and records, and many other things employed for amusement and entertainment.
The business of mail order houses has become so large that it has occasioned the building of many buildings and will sooner or later establish a type of building that will become familiar as representative of the mail order business. Sears, Roebuck and Co., whose buildings are illustrated in this article, will have, with the completion of the one at Boston now under construction, ten mail order stores or distributing plants for their mail order business, located throughout the country, near the center of each parcel post section of the U. S. Postal Department. The decentralizing of their business in this way makes a shorter carry and prompter service for the customer, than a centralized organization. The traveling salesmen who sell the goods for the mail order stores, are the catalogs. The orders from customers arrive by mail and these orders as a rule are filled and shipped within twenty-four hours.
The requirements for the building are, therefore, to provide for this simple process of doing business largely through the mail and by use of freight and express transportation for the heavier goods and special shipments. Briefly stated, the filling of a customer’s order consists of sending through
pneumatic tubes from the main office a separate order to each department containing the goods called for. Each department selects the goods ordered, and starts them going on the way to the shipping room at the time scheduled, as the time for every article to arrive in the shipping room is prearranged when the separate orders are made out. This timing of the moving of orders produces a steady flow of merchandise in shipment and prevents the overcrowding and spasmodic operation of the system. The movement of merchandise horizontally is accomplished generally for long distances by horizontal traveling conveyors, and the movement downward to the shipping room, which is in one of the lower articles, is made by means of spiral chutes. The horizontal conveyors take the merchandise, usually placed in baskets, to the spiral chutes, and it slides round and round in a large steel tube until it finally comes out on another horizontal traveling conveyor down near the shipping room, and here it goes through a sorting process of transferring it from one conveyor to another, that finally results in accumulating all of the various articles of an order in one section in the shipping room, where they are packed, addressed and started on their way by mail or express to the customer.
SEARS, ROEBUCK & COMPANY MAIL ORDER STORE, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. — NIMMONS, CARR & WRIGHT, ARCHITECTS
Photo by Nordin
The business of mail order houses has become so large that it has occasioned the building of many buildings and will sooner or later establish a type of building that will become familiar as representative of the mail order business. Sears, Roebuck and Co., whose buildings are illustrated in this article, will have, with the completion of the one at Boston now under construction, ten mail order stores or distributing plants for their mail order business, located throughout the country, near the center of each parcel post section of the U. S. Postal Department. The decentralizing of their business in this way makes a shorter carry and prompter service for the customer, than a centralized organization. The traveling salesmen who sell the goods for the mail order stores, are the catalogs. The orders from customers arrive by mail and these orders as a rule are filled and shipped within twenty-four hours.
The requirements for the building are, therefore, to provide for this simple process of doing business largely through the mail and by use of freight and express transportation for the heavier goods and special shipments. Briefly stated, the filling of a customer’s order consists of sending through
pneumatic tubes from the main office a separate order to each department containing the goods called for. Each department selects the goods ordered, and starts them going on the way to the shipping room at the time scheduled, as the time for every article to arrive in the shipping room is prearranged when the separate orders are made out. This timing of the moving of orders produces a steady flow of merchandise in shipment and prevents the overcrowding and spasmodic operation of the system. The movement of merchandise horizontally is accomplished generally for long distances by horizontal traveling conveyors, and the movement downward to the shipping room, which is in one of the lower articles, is made by means of spiral chutes. The horizontal conveyors take the merchandise, usually placed in baskets, to the spiral chutes, and it slides round and round in a large steel tube until it finally comes out on another horizontal traveling conveyor down near the shipping room, and here it goes through a sorting process of transferring it from one conveyor to another, that finally results in accumulating all of the various articles of an order in one section in the shipping room, where they are packed, addressed and started on their way by mail or express to the customer.
SEARS, ROEBUCK & COMPANY MAIL ORDER STORE, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. — NIMMONS, CARR & WRIGHT, ARCHITECTS
Photo by Nordin