INTRODUCTION
The Pangborn Corporation, founded in 1904 and occupying its present site since
1916, offers a commendable architectural achievement on several accounts. At a very
basic level, it is successfully integrated spatially into the surrounding community. This
represents no small feat: to take a major international manufacturing facility and,
through thoughtful site planning and design, render it not only largely innocuous, but
arguably enhance the overall aesthetic of the surrounding neighborhood. Additionally,
the physical body of the factory site itself is in some ways merely a locus out of which
radiate a handful of related pieces in the built environment of the Pangborn legacy. The
corporation has played a key role in helping to shape what was, at the time of its arrival
in its adopted home town, a relatively undeveloped corner of the city – a role, arguably,
that presents a case for joint ventures between the business and civic sectors. The
Pangborn example is by no means an anomaly in the realm of thoughtfully-conceived
industrial growth within small cities and adjacent to residential areas. Its status in the
community, however – exemplified by widespread kudos at best, and casual
indifference at worst – can be traced to very specific factors that set it apart from the
hordes of industrial plants spotting American towns nationwide, most of them ranging in
character from the ignoble to the unremarkable.
The Pangborn factory’s self-conscious architectural presence and overarching
sense of commitment to merging comfortably into the fabric of the city are an outgrowth
of the entrepreneur’s desire to effect civic improvement through successful business
ownership. This sentiment has its roots in early 20th-century social movements within
the business community, and the period of legendary paternalism displayed historically
by the Pangborn Corporation can be traced from the decade following its move to
Hagerstown, Maryland in the nineteen-teens. This “golden era” of philanthropic
community involvement held strong through the corporation’s fiftieth anniversary in
1954, with a postwar decline marked by Thomas Pangborn’s death in 1967, and a
subsequent steady dissipation of appreciable positive effect on the city’s economy as
well as company pride.
The foregoing introduction to the Pangborn Corporation’s physical and
social legacy in its community is mirrored in a two-part architectural manifestation of
these interwoven factors. The first of these is the factory itself, today comprised of
fifteen buildings, situated on roughly fifteen acres and utilized primarily for distribution
and managerial functions since the complete “outsourcing” of production beginning in
1999. The second substantial component of Pangborn in the fabric of Hagerstown is the
adjacent 7 ½-acre Pangborn Park, a city-owned and -managed recreational open space
whose land was donated to the city by the company in 1935. While creating a
greensward and de facto buffer zone, the park functions almost as an extension of the
factory site itself, merging the residential, civic and industrial realms in a setting that is
not only appealing to employees tired from a long day of indoor work, but that also
provides a place of solace and leisure for local city residents.
This report will focus on three primary aspects of the Pangborn Corporation’s role
in Hagerstown, with a section devoted to each: 1) Its history, and the ways in which it
both interfaced with and helped to mold the architectural fabric of the city; 2) The
company’s legacy of paternalism and intense desire to promote a positive public image,
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evidenced very clearly in the establishment of municipally-owned Pangborn Park, which
sits opposite the manufacturing facility; and 3) A more specific look at the architectural
makeup of the factory, examining both site-specific structural elements and the
relationships between buildings as regards manufacturing processes and horizontal
technoindustrial flow.
Part I
The Pangborn Model:
Shaping Urban Space
Early History
In 1897, 17 year old Thomas Pangborn went to work for the Belleville Copper
Rolling Mills in Newark, New Jersey, near his native New York. Promoted to the
general offices in New York and moving into the sales department, he also enrolled
part-time at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. It has been remarked that his seven-year
tenure with Belleville Copper, and his ties to the leaders of a wealthy and hugely
successful 5th generation business, set the stage for his entrepreneurial future. As a
sales representative for foundry equipment, Thomas was exposed daily to the
metalworking and manufacturing industries, and he identified what he saw as a lack of
innovative schemes for the cleaning of cast metal products. His personal inquiry into
this problem led almost overnight to the advent of sandblasting as the state-of-the-art
method of efficient cast cleaning.1 While the process of sandblasting had already been
around for 35 years, its uses had been limited to glass and steel; it was Pangborn that
A more in-depth explanation of Pangborn’s products and manufacturing procedures
will be explored in Part II: Production Processes and Flow.
