Department of Community Planning & Economic Development 505 4th Avenue South, #320 Minneapolis, MN 55415 Agenda Item #6 MEMORANDUM

To: Heritage Preservation Commission Prepared By: John Smoley, Ph.D., Senior City Planner, (612) 673-2830 Date: March 2, 2021 Subject: National Register of Historic Places Nomination, 233 Park Ave

Background On January 26, 2021, the Minnesota Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) sent the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission (HPC) a letter requesting comments on the nomination of the J.I. Case Building to the National Register of Historic Places (Attachments 1 and 2). The property is located at 233 Park Ave in Minneapolis. As a Certified Local Government, the Commission is required by federal law to participate in the National Register nomination process as follows:

o Afford the public a reasonable opportunity to comment on the nomination; o Prepare a report as to whether or not the subject property is eligible for National Register listing; and o Have the chief local elected official (the Mayor) submit this report and his/her recommendation to the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Officer within sixty days of notice from the SHPO.1

The full nomination is attached for your review and comment.

Previous Reviews The City of Minneapolis identified the property as a potential historic resource in the 2011 reconnaissance-level survey of the central core portion of Minneapolis, recommending an intensive-level evaluation of the property to determine its eligibility for local or federal listing.

Nomination Review Description Located one block from the western edge of the Downtown East neighborhood, the J.I. Case Building consists of one contributing and zero noncontributing buildings on one tax parcel at the northwest corner of the intersection of Park and Washington Avenues. This flat-roofed building stands three stories tall over a raised basement. Load-bearing

1 More than a simple comment letter, this report provides the City with significant decision-making power in the matter. If both the Commission and the chief local elected official recommend that the subject property should not be nominated to the National Register, the SHPO shall take no further action, unless within thirty days of the receipt of such recommendation by the SHPO an appeal is filed with the State. If such an appeal is filed, the State shall follow the procedures for making nomination pursuant to established procedures. Even then, the City’s report and recommendations are included with the nomination submitted by the State to the Keeper of the National Register. walls of red brick with white terra cotta capitals, tiles, stringcourses, and dentils adorn the street sides of the building while common, cream-colored brick clads the interior side and rear of the building. A red sandstone band wraps around the street sides of the building midway up the first story. The building was designed by master architects Kees and Colburn in the Classical Revival style of architecture, but neither are related to the property’s significance.

Significance The nomination states that the J. I. Case Building is locally significant under National Register Criterion A for its role in commerce and community planning. The Case company’s impact upon national commerce is readily evident in the ongoing proliferation of the company’s massive red farm machinery throughout rural America. Minneapolis’ place in this significance is less apparent, but still important. For one half century the subject property served as the Case company’s regional marketing and distribution headquarters. Prior to the construction of this building, independent jobbers supplied retailers with Case equipment, until Case vertically integrated these operations into its own company, in line with industry trends. In terms of its community planning significance, the subject property’s setting belies this block’s rough and tumble past. The entire block is an example of a private redevelopment spurred by a former mayor to eliminate blight and spread Minneapolis’ farm implement industry further south of the Warehouse District. The Case building’s construction demolished the courtyard of Fish Alley, a notorious hub for persistent criminal activity. While earlier redevelopment on other parts of this block had weakened the alley’s influence, it took the Case project to eliminate it completely. The buildings’ period of significance spans from its completion in 1907 through 1958, the last full year that Case occupied the property before moving to Eagan.

Integrity The National Register of Historic Places divides integrity into seven aspects: location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association. Possessing several, and usually most, of these aspects allows resources to successfully communicate their historical significance within a given context.2 The J.I. Case Building retains integrity, never having been moved; having had very few alterations; possessing its decorative masonry workmanship; and being located in close proximity to Washington Ave with other neighboring farm equipment buildings from the early twentieth century: the Advance Thresher and Emerson-Newton Implement Company Buildings as well as the Great Northern Implement Company Building, rebuilt after the 1910 fire.

Staff Recommendation Staff recommends the Heritage Preservation Commission adopt this CPED report, approve the National Register nomination for the J.I. Case Building at 233 Park Ave, and direct staff to transmit a letter summarizing the report to the State Historic Preservation Officer.

Attachments 1. CLG Comment Notice from MnSHPO 2. J.I. Case Building National Register Nomination, prepared by Hess, Roise and Company.

2 National Park Service, How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998) 44-49.

NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018 expiration date 03/31/2022

United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

This form is for use in nominating or requesting determinations for individual properties and districts. See instructions in National Register Bulletin, How to Complete the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. If any item does not apply to the property being documented, enter "N/A" for "not applicable." For functions, architectural classification, materials, and areas of significance, enter only categories and subcategories from the instructions.

1. Name of Property Historic name: ___J. I. Case Building______Other names/site number: ______Name of related multiple property listing: __N/A______(Enter "N/A" if property is not part of a multiple property listing ______2. Location Street & number: __233 Park Avenue______City or town: _Minneapolis____ State: __MN______County: _Hennepin______Not For Publication: N/A Vicinity: N/A ______3. State/Federal Agency Certification As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended, I hereby certify that this nomination ___ request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property ___ meets ___ does not meet the National Register Criteria. I recommend that this property be considered significant at the following level(s) of significance: ___national ___statewide ___local Applicable National Register Criteria: ___A ___B ___C ___D

Signature of certifying official/Title: Date ______State or Federal agency/bureau or Tribal Government

In my opinion, the property meets does not meet the National Register criteria.

