Watertower Place

Born in 1881 in Kristiania, Norway (now Oslo), Hans Peter Henschien emigrated to the United States in June 1901. In his early twenties he started Henschien & McLaren Architects which set up shop in the Old Colony Building in Chicago. Their specialties included packing house and cold storage construction.  The young genius is most noted for his theory of the 'rational factory' which used gravity as its core technology.

In 1915, Chicago, Nickerson & Collins Co. published the fully illustrated Packing House and Cold Storage Construction; a general reference work on the planning, construction and equipment of modern American meat packing plants, with special reference to the requirements of the United States government, and a complete treatise on the design of cold storage plants, including refrigeration, insulation and cost data. This book became the 'Bible' for creating meat packing facilities in the USA and throughout the world. Other projects include the Richter Sausage Factory in Chicago, the Rath Packing Co. in Waterloo, IA, and numerous plants in Russia, just to name a few.

From 1915 to 1917 the Pueblo Chieftain regularly reported on the construction of the massive Nuckolls Packing Co. plant with an emphasis on the introduction of the world's latest modern technologies. At a cost of $300,000 to build in 1916, it would require $149,000,000 to construct today.