Throwback Thursday – Burny Brothers, Inc.

For this week's Throwback Thursday trip we visit June 1969 for the opening of the Epstein designed and engineered 170,000 square foot bakery addition to the Burny Brothers, Inc. production facility located at 300 W. North Avenue in Northlake, Illinois, directly east of where I-294 & North Avenue intersect. For this addition, which provided Burny with new production facilities and cold storage space, Epstein was charged with designing a modern food processing addition on a site that provided limited expansion opportunities. Therefore, our architects and engineers came up with several innovative space saving design solutions for Burny's new freezing and warehousing space.

For instance, all production, shipping, storage and garage facilities were expanded vertically as much as possible, including a new 47 foot high, 20,000 square foot, -10 degree F holding freezer. To maximize the warehouse space in this holding freezer Burny's product was stored on stacked cranes. In addition, we also designed new employee facilities, including a cafeteria, in the mezzanine area, suspended above the production floor.

For those of you not familiar with Burny Brothers (ie - old), the company was founded in 1910 by an immigrant family living in Chicago. The Burny bakery business was a huge success and grew from its home on South Racine to eventually have multiple baking locations throughout greater Chicago and become the largest variety baker in the United States! In 1963, the Burny family sold their interest to Beatrice Foods which still produced products under the Burny Brothers name until 1979. It was then that Beatrice sold all remaining Burny interests to Enternmann's Bakery of New York. At this time Entenmann's chose to no longer produce product using the Burny brand, but they did operate out of this facility until 2004 when the plant was eventually closed.

Today, this facility no longer exists having been demolished and the site is being converted into a massive Truck parking lot.