Signature of commenting official: Date

Title: State or Federal agency/bureau or Tribal Government

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

______4. National Park Service Certification I hereby certify that this property is: entered in the National Register determined eligible for the National Register determined not eligible for the National Register removed from the National Register other (explain:) ______

______Signature of the Keeper Date of Action ______5. Classification Ownership of Property (Check as many boxes as apply.) Private: X

Public – Local

Public – State

Public – Federal

Category of Property (Check only one box.)

Building(s) X

District

Site

Structure

Object

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Number of Resources within Property (Do not include previously listed resources in the count) Contributing Noncontributing _____1______buildings

______sites

______structures

______objects

_____1______Total

Number of contributing resources previously listed in the National Register ______6. Function or Use Historic Functions (Enter categories from instructions.) ______COMMERCE/TRADE: warehouse ______

Current Functions (Enter categories from instructions.) ______COMMERCE/TRADE: business ______

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

7. Description

Architectural Classification (Enter categories from instructions.) LATE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY REVIVALS: Classical Revival______

Materials: (enter categories from instructions.) Principal exterior materials of the property: ______

BRICK; STONE: Sandstone; TERRACOTTA

Narrative Description (Describe the historic and current physical appearance and condition of the property. Describe contributing and noncontributing resources if applicable. Begin with a summary paragraph that briefly describes the general characteristics of the property, such as its location, type, style, method of construction, setting, size, and significant features. Indicate whether the property has historic integrity.) ______Summary Paragraph

Note: The downtown street grid is aligned on a northeast-southwest axis. To simplify the description, Washington Avenue South is north, Park Avenue is west, etc.

The J. I. Case Building is situated on the southeast corner of the Washington Avenue South and Park Avenue intersection in Minneapolis’s Downtown East neighborhood. From 1907—the year construction was completed—to 1936, the building’s street address was 701 Washington Avenue South. The entrance was shifted to the west facade in 1936 and the current address is 233 Park Avenue. The building is flanked on the north by Washington Avenue South and on the west by Park Avenue. It is neighbored to the south by the Advance Thresher Company and Emerson- Newton Implement Company Buildings (1900, 1904) and to the east by the East End Apartments (2018).

Sidewalks border the J. I. Case Building along Washington and Park Avenues. There is also a raised bike lane separated from the sidewalk by a boulevard with deciduous trees along Park Avenue. A metal picket fence lines area wells with windows on west facade. At the building’s rear, to the south, driveways lead to a surface parking lot and to a one-story building that is the entrance to an underground parking ramp. The parking ramp entrance is part of the East End Apartments, but directly adjoins the south facade of the Case Building’s loading dock addition.

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

______Narrative Description

Exterior North and West Facades The J. I. Case Building stands three stories over a raised basement. The building has a wood post-and beam structure with masonry bearing walls. It has a rectangular footprint with five bays on the west facade, facing Park Avenue, and six bays on the north facade facing Washington Avenue South (Photographs 1 and 2). These primary facades are covered with historic red brick masonry. The brick is laid in a common bond pattern at the first story. Common-bond brick pilasters separate the bays on the first story. The pilasters are wider on the plinths over the raised basement and have smooth red sandstone at the bases. The sandstone extends in a band across the facades. The pilasters are capped with Tuscan-style, white terracotta capitals and a string course of white terracotta tiles. Several courses of Flemish-bond brick extend to the base of the second story where another white terracotta tile stringcourse with dentil molding divides the upper stories from the first story. The masonry on the second and third stories is laid in a Flemish bond pattern. Brick pilasters with white terracotta bases separate the bays. There is a thin white terracotta stringcourse at the base of the attic, which runs the entire width of both facades. The building is capped with a white terracotta dentil course below a wide metal cornice.

Several bays on the first story are filled with large non-historic windows. The white terracotta stringcourse forms the header above the windows. The window openings are historic, but most of the window units were replaced in the 1990s when a restaurant moved into the first floor. The wood-frame window units on the north facade and the fourth bay on the north end of the west facade are variations of the Chicago-Style window. These fixed-pane windows are arranged in a tripartite pattern, where a larger rectangular central light flanked by two narrow lights is topped with a three-light transom. The southern three bays on the west facade hold paired fixed-pane windows and transoms. There are fixed, metal-frame windows of varying dimensions in the openings on the raised basement of the north and west facades. The windows on the upper stories are paired, non-historic, aluminum-frame, one-over-one units. All of the windows hold insulated glazing.

The original main entrance was located in the western bay of the north facade, facing Washington Avenue. The entrance was enclosed the 1930s and turned into a window opening, and the main entrance was moved to the north bay on the west facade.1 The entrance has non- historic, aluminum-frame, double doors, and transom windows (Photograph 3). The doors are flanked by non-historic aluminum-frame sidelights. A non-historic metal awning, which is supported by overhead cables, projects above the doors. There are large, multi-pane historic wood-frame windows above the awning. A large non-historic sign with the words “The Old Spaghetti Factory” is mounted in front of the windows.