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3
heralded its acceptance and widespread adoption in the realm of foundry work. Earlier,
inefficient, and not-always-effective means of cleaning castings such as coarse files,
wire brushes, emery stones, and acid baths fell by the wayside with the advances made
in sandblasting.
In 1904, full of ideas and with limited funds available to him (according to a 1929
company newsletter, the sole capital consisted of a box of stationary and a rubber
stamp – imprint at right) Thomas founded his own business in
lower New York, representing manufacturers as a supplier to
the steel and foundry industries. Like his older brother
Thomas, John Pangborn began working in the New
York area at 17 years of age, employed as a sales clerk for the Western Electric
Manufacturing Company. Leaving his position to join his brother full-time in 1905, they
moved through a series of buildings – from 42 Day Street, to 227 Fulton Street, to 90
West Street2, each move auspiciously representing the need for expansion as they
gained the confidence of the Foundrymen of New York by reliably supplying their
material needs.
In 1908 the brothers moved across the river to the New Jersey side where,
operating out of a loft space that expanded to three full floors within four years 3, they
started what would prefigure revolutionary advances in the efficiency of industry as a
2
See Illustration 1. Jersey City. Here, from 1908 to 1911, the Pangborn brothers
launched their careers in sandblast machine manufacturing. The plant expanded from
part of a loft to all three floors of the building.
3
See Illustration 2. The early Pangborn staff. In just seven years, the company went
from a one-man supply sales outfit to a fully operational producer of innovative
sandblasting equipment for diverse industrial applications.
4
whole – the manufacturing of commercial sandblasting equipment. Their largest
supplier was the New York Central Iron Works, located in Hagerstown, Maryland. In
1912, confronted once again with the need for increased space, the Thomas W.
Pangborn Company moved to Hagerstown to occupy part of a new plant built there by
their distributor, where they operated from 1912 to 1915.
The Move to Hagerstown / Land Acquisition
Once again prompted to expand production in response to industry’s growing
demand for their machines, the brothers decided to build an entirely new facility of their
own. Locating a tract of land in the largely-undeveloped northeastern section of
Hagerstown, they began clearing ground in 19154, and the first building – still in use
today – was completed in 19165.
The original independent site of the Pangborn Corporation in Hagerstown was
officially purchased on May 22nd, 1915. Consisting of two parcels of land bought from
Walter V. and Lutie B.Spessard, this combined property was situated in the original
“Morris Addition to East Hagerstown” plat. Totaling roughly five acres, it was bounded
by Crestline Avenue (later changed to Pangborn Boulevard) to the east and the
Western Maryland Railroad right-of-way to the north. On New Year’s Eve day, 1915,
Pangborn mortgaged these original two parcels to M.P. Moller (of Hagerstown’s famous
Moller Pipe Organ Factory) and John M. Lane in the face of outstanding debt, with the
provision that the mortgage be voided if Pangborn paid the initial sum of $25,000, plus
4
See Illustration 3. 1915 - Cleared lot prior to construction at the new Hagerstown site.
See Illustration 4. 1917 - The Pangborn staff in Hagerstown, one year into the new
location.
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interest, by the end of 1916. This they did, although such examples of real estate
swapping and cooperative financing amongst Hagerstown business owners and
developers manifests itself repeatedly in the land deed records involving the Pangborn
Corporation.
