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Architect helps find new use  for building he designed in 1957

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By Tom Stafford, Staff Writer 9:18 PM Sunday, September 27, 2009

It was summer of 1957, and Forest Ripley, already the owner of Ripley Buick, had snagged the Springfield franchise for Ford’s newest model: The Edsel.

Happy to have Clair Enescoe as a partner, Ripley called the elder Don Six of Six Industries, to explain the fix they were in: There were cars heading his way for the Sept. 4 national unveiling of the brand spanking new line, and there was no showroom to put them in.

“Six built that building in 60 days from start to finish,” recalled Dick Bierley, an architect on the project. “The biggest problem we had was the 66-foot long steel trusses in there.”

The trusses were part of the structural system Jim Snyder and Bierley designed, and they couldn’t just be ordered.

They had to be fabricated. And soon.

Economic sag

When Bierley got his architecture degree from Miami University in Oxford and came to Springfield in 1954, “the job situation was about as bad as it is now,” he said.

So he did designs for the old Clark County Lumber Co. until things picked up and he took the job with Six.

“It was a different time,” Bierley said. Names like Six, Frey, Rogers and Samuelson all stood for large local construction companies.

And, as was often the case then, “we used all local contractors” for everything but the most unusual work, he said.

By the time the Edsel job came up, real estate developer Martin Levine had leveled the old Western School at the northeast corner of Main and Yellow Springs streets, making 14 N. Yellow Springs St. a perfect place for a dealership.

Leaving ample room for a parking lot just off Main Street, Bierley and Snyder set the building back parallel to Main and created interest with an angle-roof design.

Drivers on both Main and Yellow Springs streets could see the cars through the quarter-inch plate glass windows.

“The front part was the showroom and a couple of sales offices,” Bierley recalled. Extending east, “the bigger concrete block building was the service department.”

Edsel

It was, in many ways, a simpler era in building.

“There was no energy code in the ’50s. They didn’t worry about how much it cost to heat a building, because energy was cheap,” Bierely said. “You had a lot less lighting (and) the offices weren’t as big,” he added. Nor was any thought given to handicap accessibility.

Neer Welding, run by Bud Neer, who for years operated the Mad River Airport, ended up doing the trusses, and the building was finished in time for the unveiling of a model that proved to be one of the biggest failures in automotive marketing history.

The Edsel was produced for a mere three years, and by the early 1960s, the Enscoe-Ripley was gone.

Baker-Ice moved in to sell DeSotos and Plymouths. They stayed through the ’60s, and other Chrysler, Plymouth and Dodge dealerships occupied the building through the ’80s, and the building became a wholesale plumbing outlet in the 1990s.

Like Brett Favre

About the time the property went vacant in the late ’90s, Bierley had finished a career in which he had worked all over town.

Large parts of it were spent on the combined Six-Levine development of the commercial properties on Commerce Road and Circle. He also designed a building at Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport for Wheel Constuctors.

But having reached retirement age, Bierley found himself having the same trouble as quarterback Brett Favre.

“I tried to retire,” Bierley said, “but I couldn’t.”

So for the past decade or so, he’s done work part time for Kapp Construction.

And that’s how Reed Welsh from Kapp came to ask Bierley to look at a possible rehabilitation project at the northeast corner of Main and Yellow Springs streets.

“Oh, yeah, you mean the old Edsel building,” Bierley replied.

To which Walsh said “What?”

Believe it or not

Having been in and out of many offices in his work with Garrigan’s Office Plus, Joe Garrigan said “I knew what I wanted and I knew what I didn’t want” in an office.

Wanting to locate downtown, he considered the old Edsel site doable.

The plate glass windows, replaced with insulated glass, provide the natural light he was looking for.

Glassing in the walls of the offices and rooms opened up the floor plan, which is clear of poles thanks to under-the-floor Category 6 computer wiring.

The insulated roof and walls combine with insulated glass to block out even the noise of the nearby trains, and changed business practices helped with the rest.

Just-in-time delivery systems and computer management of inventories allow the former service area, though not huge, to take care of the business’ short-term storage needs. And the drain holes in the floor of the former auto shop provide a place for water that might come in when a semi backs up for a delivery beneath the metal canopy at the back door.

“It’s perfect for us,” Garrigan said. “All the planets lined up.”

Bierley sees it the same way.

“Usually it’s a tear-down and rebuild if you can find a place downtown” to locate, he said.

And the fact that a 79-year-old architect helped to find a new use for a building he designed half a century earlier to sell Edsels?

That should qualify for an entry at least in Forest Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.

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SUPER JOB! We think is it so great to have the ORIGINAL ARCHITECT to redesign the same old building, that still stands in Springfield. You are a very good man keep up the good work.

Jim and Pat Mullikin
3:29 PM, 9/29/2009

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Great job! I applaud Joe Garrigan for having the ability to see the possibility of the site. And I think it is so nice that the original architect was able to do the redesign. I think Springfield is on its way back. There are a lot of things that need fixing but I love this city and have no intention of ever moving. Now let's find a good use for the beautiful and awesome South High building.

Anne
7:03 AM, 9/28/2009

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I am so happy to see something re-used instead of being torn down, and I've loved that old building ever since I was a 'youngin'. It's got style...and character. How great is that...someone seen the beauty too.

sprigfield native
9:56 PM, 9/27/2009

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