The History of 400 Square

Tim Fulton 0:13Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, I had a conversation with Zach Hinkle, the curator of the 400 History Show and Mini Museum, and the complex's maintenance manager. 400 West Rich is a collaborative community center for the arts in Franklinton. Zach put the show together on the occasion of 400 West Rich's 10th anniversary. In this episode, we discuss the history of Franklinton, how the building has evolved over time, and what you can experience at the 400 History Show and Mini Museum. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Also, the Confluence Cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website, theconfluencecast.com, or at patreon.com/confluence. This episode of the Confluence Cast is sponsored by Gateway Film Center, a nonprofit cinema committed to storytellers and amplifying the impact of their work in our community. A story told by an authentic voice can inspire new ideas and has the power to entertain, push boundaries, spark new levels of empathy, and advance social change. To learn more about their programs and plan your next visit, please visit gatewayfilmcenter.org. Enjoy the interview. Here on location at 400 West Rich with 400 Square maintenance manager and 400 History Show and Mini Museum curator, Zach Hinkle. Zach, how are you?

Zach Hinkle 2:03I'm all right, Tim. How are you, buddy?

Tim Fulton 2:04I'm doing well. I'm doing well. So we actually spoke with Chris Sherman about 400 West Rich a couple of years ago. We will link that episode in the show notes, but for those that aren't familiar, Zach, tell us about 400 West Rich.

Zach Hinkle 2:18Uh, yes, 400 West Rich and the greater 400 Square is a campus of buildings that contain, um, about 120 art studios and some offices as well as the Strong Water Food & Spirits restaurant and events center, as well as some other, uh, out buildings and the Vendatelli Room and, uh, a lot of free ample parking right in the downtown zip code. Uh, but I've been working here for about 10 years, and I've been the maintenance manager for about a year of that. Uh, I also live in the neighborhood about four blocks away along, uh, State Street, West State Street. And our 10-year anniversary of working on 400 and the properties was in October of 2020, about a month ago, a little over a month ago now, and we kind of realized we did nothing to celebrate it. So-

Tim Fulton 3:10Okay

Zach Hinkle 3:10... I said, "Hey, what if, uh, for, in November, uh, we act like that's the 10-year anniversary? Nobody's gonna know the difference." 'Cause we we're the ones working on it. And we say, we put together like a little history show, like a mini museum, showing, uh, antiques, artifacts, curiosities, artwork, and photos and stuff about 400 and Chrome Edge and B&T Metals, and we kinda put that together in a little walk-through museum-

Tim Fulton 3:41Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 3:42... uh, that I came up with and put together in about four weeks.

Tim Fulton 3:46Okay.

Zach Hinkle 3:46And that's where we are today.

Tim Fulton 3:47So first of all, sort of give us a little bit of a history of the building.

Zach Hinkle 3:51Uh, 400 West Rich, um, the core of the building, the oldest portion, was built in 1911. That's where the Strong Water Food & Spirits event center is, if you've ever been to a wedding there or a luncheon or a dance party or something. Uh, that's the oldest portion. And then the larger kinda portion you see from Rich, Lucas, and Town Streets was built in the 1920s, that whole brick facade there. Um, the whole facility's about 103,000 square feet. If you took Ohio Stadium's capacity and gave everyone a square foot, they would theoretically fit in the building.

Tim Fulton 4:31Theoretically. Walk us through what the, the building was originally used for.

Zach Hinkle 4:35So this was built as a, uh, ceramics, uh, foundry, uh, making toilets, sinks, uh, chimney caps, and some other things like that. It was 1911. Indoor plumbing was all the rage. It was a, a boom. There was a plumbing boom of sorts going on.

Tim Fulton 4:55Mm-hmm.

Zach Hinkle 4:56And, uh, somebody to make all these indoor toilets and sinks, and D.A. Ebinger Sanitary Manufacturing Company, uh, was here to do that, and, uh, that company eventually, um, spun off into being known as Ebco-

Tim Fulton 5:14Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 5:15... around, uh, let's say World War II.

Tim Fulton 5:18Okay.

Zach Hinkle 5:18It was the Atomic Age, airplanes, jet engines, so a clunky old name, like D.A. Ebinger Sanitary Manufacturing Company went and they shortened it to, uh, Ebco. And that company eventually transitioned into Oasis, um, who makes water fountains, and they eventually moved out of this building, I believe, to St. Louis, Missouri.

Tim Fulton 5:42Okay.