In 1918, Pangborn purchased an additional, adjacent 1.3-acre parcel from the
Spessards, and in 1919 acquired yet another tract for $2,500 with the intent of a
proposed street running West from Crestline Avenue. This would become the
continuation of present-day Pangborn Boulevard, which approaches the site from the
south and makes a 90-degree turn to the west at what, originally and to the present-day,
is situated the official entrance to the factory. Interestingly, the deed to this parcel
contained a number of conditions:
1. That no buildings shall be erected thereon nearer than thirty feet from the north Marginal line
of the aforementioned proposed street.
2. That no intoxicating liquor shall ever be sold on said tract.
3
That no dwelling along the said proposed street shall be erected to cost less than $1800 for a
single house and $2500 for a double house…
6
Such stipulations, while owing more to the concerns of the seller than to
Pangborn as the buyer, mark the beginning of a long phase of development and civic
involvement through which the Pangborn Corporation influenced the architectural and
social character of its quadrant of the city. The growth of the site involved not only
factory expansion, but the allocation of open space and the coexistence of residential,
civic, and industrial entities.
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In 1920, the Pangborn Corporation bought yet another tract from the Spessards,
this time a substantial piece containing approximately 6.4 acres. In December 1921,
repeating the circumstanes of 1916, Pangborn was again forced to mortgage the
original two Spessard parcels. Owing $125,000 (representing a five-fold increase in
value in just five years) to the Maryland Survey and Trust Company, they were given
until the end of the following year to pay off this debt. Again, they were successful in
persevering.
In 1929, an additional eight-tenths of an acre was purchased from D. Walter
Groh (another early Hagerstown industrialist), furthering Pangborn’s consolidation of
land fronting the strategic Western Maryland railway, the primary means of transporting
both raw materials to the site and finshed products away toward their eventual
destinations.
Evolving In A Civic and Residential Fabric : The Factory-Town Interface
Though scant written accounts containing evidence of the early factory’s political
relationship to the town-at-large remain, numerous factors indicate the presence of an
almost paternalistic stance towards the city on the part of the Pangborns. Financial
contributions to area schools, civic groups, and charity organizations were
commonplace enough as to make Pangborn a household name in Hagerstown. An
enormous gesture of generosity befell the town in 1935, when the Pangborn
Corporation donated four of the original Spessard parcels of land, totaling 7.6 acres, for
use as a public park.7 Situated immediately opposite the expansive southern façade of
7
See Illustration 5. Proposed plan for Pangborn Park,
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the factory, the conveyance was based on a set of conditions intended to regulate the
town’s use of that substantial piece of land in perpetuity. These included:
1.
The plot of ground so conveyed, as aforesaid, to be used as a municipal park and recreation
center.
2.
That a reasonable amount of planting will be done each year for the purpose of beautifying
the said plot of ground.
4.
That the initial work on said plot of ground will be undertaken promptly as a welfare relief
project.
6.
That no vending booths or commercial structures of any character shall be erected on the
said plot of ground.
7.
That the said plot of ground will not be sold, alienated, conveyed away, or leased by the City
of Hagerstown and that it will be used solely for the purposes of a public park and recreation
center.
8.
That the proposed park will be adequately policed and lighted by the City of Hagerstown.
9. That the proposed park shall be known and designated as “PANGBORN PARK”.8
The nature of these restrictions, while clearly in the interests of safeguarding both
the well-being of factory employees and the public image of the factory (the park being
in such close proximity, today separated only by a two-lane street, sidewalks, and the
original thirty feet of setback on the factory side), also suggests an interest on the part
of the company in having some measure of control over the character and destiny of the
greater neighborhood. In an 87-year history of buying and selling parcels of land in the
city – some contiguous with the factory, and indicative of the need for expansion
(whether perceived, real, or speculative), some independent investments or trades on
1935 land deed records.
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money owed or due – the decision to donate such a substantial piece of land
entrenched Pangborn’s vision in the legacy of the city fabric.
