FACTORY TOWN LIMIT OF GENERAL STORES PLUS
FACTORY TOWN LIMIT OF GENERAL STORES WINDOWS

“GE’s experience at similar facilities confirms that mercury remediation without demolition is infeasible. Despite several attempts at non-destructive mercury removal, mercury vapor assessments in the building continue to detect mercury vapor at concentrations that exceed standards for residential and commercial uses according to guidance from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. “GE has determined that it is not feasible fully to remove all of this elemental mercury from the buildings without demolishing building infrastructure. And in a corner of this factory in 1898, Alexander Winton built the first commercially manufactured automobile (Stantec).

In the center of the former Brush Electric plant is a yard where Edward Bentley and Walter Knight in 1883 built and tested what would become America’s first commercial electric railway.

These releases caused elemental mercury to be present in many building locations between wood floor layers and in floor drains. Mercury releases were common throughout the buildings from both types of machines. “Other machines relied on large mercury vacuum pumps that operated across the facility similarly to evacuate the bulbs. “During incandescent bulb manufacturing, certain bulb-making machines contained several 1-liter mercury reservoirs that were used to create a vacuum within the bulbs,” the report continued. It acknowledges that “the buildings are generally structurally sound with localized structural issues due to roof leaks and lack of climate control.” Those issues include rotted and buckled floors, flaking paint and deteriorating asbestos, Stantec’s report said. NEOtrans secured a copy of Stantec’s presentation to the city, requesting the factory’s demolition. Other structures date back to when Brush first opened the plant 142 years ago. Those additions expanded the factory to 423,000 square feet. The 16 interconnected brick-and-mortar buildings with wood floors appear to be in good structural condition despite that the newest buildings on the site were built in 1920.

FACTORY TOWN LIMIT OF GENERAL STORES WINDOWS

The plant has sat vacant ever since with all of its windows and doors covered over. They apparently were brighter than those which illuminated Paris a year earlier, and was the first city in the world to have electric streetlights. Each one of Brush’s carbon arc lamps had the intensity of 4,000 candles and was said to turn night into day.

It traces back to 1879 when Cleveland inventor and industrialist Charles Brush placed 12 electric-arc lamps on downtown’s Public Square and made Cleveland the first city in the USA to have electric street lights. The history of GE’s Euclid Lamp Plant goes back to before GE’s ownership. But not everyone agrees the factory has to be razed before the property can be sold by GE.

The Design Review Committee of Cleveland’s City Planning Commission has scheduled a presentation this week by GE’s engineering consultant Stantec on why it should approve demolition of the factory, called the Euclid Lamp Plant, 1814 E. CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM GE claims buildings are too polluted to saveĪ sprawling factory complex on Cleveland’s near-East Side that incubated many lighting, industrial and transportation innovations is proposed to be demolished by its owner of the last 130 years, General Electric (GE). They comprise the former General Electric Euclid Lamp Plant whose origins go back to 1880 when its first buildings were constructed for the Brush Electric Company (Google).

FACTORY TOWN LIMIT OF GENERAL STORES PLUS

This substantial building at the corner of East 45th Street and Commerce Avenue, plus all of the structures in the background, are proposed to be demolished.

Factory town limit of general stores