Zach Hinkle 5:43However, another thing that's highlighted at this mini museum is, is sort of the properties west of Lucas, which was known as B&T Metals, and Chrome Edge. Um, the Chrome Edge building still exists, and we have about 26 27 art studios in there and, uh, the photo lab. And then some of the parking lots were once the B&T Metals factory. So this mini museum highlights both of those sort of histories together because they're very intertwined, and some of these things, I forget if they came out of 400 or out of B&T Metals and they-

Tim Fulton 6:27'Cause you guys have control over all the space, and so-

Zach Hinkle 6:29Yeah, yeah

Tim Fulton 6:29... yeah.

Zach Hinkle 6:29So it's sort of a joint, uh, history show between two different companies.

Tim Fulton 6:33So it's both, uh, what became EPCO and Oasis and B&T Metals.

Zach Hinkle 6:37Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Fulton 6:38Okay.

Zach Hinkle 6:39So it's sort of a mix, and, uh, it's so far back in the past, anybody who would probably know the difference is probably dead by now, so-

Tim Fulton 6:46That's fair

Zach Hinkle 6:46... I kinda like mixed the two together.

Tim Fulton 6:48Okay. That's fair. And talk a little bit about the history of Franklinton. I'm thinking specifically about the, the flood and, and how it's evolved over time.

Zach Hinkle 6:59Uh, yeah. Franklinton is Columbus's oldest, uh, neighborhood in sort of the sense we think of neighborhoods. Uh, it's actually older than the city of Columbus. It was founded in 1797 by a Virginia planter named Lucas Sullivant. He, uh, was contemporaries with George Washington, surveying the, the Western frontier. But anyways, he founded, uh, Franklinton on the sort of, uh, peninsula formed by the Scioto River at the confluence of the Olentangy and Scioto way back when. And, um, his first town he platted was flooded. Uh, and a year later, he built another one, and it had another flood, and then they eventually kinda moved it, Franklinton, to more where it is today.

Tim Fulton 7:41Okay.

Zach Hinkle 7:41It used to sit a little bit norer where, like, sorta Souder Avenue-

Tim Fulton 7:46Yeah

Zach Hinkle 7:46... hits 33.

Tim Fulton 7:47Okay.

Zach Hinkle 7:48That was, like, the original town site. So let's go about 130 years in the future. The original core of 400 is built, and then two years later, the 1913 flood occurs, uh, which is probably the most famous weather event in Ohio history.

Tim Fulton 8:05Okay.

Zach Hinkle 8:05Um, it devastated the Franklinton neighborhood, the downtown riverfront. Uh, Dayton, Ohio had even more catastrophic damage, and pretty much every town down the Miami and Scioto Rivers-

Tim Fulton 8:19Okay

Zach Hinkle 8:20... saw quite a bit of destruction and death. I think it, at least in Columbus, it killed maybe 500 people.

Tim Fulton 8:27Hmm.

Zach Hinkle 8:27Left about 10, 20,000 people homeless. It caused a lot of damage.

Tim Fulton 8:32Okay.

Zach Hinkle 8:33So the oldest core of the building was existing during that, that time. And East Franklinton neighborhood was an industrial hub. Uh, there's still some vestiges of some of those older factory buildings, like the 400 building, the Chrome Edge building, uh, the building that, um, Idea Foundry's in-

Tim Fulton 8:53Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 8:54... and some other ones around the, the neighborhood.

Tim Fulton 8:56And so then what, uh, what was the expansion of, of 400 then after that?

Zach Hinkle 9:01So after the flood era, that was a, um, that was, like, the, the kind of the major facade you see-

Tim Fulton 9:07Okay

Zach Hinkle 9:08... on Rich, Lucas, and Town.

Tim Fulton 9:09Okay.

Zach Hinkle 9:10That, and between those two, that's, that's probably about 80, 80% of the building's footprint.

Tim Fulton 9:16Got it.

Zach Hinkle 9:17There's been some additional, uh, additions and annexes and things kinda cobbled onto it, but-

Tim Fulton 9:23Got it

Zach Hinkle 9:23... that's the majority of the structure.

Tim Fulton 9:25Okay. Walk us through what you can see here at the history show in the mini museum.

Zach Hinkle 9:30So when you first come into the mini museum, you see these big boiler doors-

Tim Fulton 9:37Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 9:37... that are a cast iron. Uh, these were the boiler doors to the boiler in the B&T Metals, uh, factory, which, um, stood at where the sort of Strongwater parking lot is today.

