GROUND WAS BROKEN FOR THE GOFF BUILDING ON JUNE 28, 1910
Nathan Goff, Jr. had a life-long love affair with Clarksburg. Born Feb. 9, 1843, in Waldomore at 400 West Pike Street, the son of Waldo P. and Harriet L. Moore Goff, Jr., graduated from Clarksburg's Northwestern academy, established a law practice in the town in 1865 and began a career that would make him the most prominent and wealthiest citizen of the town.
By 1905, when income from oil sales alone in ten years had totaled $1,077,991.52, Goff had invested heavily in his hometown. In 1897 he and other Waldo P. Goff heirs had given land for North Fourth Street leading from West Pike Street to the Fourth Street Bridge which Goff built himselt to open up his land in Glen Elk. In 1901, Goff built the Elkbridge Building, a $60,000 brick structure at the north end of the Fourth Street Bridge. In 1903 Goff and associates of Goff formed the Clarksburg Gas and Electric Company and won the franchise to furnish gas and electricity to the City for thirty years; and in the same year, Goff built the Oak Hall Building, a $35,000 office and apartment building on West Main Street. Between 1901-1904 Goff spent more than $400,000 to erect the Waldo Hotel, one of the largest and most elaborate hotels in West Virginia and built next door to the house where Nathan Goff, Jr. had been born and reared.
Goff liked to build fine buildings. By 1907 he was ready to replace with a modern structure the brick office building he had erected in 1891 on the corner of West Main and Court streets, and next door to the Harrison County Courthouse. Goff's work had sent him frequently to Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina because those states plus West Virginia were under his jurisdiction as judge of the U.S. Circuite Court for the Fourth Judicial Circuit. As senior circuit judge, after November 1893, Goff had assigned cases over which the seven district judges in the circuit would preside at a time when custom dictated that judges sit in cases outside their respective districts when services were needed. Goff traveled the circuit frequently as judge from 1892-1913. He admired the work of Architect Frank P. Milburn which he saw reflected in Union Station the dome of the Sourht Carolina State House, and other buildings in Columbia, S.C., for Milburn designed at least two hundred fifty major structures in the South.
Frank Pierce Milburn (1898-1926), a native of Bowling Green, Kentucky, practiced as an architect in Louisville, Ky., 1884-1889; in Kenova, W. Va., 1890-1895. He moved to Charlotte, N.C. in 1895 to be architect for the Southern Railroad Company, and in the same year won the contract as architect for the Mechklenburg County Courthouse at Charlotte. He built the first steel frame building in North Carolina and the first steel frame building in South Carolina, where he moved from Charlotte to take up residence in Columbia, the state capital.
In his first fifteen years of practice, Milburn designed 19 railroad stations, 26 County Courthouses, 15 residences, 9 college buildings, including 5 for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, plus offices, churches, banks and schools. "He is said to have acquired in a few years the largest architectural business south of the Mason and Dixon Line." Milburn employed MIchael Heister as designer and together the two opened "Milburn, Heister & Co., Architects" circa 1904 in Washington, D.C. The Washington firm executed designs in Washington for the Department of Commerce Building, the Navy Building,, the House of Representatives Office Building and Lansburg's Department Store. "Stylistically, Milburn was typical of 19th Century eclectics and at other times adopting the classical attitudes of the Neo-Classical Revival or Beaux Arts Classicism...His notable achievement was in skyscraper construction iwth the vertical emphasis of a tall structure terminating in an ornate and usually wide overhanging cornice.
Goff hired Milburn in 1908 to draw up plans for his office building. A newspaper in 1909 reported: "The Goff Building will be 9 stories in height...The old buildings at the corner of Main and Court streets have already been razed and the excavation for the foundation is expected to be begun at a very early date." Nov. 11, 1909, Manufacturers' Record, an architectural trade journal, published a sketch of the structure projected by Milburn & Heister Architects to be build in Clarksburg.
Ground was broken for the Goff Building June 28, 1910. Representatives from Milburn & Heister rode the B&O Railway often to Clarksburg for "the firm was expert, relieving the client of all worry". "Milburn was a conscientious architect who felt that standards within the architectural profession should be as high as those in medicine and law. It was his belief that the architect is more important than doctor or lawyer, since the architect is responsible for the supporting structure, practical planning, sanitary conditions, heating, ventilation and acoustice, and the economics in addition to the politics in the erection of the building." A son of Frank P. Milburn said of his father: "For 25 years he traveled 30,000 miles a year in sleepers, doing a day's work each day, and then moving at night to the next stop. He felt this necessary to explain his drawings to the various contractors and to see that they were properly executed.
The contractors who executed Milburn's plans for the Goff Building had at their fingertops expert workmen and local sources of supply because they knew the Clarksburg turf. H.W. Elliott and E.L. Winchell had build structures in the town since 1903; "Contractors Elliott and Winchell are prominent in their line, having had a wide and successful career. They came to West Virginia 8 years ago and among the monuments to their ability are the (Harrison County) jail and sheriff's residence (1905), the Empire Building (1906), 2 schoolhouses, and V.L Highland's residence circa 1904 here besides the Goff Building. They have also erected large buildings in Wheeling, Charleston, Mannington and other West Virginia places."
After excavating, "The foundations under foundations for the walls and for the steel columns were reinforced with 2 courses of lugged and twisted steel rods laid right angles and worked into the concrete foundations or footings. The foundations were tested with a dead load of 6,000 pounds to the square foot for 48 hours without settlement, thus showing the stability of the ground sustaining the building."