1 City of Minneapolis Building Permit A19152 (November 7, 1928) and A22313 (January 2, 1936).

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

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Secondary entrances are also located on the north and west facades. One is on the west facade in the second bay from the south end. The non-historic, single-leaf metal-and-glass door is accessed by a concrete staircase and stoop with non-historic metal railings. The walls and ceiling in the recessed enclosure around the door are finished in non-historic stucco. On the north facade, a non-historic, single-leaf metal-and-glass door is in the eastern bay at the basement level. This was added in 2000 to provide egress.

South and East Facades The secondary south and east facades overlook the interior of the block. Both facades are clad in common yellow brick laid in the common-bond pattern. The brick is painted red at the attic level. The south facade has six bays and most of the fenestration has a tripartite arrangement, composed of three, fixed, aluminum-frame one-over-one windows. In the fourth bay from the west, two single window openings in a stepped pattern light a former elevator shaft and a stairwell. These windows are also fixed, one-over-one units. The south staircase leads to a historic brick penthouse, which rises above the roofline on the south facade.

A non-historic, loading dock addition, which was constructed in 1959, covers the entire first story of the south facade (Photograph 4).2 The addition is one-story and constructed of concrete blocks, which are painted red. A large opening dominates the west wall and provides access to a raised concrete dock that is recessed one-and-one-half bays. A concrete-block wall extends across the raised dock to enclose most of the loading dock. A large, non-historic metal garage door and a hollow-core person door are set in the wall. A concrete staircase leads up to the person door. The interior of the addition is described with the first floor, below. Within the addition, part of the south facade of the main building is visible and four historic metal-frame windows are extant. The windows are three-over-three, double-hung units with two three-pane transoms above.

The east facade is mostly obscured from view by the East End Apartments (Photograph 5). Several windows on the east facade are partly visible from the surface parking lot inside the block. The windows are fixed, aluminum-frame, one-over-one units like the other upper-story windows on the building. The window openings on these facades appear to be historic, and each has a white terracotta-tile sill.

Roof The building has a flat roof, which slopes downward to the southeast and is covered with an EPDM membrane and gravel. A historic brick penthouse sits on the south wall and holds a former freight elevator shaft and a historic staircase. The penthouse has an irregular plan and common-bond brick walls, which are painted red and capped with historic clay parapet tiles. A single three-light window is on the east wall. The west wall has a historic window opening that is infilled with plywood. Large, non-historic mechanical units and several sections of ductwork are located near the middle of the roof and near the east parapet. An interior brick chimney along the building’s south wall is not visible from the street.

2 City of Minneapolis Building Permit A33838 (January 15, 1959).

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Interior The J. I. Case Building has a wood post-and-beam structure, which bears on large timber posts and on the exterior brick walls. Exposed brick walls and evenly spaced wood posts dominate the architecture of the interior spaces. In most places, the wood structure is exposed on the ceilings, showcasing the timber. In the 1990s, the first floor was retrofitted as a restaurant, and the basement, second, and third stories were used as artists’ studios. In 2000, the current owner purchased the building and the basement, second, and third stories were renovated to hold offices. A historic freight elevator shaft and staircase, located near the center of the south wall, were retained, and modified to meet code.

First Floor The main entrance into the Case Building is in the north bay of the west facade. The first floor is raised above street level and the entry vestibule holds an elevator and short staircase that lead from sidewalk level up to the first floor. The floors are covered in non-historic yellow tile and the staircase are covered in non-historic carpet. The walls are exposed brick on the north and west walls with non-historic wood panels on the lower portions of the walls. The non-historic elevator shaft is enclosed in gypsum board and wood panels. The east and south walls are covered in the same non-historic dark wood paneling. The ceilings are the exposed wood structure. At the top of the staircase, a double-leaf, wood-frame door system leads into an existing restaurant space. The doors have a historic four-light transom and are flanked to the south by fixed-light windows looking into the restaurant.

A restaurant encompasses most of the first floor and is comprised of large rooms that hold a bar area, dining area, a game room, and a kitchen (Photograph 6). The spaces are open and flow into each other, except for the kitchen, which is separate to comply with health code. All of the spaces and most of the finishes are not historic and date from the 1990s. Large historic timber posts are exposed throughout the first floor and most of the ceilings are the exposed historic wood structure. Some ceilings in smaller spaces are non-historic gypsum board or acoustic tile. Brick walls are exposed along the perimeter of the floor. Several non-historic, partial-height, wood walls are extant throughout the dining areas. These formerly held dining tables and bar tops. Along the south wall of the central dining space the brick walls of the historic freight elevator shaft are visible. The large elevator opening is enclosed with gypsum board. The floors include non-historic wood and carpet. There is a long, wide open hallway along the western edge of the dining areas that leads to restrooms and a game room.

The kitchen is located along the east side from the dining area and from the loading dock addition. The kitchen has a narrow, rectilinear plan. It is subdivided by non-historic gypsum board partition walls and has several large refrigerators and closets for storage. The dropped ceilings are non-historic textured lay-in acoustic panels and the floors are non-historic quarry tile.

