Armour & Co. Building

The Armour Building is a three-story brick building in the city's waterfront warehouse district. Its main entrance is on Battery Street; it also has a facade on Union Street.[2] It was designed by Henry Geilfuss & Son, a prominent San Francisco architectural firm of the period, as a meat smoking and packing facility,[2][3][4] and was built in 1907 in an Italianate style.[1] The site was previously occupied by a 1902 American Milling Company warehouse, also designed by Geilfuss, which was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire.[2]

The building was provided with four smoke ovens in one corner of each floor, walled with brick and originally with steel doors, and otherwise was largely open; after Armour moved out of the building in 1934, office partitions were added beginning in 1944, when a new owner, V. Traverso Co., used it as a grocery warehouse, and the ovens were repurposed as conference rooms, storerooms, and restrooms. Employees' lunch and shower facilities and a test kitchen were created in the basement in 1979, and the loading docks have been converted to windows and an additional entrance. The building was also damaged by fire in 1940 and received seismic upgrades in the 1970s.[2]