W. F. Hall Printing Co. II
Life Span: 1908-1950/1989
Location: NE corner of Superior and Kingsbury streets
Architect: Paul Gerhardt
Chicago Tribune, April 18, 1908
Big Building Is Planned.
A deal of much importance, particularly as marking the removal of another large business concern in the central district into the north side district and the construction of a large building, has just been closed. The W. F. Hall Printing company. which has been located on Plymouth court for more than fifteen years, will occupy under a ten years’ lease a building which Joseph Tilt will erect at the northeast corner of Superior and Kingsbury streets. It will front 110 feet, with a depth of 130, will be seven stories high, of heavy mill construction, and will cost about $150,000. The aggregate rental for the term is $170.000, or $17,000 a year.
Paul Gerhardt is the architect for the building. which will be one of the largest ever occupied by a single concern for printing purposes. J. H. Van Vlissingen & Co. and Perkins B. Bass were the brokers in the transaction. It is expected the building will be ready for occupancy at the end of the year.
Inter Ocean, January 1, 1912
Though housed in a modern, seven story brick building at the intersection of Kingsbury and. West Superior streets, which it entered new three years ago, the W. F. Hall Printing company, finding its business increasing faster than its room, must soon build extensive additions, which will make their plant cover an entire block.
The business was founded by W. F. Halt, la 1893. Its birth was not pretentious. The printing business at that time had not reached the scope of the present day. At flood tide, the business of the new firm during the first few years did not reach proportions that would have occupied more than one-fourth of one-floor of the new and inadequate building. A few years ago, after the death of Mr. Hall, the business was bought by R. M. Eastman, president and treasurer, and E. M. Colvin, vice president and secretary. During the last five years the business has grown by leaps and bounds, and three years ago greatly increased business made it imperative to move to larger quarters.
Daring 1911 it was necessary to operate the fall plant for twenty-six consecutive days,-for twenty-three hours each day, including Sundays and holidays, in order to get out the increased business that came through the regular channels.
Since Gutenberg invented printing at Mentz about 1450, the brains of every generation have done their utmost to make improvements, until today a trip through the great home of the W. F. Hall Printing company shows the perfection and almost human instinct of every improved device intended to do the job better and save time and possibly considerable money in labor.
On the fifth floor, ten Mergenthaler linotype machines click and sputter all day long setting up machine sized type, for any of the hundreds of printing jobs on. hand. Here, too, is the mailing department, where often 100 men and boys are engaged in the task of routing mall direct to destination. In this way the mall is taken directly to the depot in bags and does not have to await the delay and confusion of going through the regular channels of the postoffice. Also here is the hand setting department where all display work and many de luxe productions are set by the slower method of hand. Most of the seventh floor Is occupied by a carpenter and repair shop.
On the fourth floor is where the pasting of paint, wall papers or other kinds of small samples into catalogues is done. The great mall order catalogues are made here. They are made complete and ready tor shipping without being handled again. Wall paper cutting machines operate with consuming energy and cut the papers in the proper sized rolls ready for printing, for you must understand it is now wall paper only by courtesy, for the pattern has not yet been stamped on.
On the third floor is to be seen one of the largest paper cutters in captivity. It cuts a swath seventy-four inches wide, cutting the paper ready for the cylinder presses, and the rumble of its labors is mingled with the devouring rattle of twenty-four cylinder presses that operate in a way almost human.
On. the second floor one sees seven smaller cutting machines plowing through mountains of paper, while women and girls industriously stitch. Here smaller catalogues and pamphlets are trimmed with an intricate invention that operates ia an unbelievable rowing way. Seven great folders clatter noisily while magazines are assembled, stitched, all by machinery, and made ready tor the news stands.
Everywhere is hum and activity. Two automatic trimmers on the first floor grumble with a purpose and every time, the great blade come down something is accomplished. Two large gathering machine and two binding machines add to the confusion of the shipping department where wsgons are loaded. Two modern elevators bring materials from every floor and often 100 loads a day leave the plant.
In the basement hydraulic presses baling the waste paper from the upper floors adds its complaint with eleven rotary presses.
This concern is printing an average of 100 tons of paper daily la its rotary press room, besides operating over a score of flat bed presses above. It binds close to 200,000 books daily in its pamphlet department and in the magazine bindery 60,000 standard-size magazines per day.
On nearly every floor are to be eeen great piles of flat stock paper. Instead of being piled solid this is stacked in large layers with trucks’ tops between to make handling comparatively easy. Hundreds of tons of such paper is always kept in stock.
But it is in the basement where the great rolls for the cylinder presses are unloaded that the hand of science is utilized to the full. Ordinarily the handling of such large rolls of paper is cumbersome and awkward work, and yet the W. F. Hall Printing company has devices which make the task absurdly easy.
The W. F. Hall Printing company was the first to set complicated catalogue work by machinery. In addition to it catalogue work it does a very large amount of general printing, on which the composition is done by ten Mergenthaler linotype machines, where one person on each machine can do the work of several, as compared with typesetting by hand. However, all display work and many de luxe productions are set by band,
In another part of this enormous plant are magazine presses used for publications such as Popular Mechanics, Shop Notes Quarterly, the New Story Magazine, etc., which are printed here. With web perfecting presses. two-color presses. electric fans to cool the rollers, up-to-date devices for cutting, lighting and a full equipment of electric meters, W. F. Hall Printing company is well worth a visit.
As an example of efficiency in business, of getting the most out of machinery, and a study in the adaptation of means to an end, there is nothing to surpass it in America.
- The original first editions of Tarzan of the Apes (1914) and A Princess of Mars (1917), as published by the A. C. McClurg Company in Chicago and printed by W. F. Hall Co.
In November, 1985, W. F. Hall Printing Co. was sold for $225 million in cash by Mobil Corp. to a joint venture partnership of W. . Krueger Co. of Arizona and Swiss publisher Ringier A.G. Mobile said the price includes $175 million for Hall’s stock and $50 million to retire a Hall debt.
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