The building of steel frame fireproof construction with reinforced concrete floors and gypsum block partitions that rose above the foundations fronts 86 feet on West Main Street and 125 feet on Court Street. The exterior walls are stone in the lower stories, impervious press brick above. The roof is of steel construction with book tile covered by slate. (Note: the Glen View brick in the Goff Building was manufactured in Clarksburg)
" On the first floor is a modern equipped banking room and five stores, and the upper stories contain 193 offices. There are two iron and marble stairways from the ground to the top floor, also two traction type high-speed electric passenger elevators, and a glass and bronze mail chute the full height of the building. Each office contains a porcelain lavatory, with hot and cold water, electric light and telephone connections, and and gas for dentists.
"The banking room is finished in marble and bronze, has large fireproof valuts; the main entrance corridor has marble floors and wainscoting, ornamental beams and cornices, etc.; and all the corridors in the upper floors are finished in marble mosaic. All the interior wood finish is of oak and birch. The building contains a separate pressure system to insure water to all parts of the building at all times, also contains a fire line stand pipe with hose connections on each floor, and all plumbing and electric light fixtures, as well as all hardware are of the best manufacture. The building is heated by an overhead direct steam system, using natural gas for fuel."
The contractors were proud that they could turn over to the owner in January, 1911 the building completed without a single serious injury or loss of life "which is an unusual condition on buildings of this size, where so many men of various trades are employed, showing the contractors were careful and diligent in every particular."
"It is a massive structure as a few figures furnished by Contractor Elliott show. There were 3,826 cubic yards of dirt in the excavation, 48 railroad carloads of crushed limestone were used, 21 railroad carloads of Portland Cement, 41 cars of sand, 982,000 bricks, 11 cars of furnace slag, 5 cars of fireproof partition blocks, 12 cars of wall plaster, 1 car of plaster paris, 1 car of roofing slate, 1 car of galvanized iron cornice, 776 tons of structural steel, 56 tons of ornamental iron, 18 tons of glass, 8 1/2 tons of sashweights, 2 cars of framing lumber, 4 cars of flooring, 2 cars of interior finishing lumber, 55 tons of radiators, 31 tons of steam pipe, 205 tons of vitreous china lavatories, 1,156 gallons of paint, 32 tons of Alabama marble for terrazzo floors and marble mosaic and 90 barrels of chandeliers for gas and electric lights."
The geographic location for many of the concerns that supplied help in erecting the Goff Building shows the hand of Architect Milburn: B. McKenzie, Greensboro N.C., heating; The McClamrock Marble & Tile Co., Greensboro, N.C., marble mosaic and terrazzo work: W.T. Vandergrift, Charlottesville, Va., Inspector; J.E. Moss Iron Works Co., Hamilton Ohio, ornamental ironwork; Evens Marble Co., Baltimore, Md., marble floors and wainscoting; E.J. Myer & Co., Hamilton, Ohio, vault or sidewalk light; Union Bridge Co., Rutherford, N.J. bronze work in banking room; Diebold Safe & Lock Co., Pittsburgh, Pa., structural steel; The John O'Hare Co., Clarksburg, plumbing; Cutter Mail Chute Co. Rochester, N.Y., mail chute; S.C. Crow, Bellaire, Ohio, painting; Otis Elevator Co., Pittsburgh, Pa., elevators.
The Daily Telegram of Jan. 30, 1911 reported "only a few touches remain to make the completion of the new Goff Building, a 9-story skyscraper, here complete and business firms and professional men are already busy moving into the great structure."
Moving into the first floor banking room was the Farmers Bank; into the 2 storerooms facing West Main Street were williams-Coffman Hardware Co., and Bane and Bond (millinery); into store rooms on the Court Street side. Haymay Greenhouse Co., Ernest Siers (haberdashery) and P.M. Long (insurance). Moving into offices on the 2nd floor were Dr. ARnett and Gaston, Dr. L.F. Kormann, Dr. F.B. Stathers, Dr. H.H. Haynes, Dr. R.A. Haynes, Taney Harrison, E.D. Lewis, W.E. Morris, G.H. Montgomery. MOving into offices on the 3rd floor were Post & Reger, John Ross, Jr., Davis & Davis (John J. and John W.), Osman E. Swartz, E.B. Templeton, Charles W. Mooer. Moving into offices on the 4th floor were Charles B. Johnson, G.M. Hoffheimer H.H. Staggers. Moving into offices on the 5th floor were Drs. D.B. Davis and J.F. Williams, MIss F. Huber, J.W. Robinson, Pardee & Curtin Lumber Co., Moving into offices on the 6th Floor were Fidelity Casualty Co. (Ledru Tracey) C.C. Davis, Finley and Burnside, Miss M.D. Freeman, Swager Coal Co. Moving into the 7th Flor were J.B. Hoffmier, Drs. H.E. Sloan and R.V. Lynch, E.F. Garrett, W. Frank Stout, R.E. Parrish. Moving into offices on the 8th Floor were B.M. Despard, Edward C. Bassel, S.R. Bentley, and Thomas Shaw. Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Co. (Samuel Shrader). Seventeen rooms on the 9th Floor were not yet rented in January, 1911.
Milburn built for the $200,000 contract price which later increased to $250,000, a structure that has served Clarksburg almost unchanged for (at the time of this writing) 74 years, and a structure that has been a money-maker for Nathan Goff, Jr. and his estate through the years. "...the exterior of the building is precisely the same as originally constructed and the interior is basically the same with a few minor adjustments on some of the floors to accommodate some of the larger firms. The marble stairways and marble floors are still intact, and also the interior wood finish."
By: Dorothy Davis. From: "Clarksburg: A BiCentennial Album" 1785-1985.