Tim Fulton 9:51Mm-hmm.

Zach Hinkle 9:52Gravel parking lot. And, uh, that building was much older than B&T Metals. So there was something in there before them, uh, 'cause I think B&T got started in the 1930s. It made floor coverings, uh, and was a extruder of sorts. It would make aluminum, uh, trim pieces-

Tim Fulton 10:14Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 10:14... for the flooring industry, but it's, it moved into, like, automotive, aviation, uh, institutional uses. It was, uh, at its peak in about the '50s or so. Uh, in 1940s and '50s it was, uh, it was the largest Black employer in Columbus, uh-

Tim Fulton 10:32Okay

Zach Hinkle 10:32... Black-owned business.

Tim Fulton 10:33Okay.

Zach Hinkle 10:34Yeah. So it, that, uh, that's a bit of a historic thing. And another thing that's really historic about it is it was one of the sites for the uranium milled for the first atomic bomb. Under great secrecy, uh, the Manhattan Project-

Tim Fulton 10:48Huh

Zach Hinkle 10:49... uh, was partly developed in the B&T Metals building. Um, employees were under strict guard and, uh, took daily health screenings.

Tim Fulton 11:01Huh.

Zach Hinkle 11:02And they didn't know what they were doing.

Tim Fulton 11:04Got it.

Zach Hinkle 11:04It was a, it was a big secret program.

Tim Fulton 11:06Before we get, uh, too much farther into the show, c- I know that you had talked to me before about some of the things that were developed in this building.

Zach Hinkle 11:14Sure. Um, in the, uh, 400 West Rich building, being that it was a, uh, plumbing, uh, has its origin in plumbing-

Tim Fulton 11:23Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 11:24... and later moved into sort of, uh, water fountains.

Tim Fulton 11:27Mm-hmm.

Zach Hinkle 11:27Uh, supposedly the electric dehumidifier was invented in this building.

Tim Fulton 11:32Okay.

Zach Hinkle 11:32And the first refrigerated water fountain, water drinking fountain.

Tim Fulton 11:36Okay.

Zach Hinkle 11:37And it's sort of more of an urban legend, and I haven't found any real proof to it, but supposedly the soft serve ice cream machines were invented here.

Tim Fulton 11:45Okay.

Zach Hinkle 11:46Uh, but I think, I don't think that's so true. I think they were invented elsewhere, and maybe they-

Tim Fulton 11:52Maybe manufactured a lot of them here

Zach Hinkle 11:53... manufactured the parts or, or made a copycat or something here.

Tim Fulton 11:58Okay.

Zach Hinkle 11:58Yeah.

Tim Fulton 11:58Gotcha.

Zach Hinkle 11:59But yeah, these are the boiler doors. Uh, you can cook your breakfast, you know, pancakes and eggs on these

Tim Fulton 12:06If you wanted to

Zach Hinkle 12:06If you wanted to. I'd clean them first. Might get a little, uh, asbestos in there, but, hey.

Tim Fulton 12:12And w- walk us through... So you've got some, uh-

Zach Hinkle 12:15So throughout the museum, there's all kinds of blueprints.

Tim Fulton 12:19Mm-hmm.

Zach Hinkle 12:19And ph- it's kind of a mix of photographs and blueprints along this wall.

Tim Fulton 12:23Mm-hmm.

Zach Hinkle 12:23Yeah, there's some building plans of 400 West Rich, um, labeled as EPCO Manufacturing Company in the mid-1950s here. There's also some contemporary photos of what the building looks like.

Tim Fulton 12:34Yeah. And so you can see what the original intent and layout of the space was, also how it's changed. What I thought was interesting is the blueprint of the, the showroom that's now Strong Water, uh, bar.

Zach Hinkle 12:48Mm-hmm. So this is a, uh, it's actually a blueprint of the ceiling pattern.

Tim Fulton 12:53Oh, okay.

Zach Hinkle 12:53So if you go in the, you know, if you happen to have the drink at Strong Water one night and you fell on your back, that's what the ceiling would look like, and it still kinda does.

Tim Fulton 13:01There you go.

Zach Hinkle 13:01So and this is the kinda famous little cute receptionist desk that's at the lobby-

Tim Fulton 13:07Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 13:07... and the staircase, and where the orange couch usually lives. Um-

Tim Fulton 13:11Yeah. It should be noted that the, the orange couch is indeed-

Zach Hinkle 13:13The orange couch is on display, uh, in the museum, yes.