The loading dock addition was constructed in 1959 of concrete blocks. It is accessible from the kitchen and corridor. The spaces in the addition are unfinished and used for trash collection and

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

MEP equipment. The floor is poured concrete and the walls exposed concrete block and the south facade of the building.

Second and Third Floors The second floor has multiple non-historic tenant office spaces with a publicly accessible corridor extending from the elevator lobby to the offices and stairwells. The largest office is used by Sherman Associates, and encompasses the north and east sides of the floor. Smaller offices are constructed on the south side. The walls for the corridor and all of the offices are created by non-historic, gypsum-board partition walls and the perimeter walls are exposed brick. Partition walls enclose the historic freight elevator shaft, which has been infilled with a floor and subdivided to create two small offices. All of the offices have a mix of historic wood floors, non- historic vinyl floors, and non-historic wood floors. Timber posts are visible throughout the spaces and the ceilings are the exposed wood structure.

The third floor also contains non-historic offices for a single tenant. The offices have an open plan with non-historic gypsum-board partition walls creating offices, conference rooms, and restrooms (Photograph 7). The floors include historic wood, non-historic carpet, and non-historic vinyl. Timber posts and exposed brick walls are visible throughout, and the ceiling is the exposed wood structure. The freight elevator shaft is intact and has been infilled with a floor to create a conference room (Photograph 8). The large door opening has a corrugated-metal elevator gate that predates 2000. The gate is locked in the down position and double wood doors are set in the metal to provide access to the conference room in the former shaft. Original elevator equipment is still extant in the elevator shaft/conference room.

Attic The attic is accessible from the third floor using a wood ladder in a closet directly west of the freight elevator shaft. The attic is unfinished, with exposed brick masonry walls, wood floors, wood posts, and timber beam ceilings. There are non-historic partition walls in places. Head height in the attic decreases in areas away from the southwest corner and these areas are hard to access.

Basement The basement entrance from the non-historic, northwest elevator opens into an open office space. Like the offices on the second and third floors, non-historic, gypsum-board partition walls subdivide the space into offices, conference rooms, corridors, restrooms, and an exercise room. Timber posts and bricks walls are exposed throughout the space. Some of the posts and walls have been painted white. The floors are concrete and non-historic carpet. The exposed wood structure on the ceiling has been painted white in most of the spaces. The historic freight elevator shaft is retained on the south wall and is open to the infilled floor on the second floor. Unlike the upper floors, historic brick walls are extant in some parts of the basement. On the east perimeter wall, the wall is buttressed with sloping concrete, which appears to be original. In the southwest corner, historic double-leaf fire doors have been retained at a segmental-arch opening that leads to the south side of the building (Photograph 9).

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Circulation The Case Building has two staircases. The historic south stairwell and staircase were modified in 2000 because the staircase did not meet code. Part of the brick wall dividing the stairwell from the freight elevator shaft was demolished and a concrete-block wall constructed in part of the elevator shaft (Photograph 10). It created a slightly wider stairwell, and a new steel pan staircase was installed. The walls are bearing masonry, except the west wall that adjoins the historic freight elevator. The non-historic west staircase is adjacent to the building’s secondary entrance from Park Avenue. The staircase is constructed of unpainted wood and has non-historic gypsum- board walls. The width, rise, and run of the staircase meet modern code and it appears to have been constructed in the 1990s when the Old Spaghetti Factory opened in the building. The elevator in the northwest corner of the building is also not historic. It dates from the early 2000s and provides access to all floors.

Integrity The J. I. Case Building retains good historic integrity to support its eligibility for the National Register. The building is in its original location at 233 Park Avenue. The urban setting around the building has changed some over time. The neighboring Advance Thresher and Emerson- Newton Implement Company Buildings, as well as the Great Northern Implement Company Building, still stand. Newer buildings extend along Washington Avenue South, which remains an important transportation corridor. The presence of neighboring historic warehouse buildings reinforces the physical context of the early twentieth century, and the Case Building to retain integrity of setting.

The integrity of design and materials on the building’s exterior envelope is strong, and its appearance today is similar to historic images from the early twentieth century. The main entrance was moved to face Park Avenue in 1936, during the period of significance. Although the doors and windows were replaced in the 1990s and 2000, the overall character of the building is good. A concrete-block loading dock was added in 1959, after the period of significance, when the building became a warehouse for Minneapolis House Furnishings. The utilitarian character of the addition fits overall with the character of the building and does not detract from its historic integrity.

The integrity of materials and workmanship on the interior has been somewhat affected by the renovations in the 1990s and 2000, which converted the first floor to a restaurant and the upper floors and basement into offices. Although space was partitioned throughout the building, these changes do not obscure the historic structure or finishes. The retention of historic masonry, timber posts and beams, and a historic freight elevator shaft allow the J. I. Case Building to communicate its history as an industrial warehouse.

Through the retention of historic materials, workmanship, design features, setting, and location, the building is easily identifiable as an early twentieth warehouse and retains integrity of feeling and association. The J. I. Case Building has good historic integrity and is eligible for listing in the National Register.

