Finance History|Sixth and Main, Cincinnati — Three Thousand Five Hundred Ninety-Six Dollars Each

People treat Procter and Gamble as a plaza of towers that later sponsored radio serials. The partnership was signed two blocks from this campus. William Procter made candles. James Gamble made soap. They had married sisters. Their father-in-law, Alexander Norris, told the two sons-in-law to stop competing. On 31 October 1837 they signed a partnership and each put up 3,596.47 dollars. Cincinnati was then among the largest cities west of the Atlantic ports, and the meat packers on the river supplied tallow and lard. The first office stood at Sixth and Main. The first plant stood on Central Avenue, then called Western Row, beside the canal that carried crates north. A fire in January 1884 destroyed most of that downtown works. The firm rebuilt as Ivorydale in St. Bernard in 1886 and kept the headquarters in Cincinnati. The present General Office occupies the blocks beside the first rooms. The mechanism is a river-city partnership that turned packing-house waste into branded soap and candles, then into a listed consumer-staples name that never left the same street grid. The plaza is public at the edges. The original 1837 rooms do not survive as an interior. Photo: Warren LeMay, CC0, Procter and Gamble World Headquarters, via Wikimedia Commons.