Halle Building
The Halle Building, formerly known as the Pope Building and after 2014 as The Residences at Halle, is an 11-story Chicago School mixed-use structure located in the Downtown Cleveland central business district in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. Designed by architect Henry Bacon, the building was the flagship department store of the Halle Brothers Co. from 1910 to 1982.
The Halle Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 8, 1983, and converted to office space in 1986. On November 19, 1995, the Halle Building was listed as a contributing property to the Lower Prospect—Huron Historic District. The Halle Building was purchased by K & D Group in 2014. The ground floor was converted back to retail, and the sixth through tenth floors turned into apartments.
The Pope Building
In 1900, the site of the original and the addition Halle buildings was occupied by mostly by single-story wood-frame houses. On the east side of the intersection of E. 12th Place and Euclid Avenue were two low-rise, mixed-used buildings, 1208 Euclid and 1218 Euclid. Built between 1874 and 1881, they contained retail and offices on the first few floors and residential housing above. 1111 Huron Road, another office building located slightly southeast of 1218 Euclid, was built about the same time. There were also several large structures on or adjacent to the site. The earliest of these was the Cleveland Wheel Club, finished in 1893 and located on the east side of the intersection of E. 12th Place and Huron Road. It was later known as the Wyandot House hotel. The next major structure was the Euclid Point Building, which began construction in 1907 at the intersection of Huron Road and Euclid Avenue. The large property between the Euclid Point Building and the future site of the Halle Building was leased in 1909, and became the Winous Building. The Cleveland lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks began construction of a -story office-and-retail structure at 1041 Huron Road in 1909. The structure was finished in March 1911.Planning
In 1905, former Cleveland resident Alfred Atmore Pope and one of his business associates, Harrison Whittemore, purchased the site of the Halle Building and began planning the construction of a 16-story office building on the eastern portion of the site. Pope took the lead in overseeing the project, hiring New York City architect Henry Bacon to design the structure. By June 1907, plans for the building were largely complete. It was reduced to just 10 stories and had a frontage on both Euclid Avenue and Huron Road, giving the structure an average depth of. The skin of the building was brick facade clad in glazed terracotta. Bacon designed a structure with three below-ground levels. In addition to the basement, there were two sub-basements, the lowest of which was intended to be used as a station for a then-planned Cleveland subway.The existing structures between 1218 Euclid/1111 Huron and the Point Building were demolished, Cleveland-area builders traveled to New York City consult with Pope and Bacon, and test drillings were conducted at the site to determine the quality of the underlying soil and rock.
Quicksand solution
Tidewater Construction, a New York firm, began excavation toward the end of June 1907. Quicksand was soon discovered. The geology of the site consisted of of soil, of watery sand, of quicksand, and then a very deep vein of hard, blue clay. The surprising discovery of quicksand required extensive soil engineering by superintendent of design L.J. Lincoln and structural engineer F.A. Burdette. Their solution was to redesign the foundation so the building could "float" on the bed of quicksand.The T.B. Bryson company of New York City was the general contractor for the cofferdam. To create the cofferdam, Bryson excavated to the watery sand. About 600 steel sheets, manufactured by Carnegie Steel and each long and wide, were then driven completely into ground. This left the sheets embedded in about of the blue clay. Sheet-driving was subcontracted to the Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. Each steel sheet dovetailed with the one next to it, and soft pine splines inserted into the dovetails. The wood swelled when it came into contact with water, helping to ensure a tight seal.
Sheet-driving began in the middle of the west side, and worked counter-clockwise. Because 1218 Euclid had a very shallow foundation, a two-story concrete wall had to be erected to support building while excavation occurred. A drop hammer rather than a steam hammer was used on the east side as well, as sheet-driving occurred within of the adjacent structure's wall. Once the sheet-driving reached the east side, work began in the middle of the west side and worked clockwise around the site. Special care needed to be taken on the Euclid Avenue side of the building due to the danger of cave-ins. The work met at the northeast corner of the site.
The Bryson company then drove large, round wooden piles through the quicksand and into the clay below. The interior of the cofferdam was excavated, and timber braces were placed apart to help stabilize the sheeting until the foundation and interior walls could be constructed.