Following the conveyance of these seven and a half acres of land to the city in
1935, which precipitated a host of Works Progress Administration-sponsored projects in
accordance with the stipulated plans for a municipal park, the Pangborn Corporation
experienced substantial growth and, from all outward historical appearances, followed a
consistent upward trajectory in production and sales. The architectural footprint of the
factory nearly doubled between 1916 and 1950 9, adding three warehouses, a new
mechanical shop, steel shop, an expanded sheet metal shop, a new cooling and
powerhouse, and a doubling of available office space10. At that point, however, it
appears that most of the land on which today’s total factory would be sited had already
been acquired. Hemmed in by the railroad to the north and east, and fronted by its own
road, the factory expanded largely through infilling of vacant spaces between buildings,
forming a contiguous façade stretching westward from the unmistakeable 90-degree
turn in Pangborn Boulevard. Only later would further expansion result in the officespace accretion to the south of the machine assembly building, and the addition of a
detached, larger, rubber- and metal- fabrication building on the east side of a second
railroad spur, thus bringing the factory’s eastern edge immediately adjacent to the northsouth railway line. As will be made more clear through a later exploration of the spatial
evolution of the site, the first 35 years of the Pangborn Corporation’s factory in
Hagerstown saw substantial growth, strategically absorbed by way of an original site
9
See Illustration 6. Diagram depicting the 1916, 1928, and 1950 factory building
accretions of the Pangborn Corporation Hagerstown plant. Courtesy of David Tipson.
10 See Illustration 7. Sandborn Fire Insurance Company maps.
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plan in which spaces between buildings permitted additions and expansions that kept
the burgeoning company within the limits it had set out for itself.
PART II
THE “GOOD NEIGHBOR”:
BUILDING INDUSTRY FOR THE CIVIC GOOD
The early management of the Pangborn Corporation was guided by principles
borne of personal philosophy, religious conviction, and the influecnes of a
contemporaneous culture of “paternal capitalism” that sought to better society through
responsible business ownership. A t the 50th anniversary of the Pangborn
Corporation’s establishment in Hagerstown, employees presented Thomas Pangborn
with a plaque that concluded with: “High ideals and unselfish motives are exemplified by
your constant interest in our welfare. Inspiring leadership, and courage, and fair
dealings have won our esteem and loyalty.” On May 23, 1967, following the death of
Mr. Pangborn, the Hagerstown Daily Mail printed an article that included these words:
“Thomas Wesley Pangborn in his life span of 86 years excelled in many things – industry,
philanthropy, church leadership and humanitarianism among them… As founder of the Pangbron
Corporation, a key Hagerstown industry for over half a century, Mr. Pangborn made millions of dollars; as
a humanitarian he gave vast sums of money to schools, churches, and institutions in the service of
humanity… As an industrialist he was concerned with the institutions of men. He was honored with
degrees in law, letters and science by five universities or colleges. He was recognized by museums,
hospitals, business organizations, colleges… While these institutions were the immediate recipients of his
many benefactions, it is the public served by the institutions that is the real beneficiary. His relationship
with his employees was one of devotion that in turn inspired intense loyalty…The poor youth from
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Brooklyn, New York, who adopted Hagerstown, had an idea and a belief. All those over whom his
shadow fell benefitted from them. No man could give more.”
11
The foregoing comments are not unique – in almost all published accounts of
Thomas Pangborn, testaments to his generosity and community involvement abound.
While it may be readily concluded that he was a highly motivated individual, his
enthusiasm stemming from much more than self-interest, it is important to take note of
the era in which he started his corner of the industrial empire, so to speak. The early
20th century, a time during which the Industrial Revolution itself was being
revolutionized, also yielded a breed of entrepreneur guided by values considerably
more humanitarian and forward-thinking than the CEOs of today’s ephemeral fly-bynight companies – entrepreneurs of businesses more entrenched in the social fabric of
their communities, and indeed members of those communities themselves.
