| OCR Text |
Show GIGANTIC MERCHANDISE MART TO BE TWICE SIZE OF WORLD'S LARGEST BUSINESS BUILDING New Project for Chicago's Great Central Market to Cost $30,000,000 Involves the Greatest Single Development of Air Rights in the West Foremost Manufacturers, Wholesalers and Importers Will Be Housed Under One Roof in New Wholesale Whole-sale District; Inbound and Outbound Freight Station on Ground Floor of Building; Club in Tower for Nation's Merchants. t menu of engineering science, Including Includ-ing fast elevators, freight conveyors of both the gravity and endless chain type and quick horizontal distribution on every floor. Probably no building In the world will have such facilities for receiving and shipping merchandise as the new Merchandise Mart The entire ground level below the street floor will be a modern freight station. Private tracks for Incoming carload freight will extend ex-tend under the center of the building. Tbe Chicago and North Western Hallway Hall-way will operate an Inbound freight station for less than carload lots, as well as an outbound station, which will connect with all other roads through Its new Proviso yards. Tbe merchandise as It comes Into this big freight station will le loaded Into high-sj)eed high-sj)eed conveyors and transported Immediately Im-mediately to the exact floor and aisle of the merchant for whom it Is Intended. In-tended. Connection will be made with the Illinois Tunnel Company's system of freight transportation, which has more than sixty miles of tracks beneath the streets and buildings of the city, reaching all other railroad terminals. A rlvnr dock for vessels will connect with the south freight elevators of the building. Club Planned for Tower. One of the Interesting features planned for the Mart will be a Merchants' Mer-chants' Club In the tower of the building, build-ing, with lounging rooms, reading and smoking rooms, where the retailer may relax'and meet his friends. Tbe Mart will provide the retailer with everything but a place to sleep. lie can go direct from the train to the Mart with his baggage. Here his hotel reservations will be taken care of, his baggage transported to his hotel and placed in his room. Restaurants, lunch rooms and grills in the Mart will further economize his time. He will have the facilities of a barber shop, and a branch postoffl.ee, telegraph tele-graph office and public stenographers will afford him the opportunity to handle his correspondence without leaving the building. One of the biggest big-gest telephone exchanges In the world will be Installed In the Mart Many other unique features are being be-ing considered for the Mart including an Assembly Hall, where trade meetings, meet-ings, business conferences and fashion shows may be held from time to time. As the plans are worked out, many other features may be decided upon. Within recent years Chicago's central cen-tral business district has been developing devel-oping northward across the Chicago river. East of State street, along north Michigan avenue, Cass, Rush and other streets, this development has reached impressive proportions, evidenced by mote than twenty large buildings. To the west of State street a comparable development Is under way. The site of the new Merchandise Merchan-dise Mart Is In the direct path of this new northward movement. In the new river district where the Merchandise Mart is to be located, many great bulldWigs have been erected, erect-ed, and others soon .will be began. The Builders Building, the Engineers' Building, the Chicago Evening Post Building, have been completed opposite oppo-site the new Mart on Waefcer Drive. The new Chicago Daily News Building Build-ing and the great new opera house of the Chicago Civic Opera Company are being constructed on the river i three blocks south. h I Chicago, (Special). Chicago Is to Have a gigantic Merchandise Mart housed In Its own building, which will be twice the size of the largest business building In the world. This mammoth structure, two city blocks In length, 18 to 23 stories high, Is planned tor the service and convenience conven-ience of merchandise buyers of the United States and to achieve for Chicago Chi-cago a still greater prestige as a Great Central Market, It was declared de-clared today. It will cost (30,000,000. Construction will begin Immediately. Tbe project will be the largest single development of air rights. The property of the new building except for caissons begins 23 feet above "datum." Tbe big business of the country Is now done mainly In concentrated market places, as evidenced by the Garment Center and Cotton Goods Center In New York City, automobile rows In all leading cities, financial buildings, and the Furniture Mart In Chicago, where more than 700 furniture furni-ture manufacturers show their products prod-ucts side by side, In the most modern manner and under ideal conditions. Business men have learned that the nearer they are to the centers of these market places, the greater is their opportunity for volume and profit. Tbe establishment of the Merchan dlse Mart is a dramatic development la the program to. make Chicago the Great Central Market a movement which die Chicago Association of Commerce Com-merce started a number of years ago and a goal toward which it has been devoting Its energies continuously ever since, under the leadership of Its Foreign and Domestic Commerce committee. ' Located on River Front This great Mart, which will house sales quarters and merchandise displays dis-plays of several hundred of the country's coun-try's foremost manufacturers, .wholesalers .whole-salers and importers, will be located in the rapidly developing new river district, and will occupy a distinctly conspicuous position just across the river from Wacker Drive at Wells street where the southern facade of the structure will be visible for blocks. The site was formerly that of the Chicago and North Western Railway Rail-way Company's passenger station. The building will extend 724 feet on Cln-sle Cln-sle street 577 feet on the river front and 324 feet on Wells street with a ( diagonal frontage facing Orleans and Franklin streets. It will be set bock from the river about 80 feet to accommodate ac-commodate a broad upper level drive extending from Wells to Franklin. The main -entrance of the building will face the river and the drive. The Merchandise Mart will have a total floor 6pace of about 4,000,000 square -feet as compared with slightly slight-ly less than 2,000,000 square feet, which is the floor area of the Furniture Furni-ture Mart, the next largest bulldiitg. Eaeh of the eighteen main floors will have an area of more than 200,000 square feet Within the wails of this huge edifice the retail merchants of the United States, Cauada and foreign countries will be able to .see, under one roof, hundreds of lines of the world's best merchandise. The manufacturers manu-facturers exhibits will include tex-, tex-, tiles, ready-to-wear, toys, laces, gloves, corsets, millinery, silverware, glass, nips, knit goods, hosiery, shoes, oien's wear, fancy goods, sport goods, art and antiques, Jewelry, trunks, toilet articles, house furnishings, office equipment and scores of other merchandise displays. Among tin; largest tenants rvjll be the . wholesale and manufacturing males departments de-partments of Marshall Field & Company. Com-pany. ' Time Saver for Merchants. Every possible facility will be provided pro-vided for the comfort and wtnvenieiu'e of the retail merchant, who under one roof will be able to see hundreds of lines, thus saving time and money by doing In a few hours what ordinarily would take him days to accomplish On all floors of the Mart will be great corridors, with all the appear-' appear-' ance of boulevards, more than C50 feeTln length, on either side of which will be the shops displaying their varied var-ied linpg veritable "business streets." These great corridors will be Impressively Impres-sively treated architecturally and with the large space available it will be possible to house the selling activities activi-ties and warehousing of many allied concerns on one floor, thus attaining the advantages of concentrated groupings. group-ings. The facilities for handling merchandise merchan-dise within the building will embody the best and most modem achieve)- |