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

______8. Statement of Significance

Applicable National Register Criteria (Mark "x" in one or more boxes for the criteria qualifying the property for National Register listing.)

X A. Property is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history.

B. Property is associated with the lives of persons significant in our past.

C. Property embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of

construction or represents the work of a master, or possesses high artistic values, or represents a significant and distinguishable entity whose components lack individual distinction.

D. Property has yielded, or is likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

Criteria Considerations (Mark “x” in all the boxes that apply.)

A. Owned by a religious institution or used for religious purposes

B. Removed from its original location

C. A birthplace or grave

D. A cemetery

E. A reconstructed building, object, or structure

F. A commemorative property

G. Less than 50 years old or achieving significance within the past 50 years

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Areas of Significance (Enter categories from instructions.) _COMMERCE______COMMUNITY PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT ______

Period of Significance _1907-1958______

Significant Dates _1907______1959 ______1990s/2000______

Significant Person (Complete only if Criterion B is marked above.) ______

Cultural Affiliation ______

Architect/Builder Kees and Colburn (architect) Robinson, J. L. (builder) ______

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Statement of Significance Summary Paragraph (Provide a summary paragraph that includes level of significance, applicable criteria, justification for the period of significance, and any applicable criteria considerations.)

The J. I. Case Building is eligible for the National Register under Criterion A in the area of Commerce. It was built and operated as a branch house by the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, one of the country’s leading implement manufacturers. Case adopted the branch system in the late nineteenth century to control marketing and distribution of its products, which was also handled by independent jobbers. During the five decades that Case occupied the Minneapolis building, beginning in 1907, American agriculture went through a radical transition, with mechanical power replacing animal power and small farms consolidated into larger operations. Without these changes, which improved agricultural productivity exponentially, the agricultural industry would not have been able to support the country’s phenomenal growth in the first half of the twentieth century.

The building also qualifies under Criterion A in the area of Community Planning and Development. As Minneapolis became a regional warehousing center in the late nineteenth century, wholesalers outgrew the warehouse district that had developed upstream from Bridge Square. Former mayor William Eustis promoted a new district to the south and had attracted some implement companies by the early twentieth century. The area’s reputation was stained, though, by Fish Alley on the south side of Washington Avenue between Park and Chicago Avenues. The alley led to a court surrounded by seedy buildings where crime and vice ran rampant. Construction of the Case building finally eradicated this threat to the up-and-coming warehouse district. Built as the growing city solidified its position as a regional commercial center, the Case building stands as a representation of that significant era.

The period of significance for the J. I. Case Building begins with its completion in 1907 and ends in 1958, the last full year that Case occupied the property. It maintains good integrity.

______Narrative Statement of Significance (Provide at least one paragraph for each area of significance.)

J. I. Case and the Revolution in Agricultural Technology

The proliferation of implement companies in the last half of the nineteenth century was the result of momentous advances in farming technology, including the introduction of the threshing machine. The first successful model was patented by two inventors in Maine in 1834. Entrepreneurs soon developed more efficient and larger versions, spawning numerous businesses to manufacture them. Additional innovations came in the 1880s when the demand for wheat skyrocketed due to improved flour-milling techniques and the nation’s growing population. Threshing machines streamlined several steps in harvesting grains and other crops. Rotating cylinders pulled seeds from the straw and isolated the grain, blowers removed the chaff from the

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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State grain, and stackers gathered the straw. Threshing machines were initially powered by animals but were later linked to steam engines. Historian John W. Oliver observed, “The most important advance in threshing technology prior to 1900 . . . was the substitution of steam power for horsepower. Steam engines brought about larger machines, provided greater speed in operation, and greatly increased the threshing capacity. Steam threshers could easily thresh from 700 to 1,000 bushels of wheat in one day.” He noted that “most of the threshing was performed by itinerant threshermen who owned and operated the larger improved machines. Wheat threshing became something of a specialized industry, one of the first in the history of American agriculture.” In the twentieth century, gas engines would become more common than steam engines. By the 1920s, threshers were upstaged by combines, which could both harvest and thresh the crops.3

Jerome Case, an inventor and entrepreneur, played a leading role in agriculture’s transformation in the last half of the nineteenth century, and the company he founded continued this legacy through the twentieth century. Born in upstate New York in 1819, he moved to Racine, Wisconsin, in 1842, six years before the territory became a state. He brought along six small threshing machines, which were in high demand in the rapidly developing agricultural region. He operated a threshing crew with one of the machines and quickly sold the others. In his spare time, Case experimented with ideas to improve the equipment’s design, producing his first threshing machine in 1844. Business grew by leaps and bounds, leading him to form J. I. Case and Company in 1863, renamed the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company in 1880. Case diversified into related products and had become the largest steam-engine manufacturer in the world by 1886. The company developed a reputation for high-quality products and good customer service.4

In 1876, Jerome Case had established a company separate from his threshing business to focus on plows. He remained closely involved with both companies until 1890, when he stepped back from what had become known as the J. I. Case Plow Company. His only son, Jackson I. Case, ran the plow company for a year before Jerome’s son-in-law, Harry Wallace, took the reins. Within a few years, the threshing company diversified into other agricultural equipment, including plows. This angered the management of the J. I. Case Plow Company, making rivals of the once closely entwined firms and spawning lengthy court battles over the use of the Case name.5