In his speech delivered in 1954 at the 50th anniversary of his corporation,
Thomas Pangborn made these remarks:
“The corporation emblem atop our plant water tower, boasts
justifiably of quality, to the four winds. We are proud and deeply
conscious that it siginifies not only quality of product, - but the quality
also, of you men and women who are the Pangborn Corporation. I
want to thank all of my fellow workers… and you our neighbors and
fellow townspeople…we can and will strive – from year to year – to
contribute our full strength and talent to the tasks before us, - so that… [we all] may experience the same
noble pride and satisfaction… in the accomplishments and well being of all our people.” 12
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As touched on briefly in the foregoing, The Pangborn Corporation’s, and, in
particular, Thomas Pangborn’s, place in the larger realm of social and architectural
movements – including welfare capitalism, industrial paternalism, the City Beautiful and
Garden City movements – served as a template from which evolved the company town
aesthetic 13 of the Pangborn Site. Continuing forward with this theme of the “Good
Neighbor” , it is essential to explore some of the corporation’s philanthropic
contributions to the residents of Hagerstown – most notably, the establishment of the 7
½-acre Pangborn Park – in an effort to further underscore the factory’s role in shaping
the architectural landscape of the city.
Pangborn Park
Pangborn Park, built on land donated to the City of Hagerstown by the Pangborn
Corporation in 1935 , was officially dedicated on June 10, 1939, 27 years after the
Pangborns’ arrival in Hagerstown. In conjunction with a well-conceived façade,
sidewalk, and allez of trees that, viewed together 14, can be likened more to a smallscale city street scene or series of adjacent storefronts than the front of a bustling
machinery plant – Pangborn successfully inserted itself into the fabric of a previously
underdeveloped portion of the city. In so doing, it managed simultaneously to create an
open-space buffer equivalent to half of the eventual total property acreage of the factory
site itself, encouraged the coexistence of industrial, civic, and community life by
While lacking the monarch-like status that marks a true company town, Hagerstown’s
relationship to the Pangborn factory was one of significant economic dependence. For
the purposes of this report, however, the architectural manifestations of the company’s
influence on the cityscape will supercede issues of political influence.
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fostering the establishment an adjacent park, and sculpted an outdoor aesthetic that
would have made any employee proud to wander through after a day’s work indoors.
PART III
15
SITE HISTORY AND SPATIAL EVOLUTION
Introduction
The Pangborn Corporation factory, while exemplifying a unique fit into the urban
landscape of Hagerstown, follows a decidedly utilitarian model in its fundamental
architectural character. Availing itself of the widely-used industrial building technologies
of its era, it represents pragmatism, affordability, and durability. Extensive glass
fenestration, steel frame and truss construction, and non-load-bearing brick walls are
the hallmark structural characteristics of the majority of the site’s buildings. While the
scale, number of buildings, dense site organization, and very intentional layout all serve
to reinforce the factory’s undeniable impact on the immediate neighborhood, it must be
stressed that economic contingencies govern the practical nature of most industrial
architecture, and Pangborn is no exception. That said, this section will attempt to give a
more accurate description of the architectural character of the factory’s buildings, with
special attention given to their place in the industrial canon of the time.
Construction
14
15
See Illustration 8.
See Illustration 9. Pangborn Park photographs, 2002. Courtesy Mike Yengling.
13
The Pangborn plant was a project of the Frank D. Chase Company, a firm
specializing in the custom design of industrial buildings for companies throughout the
East and Midwest. Flat monitor-type buildings, brick endbay parapets, metal sash
curtain walls, steel roof truss systems, and concrete slab floors are prevalent throughout
the site. Single-story construction predominates, with high ceilings for overhead cranes,
and only the front offices (located immediately behind the southern entrance façade)
occupy more than one floor. Extensive use was made of natural lighting, and the
interiors of the large production buildings are flooded with natural light from both the
continuous sash curtain walls and central overhead monitor windows. 16 The importance
and logic of illumination will be discussed in the next section on site orientation.
Site Orientation
By the time the ground was broken for the first new Pangborn building in 1915,
electricity was widely available for use in commercial and industrial lighting applications.
