Basic Site Details | Name: | Singer Manufacturing Company - 1904 Factory | | Town, district or village: | Kilbowie | | City or county: | Glasgow | | Country: | Scotland | | Parish: | | | Status: | | | Grid ref: | | | Notes: | KILBOWIE, GLASGOW. - Additions made to the factory at Kilbowie of the Singer Manufacturing Company were opened on Friday. At these works the company have been producing sewing-machines at the rate of 800,000 per annum, but found that while other departments could produce more, their cabinet factory prescribed this limit. They therefore decided at the beginning of the year to make an addition in order to increase production to 1,000,000 sewing-machines per annum. The contract for the new building was let to Messrs Robert McAlpine and Sons, the Glasgow firm who had erected the original factory 21 years ago. The structure measures 800 feet long, 80 feet wide, and the six floors, with flat roof, rise to a height of 90 feet. from surface level. The four walls are built of brickwork, 36 inches thick at the base, narrowing to 18 inches at the top, having at intervals of 15 feet 4 inches buttresses 3 feet wide, and projecting 18 inches from the face. The intermediate supports for the floors consist of three steel columns in the width of 80 feet, set at 15 feet 4 inch centres in the longitudinal line. These columns are built of channel section, there being four 12 inch by 3inch by 0.5 inch. channels, with six cover-plates for the two lower floors, two channels for the third and fourth floors, and H -beams for the fifth and sixth levels. The main girders, which are transverse, are formed of two joists rivetted together, while the longitudinal beams rest on these at 3 feet. 3 inch centres. The calculated load per square foot of floor is 300lb. The steel was of 27 to 32 tons ultimate tensile strength, with a minimum elongation of 20 per cent, in 8 inches. While concrete was used as a bottom for the brick foundations, ferrolithic was adopted for casing the steelwork and for forming the floors. The building is divided by fire-resisting walls of ferrolithic into four compartments, the doors of communication being of tin-lined timber, running on inclined rails, and held open by balance-weights, the chain of which is released automatically by the fusing of a solder link when the temperature becomes abnormal. [Building News 9 September 1904 p379]
| Building Type Classification| The building is classified under the following categories: | | | Classification | Original classification? | Notes |  | Factory | | |
Events| The following date-based events are associated with this building: | | | From | To | Event type | Notes | | September 1904 | | Opened | |
PeopleClients| The following individuals or organisations have commissioned work on this building/design: | | | Name | Notes | | Singer Manufacturing Company | |
Related Buildings, Structures and DesignsParent Structure and Site| This structure is related to the following parent structure or site (click the item to view details): | | | Building name | Notes | | Singer Manufacturing Company Works | John Bennie Wilson has been attributed a role in the design of these buildings in some sources, but this is erroneous: there is no mention of it in his very detailed nomination paper. |
ReferencesPeriodical References| The following periodicals contain references to this building: | | | Periodical Name | Date | Edition | Publisher | Notes | | Building News | 9 September 1904 | | | p379 |
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