B.F. Goodrich Plant (1941-1953)

• At the outbreak of World War II, the U.S. Office of War Production contracted with B.F. Goodrich Company to build a synthetic rubber manufacturing plant in Louisville, KY. Batson-Cook constructed this facility, the first of its kind in the country to make synthetic rubber for tires needed for the war effort in 1943.
• This plant was designed to produce 90,000 long tons of rubber per year.
• Facilities constructed for the Louisville plant included a reactor building, process and rubber storage building, recovery building, process building, pigment preparation building and warehouse, machine shop, tank farm, transfer pump house, pump station and water treatment plant, cooling tower, administration building, and gatehouse.
• Batson-Cook completed more than $13.5 million ($231 million in today’s dollars) worth of construction projects for B.F. Goodrich between 1929 and 1953 in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.