Editing Warehouse (section)

==Warehousing in the past==
===Prehistory and ancient history===
A warehouse can be defined functionally as a building in which to store bulk produce or goods (''wares'') for commercial purposes. The built form of warehouse structures throughout time depends on many contexts: materials, technologies, sites, and cultures.

[[File:Ostia antica-17.jpg|thumb|The entrance to a warehouse (the Horrea Epagathiana) in [[Ostia (Rome)|Ostia]], an ancient Roman city]]
In this sense, the warehouse postdates the need for communal or state-based mass storage of surplus food. Prehistoric civilizations relied on family- or community-owned [[Prehistoric storage pits|storage pits]], or 'palace' storerooms, such as at [[Knossos]], to protect surplus food. The archaeologist [[Colin Renfrew]] argued that gathering and storing agricultural surpluses in Bronze Age Minoan 'palaces' was a critical ingredient in the formation of proto-state power.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Emergence of Civilisation: The Cyclades and the Aegean in the Third Millennium BC.|last=Renfrew|first=Colin|publisher=Methuen|year=1972|isbn=0-416-16480-3|location=London}}</ref>

The need for warehouses developed in societies in which trade reached a critical mass requiring storage at some point in the exchange process. This was highly evident in ancient Rome, where the horreum (pl. horrea) became a standard building form.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Roman Granaries and Store Buildings|last=Rickman|first=Geoffrey|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1971|isbn=0-521-07724-9|location=Cambridge}}</ref> The most studied examples are in [[Ostia Antica|Ostia]], the port city that served Rome. The [[Horrea Galbae]], a warehouse complex on the road towards Ostia, demonstrates that these buildings could be substantial, even by modern standards. Galba's horrea complex contained 140 rooms on the ground floor alone, covering an area of some 225,000 square feet (21,000 m<sup>2</sup>). As a point of reference, less than half of U.S. warehouses today are larger than 100,000 square feet (9290 m<sup>2</sup>).<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.action-storage.com/blog/general/history-of-the-warehouse/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190719005033/https://www.action-storage.com/blog/general/history-of-the-warehouse/ |archive-date=2019-07-19 |title=A History of the Warehouse |author=Michael |date=15 October 2018 |website=Action Storage}}</ref>

===Medieval Europe===
[[File:Horgen - Sust-Ortsmuseum - Zürichsee IMG 3829.JPG|thumb|A ''Sust'', a [[Middle Ages]] type of warehouse, in [[Horgen]], [[Switzerland]]]]
The need for a warehouse implies having quantities of goods too big to be stored in a domestic storeroom. But as attested by legislation concerning the levy of duties, some medieval merchants across Europe commonly kept goods in their large household storerooms, often on the ground floor or cellars.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The New Palaces of Medieval Venice|last=Schulz|first=Jurgen|publisher=Penn State Press|year=2004|isbn=0-271-04836-0|location=University Park PA|pages=26}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Medieval Merchant Venturers: Collected Studies|last=Carus-Wilson|first=E.M.|publisher=Routledge|year=2013|isbn=978-1-136-58279-0|location=Hoboken NJ}}</ref> An example is the [[Fondaco dei Tedeschi]], the substantial quarters of German traders in Venice, which combined a dwelling, warehouse, market and quarters for travellers.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia|last=Friedman, John Block (1) & Figg, Kristeb Mossler (2), Eds|publisher=Garland|year=2000|isbn=978-1-135-59094-9|location=New York|pages=196}}</ref>

From the [[Middle Ages]] on, dedicated warehouses were constructed around ports and other commercial hubs to facilitate large-scale trade. The warehouses of the trading port [[Bryggen]] in Bergen, Norway (now a [[World Heritage Site]]), demonstrate characteristic European gabled timber forms dating from the late Middle Ages, though what remains today was largely rebuilt in the same traditional style following great fires in 1702 and 1955.

===Industrial Revolution===
[[File:Atlantic Dock, Brooklyn, ca. 1872-1887. (5833485842).jpg|thumb|right|Historic Atlantic Dock warehouse in [[Brooklyn]] in the 1800s]]

During the [[Industrial Revolution]] of the mid 18th century, the function of warehouses evolved and became more specialised. The mass production of goods launched by the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries fuelled the development of larger and more specialised warehouses, usually located close to transport hubs on canals, at railways and portside. Specialisation of tasks is characteristic of the [[factory system]], which developed in British textile mills and potteries in the mid-late 1700s. Factory processes sped up work and deskilled labour, bringing new profits to capital investment.