Nonetheless, many industrial buildings of the era still followed the practice of situating
buildings on a north-south axis so as to permit maximum infiltration of natural light as
the sun followed its daily course across the horizon. Originally this was enhanced by
extremely narrow and longitudinal building design, following the imperative that sunlight
– the primary source of workplace illumination prior to overhead electric lighting – be
allowed to flood the interior of the structure from either side. In the early 20th century,
greater roof truss spans led to the proliferation of central, overhead monitor windows
16
See Illustrations 10 - 11
14
which, in conjunction with glass curtain walls, supplemented the more consistent – but
comparably expensive – output of electric lighting.
The foregoing trend is indicative of early 20th-century dependence on natural
lighting in industrial buildings, a factor that is, arguably, of inestimable benefit to factory
employees’ well-being. The majority of the Pangborn factory’s larger production and
storage buildings follow this pattern. They are all rectangular in form, and those that
have not had later, adjacent buildings built directly on to them display the trademark
steel-mullioned phalanxes of windows that all but comprise the long east and west
sides.
One notable exception to the predominant north-south longitudinal orientation of
the site is the foundry, one of the original buildings appearing in the 1918 Sandborn Fire
Insurance Company maps. 17 In the absence of historical documentation such as an
architect’s notes on the project, there are two hypotheses regarding this discrepancy.
One is the fortuitous siting of the then-new factory on the preexisting east-west Western
Maryland Railroad line, and the desirability of having a primary building (in this case, the
foundry, the most important building for a metal-products manufacturer) that permitted
easy unloading and storage of bulk and heavy materials – such as fuel and metal stock
- along its length. Another possibility is that the depth of the original site (prior to
additional land acquisitions) necessitated locating the foundry behind the main
administrative, manufacturing and assembly buildings. Hemmed in by the railway to the
north and Pangborn Boulevard to the south, and filled almost to its depth by the long
north-south buildings and their fronting facades, it is possible that the foundry was quite
17
See Illustration 12.
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deliberately sited behind these other early buildings, as its noise and filth would have
been anathema to the docile streetscape of the factory’s southern entrance side.
Building Layout: Production Processes And Flow
Questions often asked by visitors to or passersby of the Pangborn factory are
“What goes on here?” , “What do they make?”, or “Why so many buildings?” One
answer to the last question is the fact that the Pangborn Corporation represents a
vertically-integrated industry; that is, it has historically attempted to retain control over its
production – a desire part economic, and part oriented towards strict quality standards –
through the on-site orchestration of as many steps in the manufacturing process as
possible. Purchasing materials in a raw state – metals, rubber, wood – the factory was
equipped to convert each of these, in distinct places within the factory, into the various
parts that comprise their machines.
Work generally began in the foundry 18, where metals – aluminum, iron, steel,
manganese (used in the making of a hard, malleable and ductile steel, with a ratio of
about 12 to 14% manganese), even a Pangborn-patented steel alloy named P-44 –
were cast into parts used in the blast cleaning and dust collection machines for which
the company remains famous. P-44 was invented specifically to meet the need for a
steel extremely resistant to scratching, and while brittle, is used very successfully in the
manufacture of the walls which house the rooms and chambers in which blast cleaning
is conducted. That is, the machines that the company produces are used by large
manufacturers – automotive, aeronautical, and military, to name some of the larger
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categories – to surface-clean the parts they are manufacturing for their products.
Consequently, the scale can be quite large, and Pangborn’s output includes not only
sandblasting technology, but the accompanying structures to house the procedure. As
a result, the space required is substantial.
While single-story, the larger buildings at Pangborn are quite tall, as evidenced in
interior photos of the assembly hall and metal shop buildings. 19 Where the foundry
yielded cast parts, the separate metal fabrication and sheet metal shops produced a
variety of machined and milled metal parts – such as springs, bushings, pulleys, and
bolts, as well as rubber products – sheets, strips, and gaskets, to name a few.
