The canal warehouse that moved 450 feet

Behind Laney's Feed Mill on South 8th Street in Huntingdon, parallel to the railroad, stands a wooden warehouse 97 feet long and 35 feet wide. The Pennsylvania Railroad built it in 1863 for Lloyd and Henry on a narrow strip between the Pennsylvania Canal and the railroad, to transfer freight between canal boats and rail cars.

Africa's 1883 county history tells how the firm came to be. Samuel E. Henry drove a one horse cart on the old Portage Railroad as a youth in the early 1830s, then worked the canal as a boat driver, clerk and agent. In the spring of 1858 he and A. M. Lloyd went into the forwarding and commission business together at Hollidaysburg, where the railroad built them a warehouse and hired them to transfer everything that arrived by canal. The Huntingdon warehouse followed in 1863. The partners bought it from the railroad in 1865; that June Lloyd sold his interest to John G. Miller. By January 1, 1867 the firm was called Henry & Co. An 1870 photograph shows the lettering on the building: S.E. Henry & Co., forwarding and commission merchants, dealers in produce, fish, salt, coal, steel, iron and nails. John White, who worked for the firm from 1874 to 1880, described it as the largest and busiest warehouse on the canal, with up to forty men loading and unloading boats and cars at the wharf and siding.

After the Johnstown Flood of 1889 the railroad filled the flooded canal through Huntingdon and moved its main line onto the canal bed. That took Henry's ground, so he moved the warehouse about 450 feet, behind the Henry & Co. flouring mill, built in 1879. It was still in use as a warehouse when the nomination was written in 1989.

It was listed for its engineering, and the nomination says neither the move nor the later additions compromised its integrity as an example of framing built to carry exceptional loads. The first floor walls have 10 by 12 inch posts, diagonally braced. A row of 12 by 12 inch posts down the center carries a summer beam and 3 by 12 inch joists on 12 inch centers. The floors are laid double, one course across the joists and another diagonally beneath. Heavy timber trusses pinned with iron leave the second floor a clear span with no post in the way.

The timber structure is most nearly comparable in terms of size and loading requirements as those in the framing of barns.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Lloyd and Henry Warehouse (reference 90000397), Lloyd and Henry Warehouse, section 8 continuation (PDF page 6) · character 9,783 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · National Register of Historic Places nomination, read in full

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