Warehouses also fulfill a range of commercial functions besides simple storage, exemplified by [[Manchester cotton warehouses|Manchester's cotton warehouses]] and Australian wool stores: receiving, stockpiling and despatching goods; displaying goods for commercial buyers; packing, checking and labelling orders, and dispatching them.

The utilitarian architecture of warehouses responded fast to emerging technologies. Before and into the nineteenth century, the basic European warehouse was built of load-bearing masonry walls or heavy-framed timber with a suitable external cladding. Inside, heavy timber posts supported timber beams and joists for the upper levels, rarely more than four to five stories high.

[[File:GlosDocks.jpg|thumb|19th-century warehouses in [[Gloucester]] docks, in the [[United Kingdom]], originally used to store imported corn]]
A [[Gable roof|gabled roof]] was conventional, with a gate in the gable facing the street, rail lines or port for a crane to hoist goods into the window-gates on each floor below. Convenient access for road transport was built-in via very large doors on the ground floor. If not in a separate building, office and display spaces were located on the ground or first floor.

Technological innovations of the early 19th century changed the shape of warehouses and the work performed inside them: cast iron columns and later, moulded steel posts; [[Saw-tooth roof|saw-tooth roofs]]; and steam power. All (except steel) were adopted quickly and were in common use by the middle of the 19th century.

Strong, slender [[Cast-iron architecture|cast iron columns]] began to replace masonry piers or timber posts to carry levels above the ground floor. As modern [[Steel frame|steel framing]] developed in the late 19th century, its strength and constructibility enabled the first skyscrapers. Steel girders replaced timber beams, increasing the span of internal bays in the warehouse.

The [[saw-tooth roof]] brought natural light to the top story of the warehouse. It transformed the shape of the warehouse, from the traditional peaked hip or gable to an essentially flat roof form that was often hidden behind a [[parapet]]. Warehouse buildings now became strongly horizontal. Inside the top floor, the vertical glazed pane of each saw-tooth enabled natural lighting over displayed goods, improving buyer inspection.

Hoists and cranes driven by [[Steam engine|steam power]] expanded the capacity of manual labour to lift and move heavy goods.

===20th century===
{{unsourced section |date= April 2024}}
[[File:Pallet racks.jpg|thumb|upright|Aisle with pallets on storage racks in a modern warehouse]]
Two new power sources, [[hydraulics]], and electricity, re-shaped warehouse design and practice at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century.

Public [[hydraulic power network]]s were constructed in many large industrial cities around the world in the 1870s-80s, exemplified by [[Manchester Hydraulic Power|Manchester]]. They were highly effective to power cranes and lifts, whose application in warehouses served taller buildings and enabled new labour efficiencies.

Public [[Electric power industry|electricity networks]] emerged in the 1890s. They were used at first mainly for lighting and soon to electrify lifts, making possible taller, more efficient warehouses. It took several decades for electrical power to be distributed widely throughout cities in the western world.

20th-century technologies made warehousing ever more efficient. Electricity became widely available and transformed lighting, security, lifting, and transport from the 1900s. The [[internal combustion engine]], developed in the late 19th century, was installed in mass-produced vehicles from the 1910s. It not only reshaped transport methods but enabled many applications as a compact, portable power plant, wherever small engines were needed.
[[File:Adams & Bazemore Cotton Warehouse, 4th near Poplar, circa 1877 - DPLA - 7e9ab74033df525c16cfacddfb85955f.jpeg|thumb|302x302px|Adams & Bazemore Cotton Warehouse in [[Macon, GA]], {{Circa|1877}}]]
The [[forklift]] truck was invented in the early 20th century and came into wide use after [[World War II]]. Forklifts transformed the possibilities of multi-level [[pallet racking]] of goods in taller, single-level steel-framed buildings for higher storage density. The forklift, and its load fixed to a uniform [[pallet]], enabled the rise of [[Logistics|logistic]] approaches to storage in the later 20th century.

Always a building of function, in the late 20th century warehouses began to adapt to standardization, mechanization, technological innovation, and changes in [[supply chain]] methods. Here in the 21st century, we are currently witnessing the next major development in warehousing, [[warehouse automation|automation]].