The Crandall Building, Salt Lake City, UT

While it may look like a fairly typical downtown office building today, the Crandall Building (known for decades in the area as the McCornick Building) located in the business district of Salt Lake City, UT was way ahead of its time. In 1890, when 2-4 story building were the norm, William S. McCornick built this 7 story smooth-finished stone-facade building. As you can see in the 1908 picture to the right, the building stood in stark contrast to the rough-hewn Romanesque buildings of the day and became a precursor to all modern architecture for the region.

McCornick had built his fortunes on diversity. A giant in the lumber, mining, railroad, banking and cattle industries, McCornick, his revolutionary building and enterprises were among the few to survive the Panic of 1893 - a national financial crisis that hit the West and Utah especially hard.

McCornick and his building survived and prospered and he went on to build the largest banking house between St. Louis and the West Coast. Now listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, the building still stands as one of great importance in Salt Lake City today.

With professional offices in the top floors and retail on the main floor, this grand old building had a problem. The building had been fitted with noisy, ineffective store coolers. These coolers were old and simply not doing the job. Ray Wild, engineer with Del R. Wild Company, learned of a new solution from the Dunham-Bush sales office in the area, Midgley-Huber: a new Dunham-Bush Compact Vertical Air Handler. Contractor Comforts Systems quickly installed one of these new units in a closet on the fourth floor of the building.

The owner of the grand old building - with its long historic past - and his tenants were immediately impressed with the slick fit in a small space and the resulting ultra-quiet, super-efficient operation and are now looking toward additional retrofits on the sixth and seventh floors.