Tim Fulton 13:17Yes.

Zach Hinkle 13:17We had to remove it from our lobby for COVID precautions-

Tim Fulton 13:21Yeah

Zach Hinkle 13:21... to keep people from congregating there. So instead we said, "We'll put it in the museum."

Tim Fulton 13:25Yes, and it, it should be noted that you can't sit or congregate-

Zach Hinkle 13:28You can't sit on it here either.

Tim Fulton 13:29Got it. Keep going through.

Zach Hinkle 13:31Uh, yeah. So we'll, there's also some more contemporary items. Like, this is, you know, a photo I took this year-

Tim Fulton 13:38Okay

Zach Hinkle 13:38... of the roof. But it shows sorta, this is actually, this is above sort of the core of the building. You see these sawtooth skylight ceilings.

Tim Fulton 13:46Uh-huh.

Zach Hinkle 13:46Sort of like how it's put together. And you also see lots of different, like, decades of different building products going on at once-

Tim Fulton 13:54Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 13:54... 'cause it's so cobbled together.

Tim Fulton 13:57Yeah.

Zach Hinkle 13:57Some other, you know, just sort of things. There's a shop chart from B&T Metals. Just some employees would use that as some sort of reference, you know-

Tim Fulton 14:05Right

Zach Hinkle 14:06... to do their job every day.

Tim Fulton 14:07Well, and you have some examples here of some of the products that actually came out of B&T and what is now Chrome Edge.

Zach Hinkle 14:16Yeah. So yeah, B&T, uh, at some point they were sort of state of the art in the aluminum extrusion business.

Tim Fulton 14:24Okay.

Zach Hinkle 14:25They were doing that stuff. And yeah, this is sort of a sample chart that you could show to a customer.

Tim Fulton 14:30Right.

Zach Hinkle 14:31And, you know, the different, the different things they could purchase.

Tim Fulton 14:34So as we move down, a lot more contemporary pictures, some pictures of what I-

Zach Hinkle 14:39Yeah

Tim Fulton 14:39... imagine the space looked like.

Zach Hinkle 14:41This is the B&T Metals, uh, building before we de- well, one of the... We demolished a large one in about 2011.

Tim Fulton 14:48Okay.

Zach Hinkle 14:49Which is what the, the f- the postcard with Mayor Coleman and, uh, ducking from the dust is-

Tim Fulton 14:53We will be sure to put a picture of that in the-

Zach Hinkle 14:55Is from. And then we demolished another section in 2016, and this is the second floor. It had no roof.

Tim Fulton 15:03Mm-hmm.

Zach Hinkle 15:03Pretty crummy shape.

Tim Fulton 15:05Talk us through some of, more of the fixtures that we have here.

Zach Hinkle 15:08So as well as, you know, flat 2D items that you can look at-

Tim Fulton 15:12Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 15:12... it is like a museum. I have glassware and, uh, we have this rotary, uh, exhaust hood that's from the roof of Chrome Edge before they redid that roof.

Tim Fulton 15:22Mm-hmm. Talk us through how, uh, 400 became the art studios and event space that it is today.

Zach Hinkle 15:30The property owner and developer named Lance Robbins-

Tim Fulton 15:34Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 15:34... and through Smart Growth, he, uh, has a bit of a history around the country of buying old factories, brownfield sites, and putting money into them and, and turning them into some sort of new use. And, um, a little over 10 years ago, he was sort of, uh, driving around the neighborhood. I think he came here for his daughter's graduation at OSU.

Tim Fulton 15:55Okay.

Zach Hinkle 15:56I think it was, like, the first time he ever came to Columbus.

Tim Fulton 15:58Okay.

Zach Hinkle 15:58And he was driving around and saw this building and said-

Tim Fulton 16:02"I'm gonna buy that"

Zach Hinkle 16:03..."The one I'm gonna get."

Tim Fulton 16:04Okay.

Zach Hinkle 16:04And he started from there. And, uh, he had Chris Sherman, he's, uh, the project manager. And him and I and multitude of other people through the years have been working on the buildings.

Tim Fulton 16:19Gotcha. And it is a continual sort of you're always working on the roof-

Zach Hinkle 16:25Yeah

Tim Fulton 16:25... uh, and always sort of fixing up studios. And do you feel like while it will always be a work in progress, is it currently, it's probably gonna be in this state that it is for a while or is there further, uh, further plans for, I don't know, additional studios or...?