Foundation
The foundation of the Pope Building is a combination of reinforced concrete floating raft and grillage. Reengineering the foundation due to the quicksand problem meant only a single sub-basement was constructed.In the sub-basement, the sheet piling was plastered and then waterproofed with felt and tar. The felt/tar waterproofing was flashed over the top of the sheet piling and extended horizontally about past the outer wall. Below the sub-basement floor was another waterproofing layer that consisted of of reinforced concrete poured atop the watery sand and then topped with felt and tar. The sub-basement walls were built directly against the waterproofed sheet piling, and made of concrete thick. The upper part of the sub-basement walls were reinforced with rebar thick and apart.
Grillages to hold the columns in place were placed atop the waterproof layer. Each grillage consisted of two tiers of interlocking I-beams. Each grill supported a single one of the 40 columns that made up the building's superstructure. The floor of the sub-basement was poured atop the waterproofing layer, and made of reinforced concrete. Originally, the building was to have relied on the sheet piling and sub-basement wall columns to support the outer walls. Structural engineers, however, felt that the re-engineered steel sheet pilings would give way under the centripetal forces placed on it by the quicksand as well as the building's weight. This required them to alter their plan for the wall columns that supported the building's frame and upper floors. The new foundation's wall columns were set inward from the sub-basement wall. Each fulcrum consisted of two C-beams, each wide and held together by four cover plates. A girder, made of steel plates bolted together and long, wide, and deep, acted as a cantilever. One end was anchored atop the fulcrum, while the other end was supported by a "cantilever support column" set from the sub-basement wall. There were no steel wall columns against the outside walls of the basement or above-ground floors. Rather, a cup-like seat surrounded the inward end of the cantilever beam and the top of the fulcrum. Into this was seated the load-bearing column above. The downward pressure of the load-bearing column helped to keep the cantilever in place atop the fulcrum, which in turn acted like a lever to support the exterior walls of the basement and upper floors.
Between the grills, of reinforced concrete helped to spread the load and keep the grills in place. The concrete between the grillage and for the floor was poured as a single unit thick. A short girder was placed between the base of each near-wall column and the grillage surrounding the fulcrum to help the grillage and floor retain integrity.
A thick brick wall was built against the waterproofed sheet piling in the basement. Against this brick wall, a thick concrete wall was poured. The basement floor was made of reinforced concrete, and designed to support the weight of the building's steam heating plant, air conditioning plant, and other mechanical equipment. The load-bearing columns in the basement were all long.
The Pope Building had the deepest basement in Cleveland. It was likely that this was the first time steel sheeting had been used as pilings in a large building anywhere in the United States, and local architects and The Plain Dealer newspaper called the soil engineering and foundation the most successful method of dealing with quicksand that the nation had ever seen.
The original basement and foundation design had an estimated cost of $175,000. Under the revised plans, the cost of the cofferdam alone was estimated at between $150,000 and $200,000, and that of the foundations $200,000. The final total cost of both the cofferdam and the foundation was $500,000.
Work began on the cofferdam on August 20, 1907, and took about two months to complete. About of concrete and of steel were used just for the foundation, which was finished about the end of 1907. As with nearly all foundations, the below-ground levels of the Pope Building were not intended to be completely watertight. The sub-basement was designed to collect water, which would then be pumped out into the city's sewer system. Because Cleveland's sewer lines were only below-ground, this meant that the water had to be pumped upward before it could enter the sewer line.
Completion of the original building
Tidewater Construction was awarded the contract to complete the building's superstructure. The of steel for the edifice was provided by the Pittsburgh Steel Construction Co., and arrived in mid-September 1908. The facade was made of brick faced with terracotta. The cream-colored, speckled, full-enamel terracotta was manufactured by the North Western Terra Cotta Company, and each tile was numbered so that workers knew exactly where it should go on the building's facade. The brick was made by the Cleveland Hydraulic Press Brick Company.The exterior wall of the first floor was made of reinforced concrete thick, waterproofed with a layer of felt, tar, and burlap. The rebar in the exterior wall was horizontal, carrying weight from column to column without putting too much pressure on the soil below. Above the first floor, two I-beams were attached to the exterior of the frame of the building. One carried the brickwork facade and the other carried the interior floor. The girders supporting floors two through ten were supported by rolled I-beams, with no more than between each girder. The concrete enclosing the girders and the concrete for the floor were poured at the same time. The concrete enclosing the girders rose to a minimum of above the girders, while the reinforced concrete for the floor itself was thick.
On November 28, 1908, the Halle Bros. department store signed a long-term lease for the entire Pope Building. This allowed the company to move from its existing location at Euclid Avenue and E. 6th Street, and to double its space.