Edward Laing Stores

The Edward Laing Stores building was once a revolutionary landmark that stood at the corner of Washington and Murray Streets. Designed by the architect and inventor James Bogardus and completed in eighteen forty-nine, it holds the distinction of being the first cast-iron building constructed in the United States. Its facade was made of mass-produced, interchangeable iron parts that could be assembled significantly faster than traditional masonry. The structure was a product of the city's early industrial age, commissioned by coal dealer and banker Edgar Hall Laing to replace his coal yard with a more profitable five-store commercial complex. Because the building was self-supporting and used iron walls rather than heavy brick or stone, its design allowed for much larger window openings than were possible in other buildings at the time. This engineering feat paved the way for the later architectural styles that would define city skylines for decades. During the urban renewal projects of the nineteen sixties, the building faced demolition, but officials decided to preserve its historic facade. In nineteen seventy-one, workers carefully dismantled the structure piece by piece, labeling every component for eventual reconstruction. However, the salvaged iron panels were left in an outdoor lot, where they became the target of a brazen series of thefts. Thieves repeatedly carted off the historic pieces to sell as scrap metal, a tragedy that resulted in the near-total loss of the original architecture. Today, only a few small fragments remain in museum collections, while the site itself has been replaced by modern residential development.