401 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA (northeast corner of Callowhill Street)
© Harry Kyriakodis
(2007)
Occupying an entire city
block at Broad and Callowhill Streets, this structure was
touted as being the largest commercial warehouse building
in the nation when completed in 1930. The Terminal
Commerce Building cost $4 million to construct and was
built by William Steele &
Sons, a longstanding
Philadelphia construction firm. The building offered
about 13 million square feet of floor space, including
showrooms and offices for the numerous firms that made
their headquarters there. The massive edifice even had
a freight station beneath it, which replaced the
Reading's North Broad Street Freight Station and rail
yard that had previously been on the site. Rail
service was provided by the Reading's now-abandoned
"City Branch" right-of-way, which passed underneath.
The Terminal Commerce Building was reputedly used to
manufacture tanks during WWII. And from the 1940s to
1973, it was the main U.S. Army Induction Center in
Philadelphia, striking fear in the young men who
entered or even passed by it. The Reading Railroad
sold the structure in 1955, whereupon it became known
as the North American Building. By the 1980s, it had
become a low-rent office and light-industrial center.
It more recently has been repositioned as a "carrier
hotel" housing telecommunications, computer and other
high-tech equipment. There are dozens of fiber optic
lines into the building, large Internet servers, huge
back-up power generators, and a number of telecom
tenants. The building was added to the National
Register of Historic Places in 1996.
West facade along
Broad Street. Photo © Steven A. Ives
(2007).