Coca-Cola Bottling Plant

By the middle of the twentieth century many of the city's leading food and beverage companies had forsaken downtown for the light industrial and commercial zone that straddles Monticello Avenue to the north. Of those that remain, the International Style Coca-Cola Bottling Plant is the most distinguished. Each area of the building is articulated as a separate box grouped around an off-center fire tower that also supports the company's signage. Brick is used on the building's exterior except at its southwest corner, where creamy marble panels attached by silver rivets create a decorative grid that draws attention to the glass-enclosed entrance below. The adjacent tower is clad in dark green marble with a vertical ribbon window. Plate glass windows along Monticello Avenue once afforded passersby a view of the bottling machinery. These have been sealed for security reasons, but their protective brise-soleil of metal slats remains.