piers mark the bays on this building and the dark red exterior brick walls utilize a variety of brick and terra cotta in different shapes and sizes to create decorative panels on the vertical brick piers and the horizontal bands between the windows. Stone sills further emphasize the horizontal banding the windows create. Above the fourth-floor windows, brick and square terra cotta tiles that match the brick create a horizontal band that is further decorated with square blue and green terra cotta tiles. The blue terra cotta tiles are inlaid in panels of eight at the top of each brick pier; corner piers also have a green tile turned 45 degrees in the field of blue. Single blue tiles turned 45 degrees are regularly spaced between the panels. Originally, the tiles sat below a decorative cornice, which was removed when the fifth floor was added to the original building in 1924. The fifth floor has similar detailing in the brick but only uses terra cotta tiles along the parapet. The parapet has a stone cap and stepped brick corbels between which is a single square terra cotta tile alternating in color from yellow to orange. The color of the tiles on the east and south sides of the building have faded from exposure to sun, but are still quite vivid on the north elevation.
The interior retains the design of its open plan. While some of the window openings have been infilled or boarded up, the feel of the open, light-filled manufacturing floors remain surprisingly intact in most areas. The first floor of the original building housed a small main lobby (where the Richmans would greet employees each morning and evening), restrooms, a small hospital space, coat rooms, a large lunch room, a large finished stock room area, a shipping room, and a boiler room. The lobby, restrooms, and hospital space have terra cotta tile floors; the rest of the floors in the building are concrete, walls are brick (decorative in the main lobby) and ceilings are concrete, as are all the columns. The second floor housed the company offices and the mail order department, the third floor was dedicated to sewing, and the fourth floor housed the cutting room and storage.
The 1922 Hopkins Plat Book Map shows that the Richman Brothers Company had begun to acquire land west of the original building to undertake a huge factory expansion. Deeds appear to indicate that all the land in the block stretching to East 49 Street had been acquired by the Richman Brothers Company by 1926. After the original building, there were five major additions to the Richman Brothers Company that creates the existing plan seen on the 1932 Hopkins Plat Book map and 1952 Sanborn map.
As the additions were constructed, two inner courtyards were created and then mostly infilled with the smaller, one-story buildings; the small additions are in poor to fair condition. The major additions, which are in fair to good condition (windows are in poor to fair condition), match the construction of the original building but not all the construction details are repeated. On the rear additions, the concrete floors and piers are expressed on the outside of the building. The original building and additions became a model plant for the Richman Brothers Company and the clothing industry, reported at the time to be the largest and first building in the country to house all the clothes-making operations under one roof.
The building has been vacant since 1992 and is in fair to good condition. At the time the Richman brothers moved their company operation to East 55th Street, the immediate neighborhood was mostly small frame houses on the surrounding blocks with a few brick institutional buildings (churches, a school, and several social halls) along East 55th Street. Today, the building is surrounded by a large number of vacant lots, and vacant and boarded buildings. There are a few occupied residential and commercial buildings, but disinvestment has left the immediate neighborhood mostly void of activity.
Street view rendering (1923)
Bird's eye view (1923)
Bird's eye view rendering (1954)
Plain Dealer advertisement (1917)
Mail order sales truck (1915)
4th floor fabric stock (1927)
Recreation baseball (1927)
Cafeteria (1927)
Cutting department (1927)