Jerome Case did not live to see the schism. He died in 1892 and his brother-in-law, Stephen Bull, became president of the threshing company. The structure of the threshing machine business was reorganized in 1897 when “younger men, many of whom had been trained for years in the modern school of business, assumed active control in the management of the affairs of the company.” Two years later, the company installed a chemical and physical laboratory at its

3 John W. Oliver, History of American Technology (New York: Ronald Press, 1956), 228, 367. 4 “The J. I. Case Plant Sold,” Minneapolis Tribune, October 13, 1897; “Case Started Farm Factory 80 Years Ago,” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, February 5, 1922; David Erb and Eldon Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead: J. I. Case Tractors and Equipment, 1842–1955 (Saint Joseph, Mich.: American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 1993), 84. 5 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 83-84, 91.

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factory in Racine. This was an innovative step; rigorous testing was uncommon among contemporary manufacturers. According to historians David Erb and Eldon Brumbaugh, “From that time onward, all material purchased by the company was ordered to rigid specifications, and analyses were performed to assure quality control of the product. Ore was assayed, samples of chemical compounds were analyzed, and parts produced in the plant were tested in an effort to raise still higher the quality of the products wearing the Case name. This was unusual for a manufacturer of that time and was mentioned frequently in Case advertising.” The company’s sales doubled to $3.3 million during the 1890s and profits followed suit.6

By 1890, the company’s products were distributed worldwide and carried by over one thousand dealers across the United States. Dealers had two sources of supply: 1) independent jobbers, who might carry the products of one or many manufacturers; and 2) a network of company-owned distribution warehouses known as “branch houses.” In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Case entities joined other implement dealers in establishing distribution points in Minneapolis and at least one jobber featured Case products as well, although not exclusively. In 1882, the J. I. Case Plow Company registered with the Minnesota Secretary of State and began selling its line at 308–310 Third Avenue North. The J. I. Case Implement Company, a jobber, registered with the state in 1883. By 1900, the J. I. Case Implement Company had expanded to 308–314 Third, apparently taking over distribution for the plow company. An advertisement inside the back cover of the 1900 city directory described Case Implement as “jobbers of J. I. Case plows, Mitchell farm and spring wagons, [and] Hoosier seeders and drills,” and it had “a full line of carriages, buggies, farm implements, twin, bicycles and harness always on hand.” By that time, the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company was at 328–330 Third. That entity had not registered with the state until 1899 but was apparently operating in Minnesota before that time, perhaps in association with the jobber. An article in the Minneapolis Tribune in January 1896 stated that “the Case Threshing Machine Company has had a big gain in the fall’s business, aggregating not far from 100 per cent.” Soon, Case’s operations, like other businesses in the original warehouse district, needed more space.7

A New Warehouse District for a New Century

Minneapolis was part of an extensive and expanding rail network by the late nineteenth century and a natural hub for manufacturing and distributing the products demanded by the flood of pioneers pushing the frontier west. The rail connections between Chicago and the East Coast secured Chicago’s role as “the principal source of manufactured goods” for the “central- northwestern states,” according to a 1932 study, “but by the turn of the century the position of Twin City wholesalers had become firmly established.” Wholesale volume in the metropolitan

6 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 84-88; “The J. I. Case Plant Sold”; “Case Started Farm Factory 80 Years Ago.” 7 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 85; Minneapolis City Directory for 1882–1883 (Minneapolis: C. Wright Davison, 1882), 561; Davison’s Minneapolis City Directory 1895 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1895), 1281; Davison’s Minneapolis City Directory 1896 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1896), 1271; “Big Year for Jobbers,” Minneapolis Tribune, January 1, 1896.

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area grew from less than $10 million in 1870 to $85 million in 1880 and $300 million in 1890.By 1929, it topped $1.25 billion.8

Agricultural equipment was a leading sector. In January 1896, the Minneapolis Tribune proclaimed the city “the greatest distributing point in the world” for farm machinery. “Representatives of the large houses which have branches in all the principal distributing points testify with almost one voice that Minneapolis is now ahead of Kansas City,” long its rival, “as a farm implement point.” During the previous year, “in small grain machinery, harvesters, threshers and the like, the largest increase has been made, and in this line of goods the gain is from 30 to 100 per cent. Many houses had their stocks exhausted long before the demand was supplied.” The momentum continued into the twentieth century. According to the Guide to the Industrial Archeology of the Twin Cities, “By 1908 Minneapolis could boast that it was the largest distributing point in the world for agricultural implements. By 1915 the manufacture and distribution of farm equipment had succeeded the flour and grain trade as the biggest business in Minneapolis in dollar volume.”9

Case and other distributors of farm equipment first clustered near a depot of the Chicago Saint Paul Minneapolis and Omaha Railway at 56 Fourth Avenue North, erected in 1880. Retailers from across the Upper Midwest came to Minneapolis to select inventory for the coming year. The significance of a group of wholesale warehouses built to serve this market was acknowledged by the district’s National Register designation. By the early twentieth century, vacant land near the railway depot was scarce and companies seeking larger sites began looking elsewhere in the city.10

