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Before & After: The Flatiron Building

 

The Flatiron Building is located at 401 East Court Street in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and was constructed in 1902.

 

On August 3, 1903, the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company building burned, but by the time firefighters arrived, an explosion had occurred on the second level that sent flames reaching into the sky. Falling bricks injured three pedestrians. By the time three lines were sent into the building, explosions stemming from the stored barrels of oil and paint began to occur on the south side of the structure on the ground floor. Thankfully, the over 12,000 barrels of turpentine and linseed oil that were stored in an attached iron cellar had not been breached.

 

Before:

1-pittsburg-plate-glass-fire.jpg

 

After:

20120520-_dsc7115.jpg

A fine building in need of more neighbors.

At least this wasn't their Chicago office that burned three times - each time being rebuilt out of "mill construction" - nearly all timber!

Gotta love it.

"You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers

Someone on Reddit wondered why the company name was misspelled as Pittsburg and not Pittsburgh. I wondered this myself, considering that PPG lists their heritage back to the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, but other sources list it as the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company.

 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was known as Pittsburg from 1890 to 1911 following a declaration from the United States Board on Geographic Names. Pittsburg Plate Glass was founded in 1895. I am assuming that after public pressure forced a change in the city’s name back to Pittsburgh, the company changed its name to reflect its home city.

There is a lot of looseness in the spelling of Pittsburgh with and without the h to this day.

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