Liggett and Meyers Harpring Tobacco Storage Warehouse

About this property

The Liggett and Myers Harpring Tobacco Storage Warehouse (built in 1930) is a building located in Lexington, Kentucky. The building is significant for its association with the burley tobacco industry in Lexington, Kentucky between 1930 and 1980 and is currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Fayette County, Kentucky. After the end of World War I, Lexington positioned itself as the largest burley tobacco market in the state, a position that was strengthened by its increase in the number of tobacco warehouse being built across the city. This new surge in the consumption of burley tobacco is what drove Liggett and Myers to build a new tobacco facility in Lexington in 1930. A newspaper article announcing the construction of the $100,000 warehouse stated that Liggett and Myers plan "to use the warehouse as a storage plant for tobacco here and awaiting shipment to their factories. The new warehouse will be completed and put into use by the opening of the tobacco season here this winter". The warehouse, located along Manchester Street and the L&N Railroad, was named for Liggett and Myers' head buyer in Kentucky, F. G. Harpring of Louisville. The new warehouse joined a line of other tobacco-related structures in Lexington's northwest tobacco district. A November 1930 article in the Lexington Leader touted the scope and scale of the Harpring Storage Warehouse. "One of the largest and finest roofing and sheet metal jobs ever done in this part of the country is now being completed by the James D. Harper firm, 724 West Short Street, on the new Liggett and Myers tobacco warehouse on the Old Frankfort Pike." The article detailed the amount of metal used, which given the size of the warehouse, is impressive: "1 ,200 squares of Baird’s Specification roofing; 1,900 lineal feet of Baird’s flashing; 1,200 lineal feet of molded gutters; 600 feet of downspout; 300 feet of corrugated iron siding and 150 squares of screen wire." The Harpring Storage Warehouse represented a major financial investment on the part of Liggett and Myers. The warehouse cost $100,000 to build. Between 1930 and the start of World War II, the urban tobacco landscape in Lexington grew dramatically. The consolidation in the tobacco markets meant that Lexington, a rail and road hub, benefited from a building boom of new, mostly metal-clad warehouses. This includes both sales and storage warehouses. The introduction of the metal-clad steel-frame brick-firewall storage warehouse with multiple sections under one roof, rippled throughout Lexington's burley storage landscape. The Harpring Warehouse began receiving tobacco during the 1930 sales season, and its design was quickly co-opted by other companies. In 1931, other national tobacco firms commenced building similar storage warehouses.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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