Simultaneously, a separate woodshop off of the foundry building custom-produced
patterns for all of the cast machine parts. Using blank hardwood stock such as cherry
or purpleheart, a reverse mold was meticulously crafted out of wood, from which the
mold for casting each machine part was rendered in steel. 20 Remarkably, the factory
still uses this technique to the present day in its off-site production facilities; an interview
with a current employee of the company noted that while rubber molds were tried
experimentally, the exacting and long-lasting woodshop-produced molds were found to
be superior.
In addition to the foundry, assembly hall, pattern shop and metal departments,
the site contains office spaces, a powerhouse, storage buildings, large shipping and
receiving areas with loading docks, and a large, recently-renovated showroom for
demonstrating equipment to prospective corporate buyers. While the architectural
configurations in evidence at the Pangborn factory are rather site-specific, basic
18
19
See Illustration 13
See Illustrations 14-15
17
patterns of horizontally-orchestrated flow of movement in the production process are
evident in general schematic drawings of multipurpose industrial building designs.
21
Pangborn, while possessing an array of unique qualities, nonetheless falls in to a breed
of architecture designed and constructed to cost-effectively meet the spatial needs of a
variety of industries. Its basic character can be seen in a multitude of single-story
factory sites that make use of ample fenestration and monitor windows (for both
illumination and ventilation), and the large spans permitted by steel frame and truss
construction to provide open floor plans and the subsequent ability to reorganize space
as production and technological advances in machinery demand.
The Illustration section at the end of this report contains section drawings as well
as photographs of a variety of industrial spaces, from the unmistakeable sawtooth
monitor buildings to the classic multistory mill buildings of the late nineteenth century. 22
The intent is to identify Pangborn within a contemporary architectural context, noting its
characteristic features while providing a spectrum from which to assess the particular
qualities that suited the needs of a specific industrial manufacturer.
CONCLUSION
The Pangborn factory, offering a rich history, an interesting architectonic canvas,
and an almost congregation-like embracing by the townspeople in its first few decades
in Maryland, went from a one-man sales outfit in Jersey City to become the largest
manufacturer, seller, and distributor of equipment that revolutionized the entirety of
20
21
See Illustration 16.
See Illustration 17.
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industry worldwide. Furthering the intrigue is the fact that, beginning in the nineteenteens, Pangborn dramatically influenced the spatial evolution of its corner of
Hagerstown. Now, however – while still retaining the distinction of being the largest
manufacturer in its field – over half a dozen of the site’s most substantial buildings sit
unused, with two-thirds of the plant’s approximately 300,000 square feet advertised for
sale or lease.23 What does this represent, for a company that for at least fifty years
prided itself on its selfless contributions and tireless involvement in the community?
How do these buildings and their current state of disuse reflect a shift in corporate ethic,
sense of civic duty, or financial solvency, and what do they bode for the future of their
city, industrial or otherwise? What is the future of once-prospering industrial space, still
structurally sound and infrastructurally relevant, now abandoned for locations offering
cheaper labor, or geographically more desirable for the transnational shipping and
receiving of goods and raw materials?
The Pangborn Corporation’s plant in Hagerstown, Maryland, approximately 70%
vacated for over three years, is now balanced somewhere between being a humanistic
local pillar of success and wealth, and a bastion of faceless industrial progress which
has inevitably moved on to more lucrative pastures. Its contributions to the community
still stand proud – the park, local schools and churches built largely through donated
company money – but the factory’s vacant buildings sit silently behind its townlike
façade, an architectural testament to an intriguing past and an uncertain future. The
Pangborn factory’s role in Hagerstown offers a compelling set of lenses for an
exploration of the origins, development, and meanings within industrial space, and in so
22
23
See Illustrations.
See Illustration.
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doing raises questions that are not only site-specific, but germane to broader future
visions of the interface between architecture and society.
20