University of Texas at Austin

Norman Bel Geddes (American, 1893-1958)
Toledo Scale Factory
1929
Charcoal on paper
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Norman Bel Geddes Database

Job 153, Toledo Scale Co. - Factory, 1929-1933

Summary: Among Geddes’s most notable designs for functional, yet theatrical, interiors was the Toledo Scale factory. The Ohio-based Toledo Scale Company commissioned two of Geddes’s most famous, never-realized designs, beginning with his reimagining of their signature product—a counter scale (job 152)—to his redesign of the firm’s entire factory complex. Here, Geddes took his idea of the transformative theater and applied it to the factory, where he imagined work to be an uplifting enterprise.

This material consolidates jobs 140, 154-160, 171-174, 184, and 186. Photos were used in Horizons (1932), pages 205-221.


(click image for description)

Box/Location Folder Description
box 8 153.1 Meeting minutes, telephone transcripts Jan-Apr 1929. Design program. Chronology of preliminary design negotiations. Agreement Apr1929. "Assignments" Jan1930. Correspondence 1929-1931.
box 8 153.2-3 Record Copy Books --- "Toledo Scale Buildings" and "Factory" or "Publicity Drawings" with 4 photographs of renderings not separated.
box 8 153.4 Rendering, captions, exhibit label 1929.
box 9 153.5 Publicity --- Offprints and tear sheets (1930-1933). Press release "Factory Planning".
photo box 3 153.1 21 Photographs of renderings, 23 of models.
negative box 1 153.1 24 Negatives. [1 damaged]
flat box 1c 153.1 Mounted photograph of rendering (Bogart #20).
flat box 1c 153.2 Mounted photograph of rendering (Bogart #27).
flat box 1c 153.3 Mounted photograph of rendering (Bogart #37).
flat box 1c 153.4 Mounted photograph of rendering (Bogart #39).
flat box 1c 153.5 Mounted photograph of rendering (Bogart #40).
flat box 1c 153.6 Mounted photograph of rendering (Bogart #41).
flat box 1c 153.7 Mounted photograph of rendering (Bogart #49).
flat box 1c 153.8 Mounted photograph of rendering (Rapid Copy #1024A).
flat file 153.1 1 Sketch (with 3 blueprints). 1 Drawing plot plan. 3 Drawings of laboratory. 8 Sketches of corridor, movable partitions.
flat file 153.2 Drawing "Front Elevation Toledo Scale Co." Hemle, Corbett & Harrison Architects (firm NBG replaced on project) with blueprint.
flat file 153.3 Cost estimates for Laboratory, connecting corridor (negative photostat).
flat file 153.4 4 Photographs of drawings.
flat file 153.5 3 Renderings.
flat file 153.6 1 Photostat of rendering.

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