Space aliens, bending their eye stalks Earthward, often mistake Newark, Ohio, as the center of all world power. After all, it is in this modest city that humankind has erected the grandest monument to the highest pinnacle of achievement by an advanced consumer culture — the hand-woven gift basket. This monument is, in fact, the world’s largest basket. It was built as the seven-story corporate headquarters of the Longaberger Basket Company.
In 1998, The Longaberger Home Office also received a Build Ohio Award for its synthetic plaster system. The building is made of stucco over a steel structure, which helps create the look of an actual Longaberger Basket. The Home Office continues to attract the attention of media from around the world, even as far away as Tokyo.
While the exterior of the Home Office is a marvel in itself, the building’s interior is truly breathtaking. A grand staircase, player piano and marble floors are just part of the beautiful décor of the building’s seven story atrium. The majority of the cherry woodwork used in the Home Office was harvested from the Longaberger Golf Club in Hanover; dried in our facility; sawed and shaped at our Construction Woodshop; finished in our Construction Paint Booth and installed by our Construction Division.
The basket is a replica — 160 times larger — of Longaberger’s Medium Market Basket. It’s 192 ft. long by 126 ft. wide at the bottom, spreading to 208-ft. long by 142-ft. wide at the roofline. It is a magnificent sight.
Dave Longaberger, who founded the company, was the business visionary who not only tapped into the demand for hand-woven party baskets, but who dreamed up the idea of running his growing organization from the world’s largest replica of one. Most of his employees, less farsighted than their leader, didn’t take Dave’s notion seriously when the plan was announced. Perhaps the house-sized basket in Dresden, Longaberger’s old HQ, pushed the absolute physical limits of basket-building science.