Henry F . Ortlieb Company Bottling House Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

The Ortlieb's Bottling House is locally significant under Criterion C in the area of Architecture as embodying the distinctive characteristics of post-World War II International Style design in the Philadelphia area in industrial and institutional buildings. These characteristics are: an overall emphasis on horizontal massing; asymmetrical organization; metal-frame ribbons of windows installed as strips across the facade; the use of red brick with exposed concrete trim; the use of large-scale signage in a sans serif font; and the inclusion of references to Philadelphia traditions and the meanings of the past. While some buildings, including the well-known PSFS building, were built in the International Style in Philadelphia in the 1930s, the later 1940s and 1950s marked the period in which this style was widely adopted for buildings in the region, including the Bottling House. The Ortlieb's Bottling House represents the distinctive characteristics of the International Style as it was adapted in the Philadelphia region due to a number of factors, including the influential design methods taught by Paul Cret at the University of Pennsylvania and a more general sense of continuity with the past. This approach resulted in the widespread use of brick as an exterior treatment, continuing the city's traditional use of this material back to the eighteenth century.