Website www.ballinger.com Number of employees 225 | Area served International | |
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Founder Walter Geissinger in 1878, renamed The Ballinger Company in 1920 by Walter Francis Ballinger Services | ||
Ballinger is an architecture/engineering firm, one of the first in the United States to merge the disciplines of architecture and engineering into a professional practice. The firm’s single office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania houses a staff of over 200 people comprising three architectural studios, two multi-disciplinary engineering studios and an interiors studio. Ballinger is one of the largest architectural firms in the Philadelphia region and known for its work in academic, healthcare, corporate, and research planning and design.
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History
The Ballinger Company traces its history to 1878 when Walter Harvey Geissinger established a practice in Philadelphia. In 1885, Geissinger entered into a partnership with Edward M. Hales. Four years later, Walter Francis Ballinger entered the firm of Geissinger and Hales. In 1895, Ballinger replaced Geissinger as a principal in the firm, and it became known as Hales and Ballinger. In 1901, Edward M. Hales retired, and in 1902, the firm was renamed Ballinger & Perrot. Emile G. Perrot was a young architect at the time who gained national recognition for his innovative design work with reinforced concrete. After Ballinger bought out Perrot in 1920, the firm became known as Ballinger Company.
In the 1950s, Robert Ballinger succeeded his father, Walter Ballinger, and along with the deMoll brothers, John and Louis, introduced the “power pole” to deliver power, chilled water and laboratory gases in research and health care environments.
Today, the firm is owned by ten principals who actively lead projects from concept through to completion.
Ballinger's early accomplishments and designs
1950s
Ballinger designs the TWA Maintenance Hangar at Philadelphia International Airport — "an early and unusual example of the use of a cable supported roof structure to provide the clear floor space needed for an airplane hangar." (Constructed 1955-1956)
1940s
In the 1940s, Ballinger was at the epicenter of the information age with the design of one of the first "computer rooms." Utilizing over 17,000 vacuum tubes, the ENIAC was developed by the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering during World War II.
The ENIAC initiated the modern computing industry and the firm went on to design technology-related facilities for IBM and the Rand Corporation (later to become the Sperry Rand Corporation, and now known as Unisys).
1930s
By the mid 1930s, Ballinger had completed 16 new hospitals.
1920s
In 1923, Ballinger began design on its first hospital, the Philadelphia Home for Incurables/Inglis House.
Walter F. Ballinger and Clifford H. Shivers file a patent in 1921 for the Super Span saw-tooth roof truss which reduced the need for columns and opened up manufacturing plant floor space.
1900s
In the early 1900s, Ballinger was one of the largest commercial and industrial design firms in the United States, designing a number of landmark projects for the Victor Talking Machine Company (e.g. The Nipper Building), and subsequently RCA, as well as the first facility for the Joseph M. Campbell Company, now known as the Campbell Soup Company.
Additionally, Walter Ballinger and Emile Perrot published Inspector's Handbook of Reinforced Concrete in 1909.