{"nrhp_refnum":"79002252","name":"Bachman and Forry Tobacco Warehouse","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"125 Bank Alley","address_restricted":false,"city":"Columbia","county":"Lancaster County","state":"PA","lat":40.029468902000076,"lon":-76.50331354799994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1979-03-29","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Agriculture","Commerce","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A three and one-half story, rectangular brick tobacco storage warehouse in Columbia, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, measuring 54 feet by 85 feet with a gable roof. It was built between 1893 and 1895 as a commercial building for storing and sweating baled leaf tobacco.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the warehouse is a symbol of the cigar leaf tobacco industry that was important to Lancaster County agriculture from the post-Civil War years into the early twentieth century. It describes the building as the purest and handsomest of the surviving warehouses of its type in the county.","narrative":"Built between 1893 and 1895 in Columbia, Lancaster County, this three and one-half story brick warehouse measures 54 by 85 feet and is topped by a gable roof. Its builders were Geiske and Neimann. Radiating brick arches top its windows and loading doors, and most windows are six over six sash. Inside, the wooden floors rest on 4 by 16 foot joists supported by solid timbers measuring 16 by 16 inches, with the third floor rising more than thirty-five feet to the ridgepole. A hand-operated elevator measuring 8 by 8 feet moved bales of tobacco between floors. Farmers sold their air-cured leaf to commercial companies, and the bales were stored and sweated in this building to bring them into proper condition for sale. The warehouse is regarded as one of the rare surviving examples of this industry, which supplied cigar wrapper leaf and shaped the county's agricultural economy from after the Civil War into the early twentieth century. In the 1930s it became the property of the David Forry Tobacco Company.","period_of_significance":"1893-95","architect_builder":"Geiske, Neimann/Builders","architectural_style":null,"criteria":[],"status_note":"Condition described as good to excellent; plans were being prepared to use the building for publication offices, a museum and a collector's reference library.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:29.822815-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/79002252.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/79002252/9949e919ca-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/79002252/9949e919ca-1600.webp","licence":"CC0","author":"Smallbones","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Forry_Warehouse_Columbia_PA.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Smallbones</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Forry_Warehouse_Columbia_PA.JPG"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"83002249","name":"Columbia Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/pennsylvania/columbia-historic-district-83002249/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71995105","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachman_and_Forry_Tobacco_Warehouse","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4838886"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/lancaster-county/bachman-and-forry-tobacco-warehouse-79002252/"}