The Ballinger Company


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.

History

Ballinger 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.
In 1983, the deMoll brothers sold the firm to ten Ballinger employees. The transfer of ownership included promising young architects William Gustafson, FAIA and Ed Jakmauh, FAIA who would continue to lead the firm into the new millennium.
Today, the firm is owned by 15 leaders who actively guide projects from concept through to completion.

Ballinger's early accomplishments and designs

1980s

Under new leadership, Ballinger wins a national competition to design a new 200-acre world headquarters for Hershey Foods and teams with Pei Cobb Freed on the design of high rise complex Commerce Square. The Wills Eye building is completed in 1981 and becomes the first Ballinger project to be published in Architectural Record.

1970s

Architects William Gustafson and Ed Jakmauh join Ballinger and bring in a major commission for Wills Eye Hospital in Center City Philadelphia. This 230,000 SF new hospital building laid the foundation for what would become a thriving healthcare design practice at Ballinger.

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."

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.

1930s

By the mid 1930s, Ballinger had completed 16 new hospitals.

1920s

In 1928, Ballinger built the Commodore Theatre, a grand cinema in West Philadelphia that held 1,105 seats. This building is now home of the Masjid Al-Jamia of Philadelphia.
In 1923, Ballinger began design on its first hospital, the Philadelphia Home for Incurables/Inglis House. Also in 1923, Ballinger built Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, Lodge Number 878 in New York City.
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, 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 in 1909.

Notable recent projects

Notable recent awards