This need had been anticipated by William Henry Eustis, a lawyer and real estate investor who served as the city’s mayor from 1893 to 1895. He hoped to harness the demand for more warehouse space to propel an early urban renewal project on the south edge of downtown. Of the many notorious spots in this area, the most infamous was “Fish Alley, . . . a field for midnight fights and all night beer drinking parties.” Located on Block 45 of the original plat of Minneapolis, this hub of crime ran between and behind a phalanx of buildings on the south side of Washington Avenue between Park and Chicago Avenues (at that time known as Seventh and Eighth Avenues, respectively) (see Figure 1).11

“Fish alley itself is nothing more than a court or a ‘blind’ alley surrounded by numerous small structures,” a 1906 article in the Minneapolis Tribune explained. A fish market once occupied an

8 Roland S. Valle and Alvin L. Nordstrom, Public Merchandise Warehousing in the Twin Cities, University of Minnesota Studies in Economics and Business No. 3 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1932), 13–14. 9 Rolf Anderson, “Minneapolis Warehouse Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places nomination form, January 1987, 8:2; “Big Year for Jobbers”; Nicholas Westbrook, A Guide to the Industrial Archeology of the Twin Cities (n.p.: Society for Industrial Archeology, 1983), prepared for the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, Saint Paul and Minneapolis, 90. 10 Anderson, “Minneapolis Warehouse Historic District,” 8:2; Westbrook, A Guide to the Industrial Archeology of the Twin Cities, 90. 11 “Rapid Progress Being Made in Redemption of the Notorious Fish Alley District,” Minneapolis Tribune, February 18, 1906.

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adjacent building, giving the alley its name. “A stranger would find it hard work to find this well known spot because of the narrowness of the alley opening. . . . [which] is only three or four feet wide.” Twenty feet back, the alley opened “into a court, which is about twenty-five feet wide by forty feet long.” By the last decades of the nineteenth century, it had become known as “the ‘hell-hole’ of Minneapolis, . . . a battle ground for all fighters. Leading from the court there are perhaps five or six stairways extending to apartments above. Every building in the vicinity sheltered many more people than there really was room for and as a result there were many entrances and exits. Law breakers also could more easily make their ‘get away’ when pursued by the police.” The paper reported that “drinking parties were a specialty of the residents and many is the time that policemen risked their lives to break them up. Knives were favorite weapons while occasionally a revolver would be used.” An officer recalled that “besides fighting men and women, I had to contend with petty thieves, pick-pockets, hold-up artists and ‘con’ men of all sorts. At one time at least 50 disorderly women lived in the block. Morally the whole district was in terrible shape.” Minneapolis residents and visitors were warned that at night “it isn’t safe to go into the alley, unless you have a gun and policeman with you, and then you are not safe.” The area’s sordid reputation was augmented by a dance hall and four saloons fronting Washington Avenue on the same block. “Suffice to say these saloons never lost money.” Only one remained by 1906 thanks to a concerted effort to clear out the troublemakers, and “nowadays it is only occasionally that a real fight occurs in the old alley.” Still, “criminals, of a certain class,” continued “to be found with women of the lowest type” in Fish Alley.12

Until Fish Alley was eradicated, William Eustis knew it would hamper the area’s redevelopment. Several years after leaving city hall, he persuaded A. G. Wright, president of the Advanced Thresher Company, to make a foray into the neighborhood. “In 1900, Mr. Eustis purchased a little over one-half of block 45 and nearly one-half of block 46 [to the west, across Park Avenue] for Mr. Wright.” While gaining control of many blighted properties, these acquisitions did not include the Fish Alley parcels. The developers did, though, try to make all of blocks 45 and 46 more attractive to businesses. “Arrangements were made with the Milwaukee road to extend its tracks from Tenth Avenue south across both blocks, thus assuring fine trackage facilities for industries located either on the Washington or Third Street side.”13

Advanced Thresher erected a handsome structure on block 45 at the corner of Third Street and Park Avenue. The Minneapolis Tribune reported that the building “attracted extraordinary attention at the time, partly on account of its fine architectural appearance and heavy cost, but chiefly because it loomed up like a great industrial monument in an unsavory locality.” Eustis and Wright’s faith in the neighborhood soon paid off. Block 46 became populated by warehouses for agricultural business including the Great Northern Implement Company—the new name of the Case Implement—as well as the Case Plow Company, the Bement-Darling Implement Company, and the Waterbury Implement Company. On block 45, Wright erected a building adjacent to Advanced Thresher for the Emerson-Newton Implement Company, an implement

12 “Police Gave Fish Alley Lasting Name,” Minneapolis Tribune, February 25, 1906. 13 “Rapid Progress Being Made in Redemption of the Notorious Fish Alley District.”