Zach Hinkle 16:45We do have some potentially, uh, develop our, uh, brick building we call the Hulk.

Tim Fulton 16:52Okay.

Zach Hinkle 16:52That's the, the last of the old, old B&T factory. We have a plan to turn that into, like, sort of a Strong Water 2 banquet hall.

Tim Fulton 17:01Okay.

Zach Hinkle 17:02And plans for a big commercial kitchen in, uh, the part we call the Tomb.

Tim Fulton 17:07Okay.

Zach Hinkle 17:08And then, you know, we always are altering things. Like, we'll, like, move walls around, move doors around.

Tim Fulton 17:13Just depending on the needs that you have.

Zach Hinkle 17:15Yeah, depending on the needs of the tenants or our needs. And I'd say, yeah, I mean, a lot of it's built out, and now it's more of, like, a fine-tuning mode.

Tim Fulton 17:23Okay.

Zach Hinkle 17:23Like, we got it. We're settled. We know what we're doing.

Tim Fulton 17:26Gotcha.

Zach Hinkle 17:27We can, we can, like, make a museum about what we've been doing.

Tim Fulton 17:29Indeed.

Zach Hinkle 17:30We have the time now to do that.

Tim Fulton 17:31You've had at least 10 years of history here. Well, what I think is interesting about the, the show is that there, it's a real mixture of things that happened in the, you know, roughly 100-year history before it became 400 West Rich.

Zach Hinkle 17:46Yeah. It highlights sort of what we found here-

Tim Fulton 17:49Okay

Zach Hinkle 17:49... more so than what we've done here.

Tim Fulton 17:51Yeah. And there's little artifacts here from blueprints from the space to industry magazines that, uh-

Zach Hinkle 17:57Yeah. This is a catalog.

Tim Fulton 17:59Right

Zach Hinkle 18:00In, uh, mint condition in the-

Tim Fulton 18:01Oh, in the bag still

Zach Hinkle 18:03... in the bag of, of-

Tim Fulton 18:03Yeah. But even down to letters from employees-

Zach Hinkle 18:06Yeah

Tim Fulton 18:06... to-

Zach Hinkle 18:07Old job applications from the 1940s.

Tim Fulton 18:10Mm-hmm.

Zach Hinkle 18:10Letters and correspondence be- from the company to employees and vice versa, some old invoices.

Tim Fulton 18:16Mm-hmm. It's interesting stuff.

Zach Hinkle 18:18So the previous owner was a guy named Bob Eichel.

Tim Fulton 18:21Okay.

Zach Hinkle 18:21And he had a art glass, um, furnace upstairs and made, uh, art glass for a few decades out of this building.

Tim Fulton 18:29Mm-hmm.

Zach Hinkle 18:29These are just some examples of some vases and a paperweight, I guess, that he made.

Tim Fulton 18:34Mm-hmm. When can people come and see the show?

Zach Hinkle 18:37Well, I kinda set it up in about the worst time possible, uh.

Tim Fulton 18:40Right.

Zach Hinkle 18:41We're, uh, back in a second COVID kind of lockdown situation. Um, I do believe we are open for an outdoor market December 11th-

Tim Fulton 18:51Mm-hmm

Zach Hinkle 18:52... for our Franklinton Friday. I would just say it's open by appointment.

Tim Fulton 18:56Got it.

Zach Hinkle 18:56I allow a few people in at a time.

Tim Fulton 18:58Yeah.

Zach Hinkle 18:58If you're really, really into Franklinton or industrial history of Columbus-

Tim Fulton 19:02Uh-huh

Zach Hinkle 19:03... this is the show for you.

Tim Fulton 19:04Great.

Zach Hinkle 19:05If not, you'd probably be bored to tears, but...

Tim Fulton 19:08I don't think so.

Zach Hinkle 19:09But there are souvenir postcards.

Tim Fulton 19:11Absolutely. Free for all that attend, right?

Zach Hinkle 19:13Free for all that attend. Uh, but admission is free. It's family-friendly.

Tim Fulton 19:17Mm-hmm.

Zach Hinkle 19:17Se habla español.

Tim Fulton 19:19Great. Zach, thank you so much for your time.

Zach Hinkle 19:22All right, you too, man. Thank you.

Tim Fulton 19:35Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite curator. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Phil Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.