Labor Day is Monday. In Syracuse, we’ve got an old factory whose entire design was based on the dignity of working men and women. The problem is this: The very feature that gives the building national significance has literally been walled off from public view.
If Rick Destito has his way, that will quickly change.
He owns what he calls the Gear Factory, an industrial landmark at West Fayette and South Geddes streets. It was designed almost 100 years ago by Detroit’s Albert Kahn, an important American architect who died in 1942.
Kahn was “a real humanist,” said Charles K. Hyde, an industrial archaelogist in Michigan who has written extensively about Kahn and his work. Raised in poverty, Kahn learned his craft through sheer perseverance, Hyde said. When such industrial titans as Henry Ford asked him to design their factories, Kahn used large windows and natural ventilation to make sure those buildings would never resemble dark and stinking industrial “sweatshops.”
In the early 1900s, the old Brown-Lipe gear company hired Kahn to design a new plant in Syracuse. He included such trademark elements as reinforced concrete, and all five floors were dominated by windows that allowed in a flood of light.
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