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company based in Rockford, Illinois, in 1904–1905. By this time, the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company had laid plans to eviscerate Fish Alley once and for all.14

Steam’s Rise and Fall

It was a busy time for Case Threshing, which had been developing steam engines since the 1870s. In addition to replacing draft animals to power threshing machines, these engines were the precursor to the tractor. The engines were initially mounted on wheels and pulled by horses, but inventors soon harnessed the steam power for self-propulsion. Horses were still used to steer the traction engines until 1884, when “the first self-propelled, self-steerable Case machine” became available, according to historians Erb and Brumbaugh. This machine was the direct precursor to the tractor. While competitors offered similar machines, Case’s steam traction engine had “the best steering mechanism in the industry.”15

Case’s production of steam engines peaked in 1911. It logged record-breaking sales of the machines the following year, but then came a precipitous drop. Case produced its last steam engine in 1927. The company had enjoyed a prolific half-century, manufacturing around one- third of all the steam-powered agricultural equipment in the country. Farmers bought 35,737 Case steam engines, more than double the volume of the nearest competitor, Ohio-based Huber Company, which manufactured only 11,568 units.16

Steam’s role was ultimately usurped by gas, which was on its way to becoming the fuel of choice by the early twentieth century. “Gas tractors offered farmers many advantages,” Erb and Brumbaugh explained. “A farmer could buy a medium-sized Case tractor for considerably less than the cost of a steam engine, could operate it himself and adapt it for a greater variety of farm jobs. Since it weighed less, it was more maneuverable, and could cross bridges and barn floors with greater safety. It was also not prone to the many troubles of boiler scaling, leakage, fire hazard and maintenance that characterized steam power. Even in its early, primitive form, the tractor was safer than steam power from an operational standpoint.” Most of the early “gas” tractors were started with gas, which worked better than most fuels for that purpose, then switched over to burn cheaper fuels such as kerosene, tractor fuel, and distillate.17

14 “Rapid Progress Being Made in Redemption of the Notorious Fish Alley District”; “Building Permits,” Minneapolis Tribune, June 4, 1898; “Changes Its Name,” Minneapolis Journal, May 14, 1903; “Young Man for General Office Work” (help-wanted advertisement), Minneapolis Tribune, October 25, 1903; Davison’s Minneapolis City Directory 1906 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1906), 2274, 2287. J. I. Case Plow Works was ultimately absorbed into a competitor, Massey-Harris, in 1928. (Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 85) 15 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 43, 47, 49. 16 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 60. 17 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 60; Randy Leffingwell, The American Farm Tractor: A History of the Classic Tractor (Osceola, Wisc.: Motorbooks International, 1991), 80; Dave Arnold, Case Tractors: Steam to Diesel (Osceola, Wisc.: Motorbooks International, 1990), 84.

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Using its experience with steam traction engines, Case developed an experimental gas traction engine in 1892. The company grew frustrated by multiple problems with its operation, though, and dropped the project, leaving innovations in gas-engine machines to others. After a number of successful models had come to market, Case returned to the pursuit, introducing a prototype gas traction engine in 1911. Historian Robert Williams observed, “Most of the machinery in use in the field in the [late twentieth century] had horse-drawn antecedents prior to the tractor,” and for the tractor, “internal combustion power improved the functioning of preexisting but redesigned machinery.” This was exemplified by Case’s “new” machine, essentially a gas engine mounted on a steam-tractor chassis. Case sent the prototype to the 1911 international tractor trials in Winnipeg, which had been launched in 1908 and quickly became where companies showcased new products. After Case won the competition, it ramped up production and began distributing the machines to dealers in 1912.18

Tractors continued to evolve during that decade as sales went through the roof. Smaller models were developed to accommodate smaller farms. A design with three wheels (“tricycle”) rather than four was another major change. Case, which brought out a three-wheel tractor in 1915, was not typically an innovator during this period but quickly matched the offerings of its competitors. An author in 1915 opined: “The large thresher companies must all be considered as strong, aggressive competitors in the tractor business. They have the advantage of being established in the farm trade, of having branch houses and a trained sales force” (see Figure 2).19

The burgeoning gas tractor market became “a dogfight for Case and others in the agricultural marketing business,” according to historian Dave Arnold. By 1909, “nine different tractor companies were already in the gas tractor business, producing 2,000 tractors; by 1920 the floodgates were wide open with 166 different companies producing over 203,000 gas tractors for the marketplace.” Included in the fray was Henry Ford, who had applied his pragmatic approach to the design and production of the Fordson tractor he began marketing during World War I. Overproduction led to price wars in the 1920s, and only the fittest survived. By 1930, nine manufacturers remained, together producing 196,000 tractors in that year.20

World War I accelerated the mechanization of agriculture in America. Many farmers joined the military, creating manpower shortages and the demand for labor-saving machines in rural America. Horses and mules, as well as men, were drafted for the war effort, and many did not return to their farms. This increased the demand for smaller tractors with greater functionality. Historian Randy Leffingwell explained that “the design of the standard tractor” in the early twentieth century “limited it to less than half of the field work that could be mechanized. Surveys suggested that a row crop and general-purpose tractor would perform more than three-fourths of the jobs.” Profits were lower for the smaller machines, though, so Case, like many

18 Robert C. Williams, Fordson, Farmall, and Poppin’ Johnny: A History of the Farm Tractor and Its Impact on America (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 8; Leffingwell, The American Farm Tractor, 78– 79; Michael Williams, Farm Tractors in Color (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1974), 8–11. 19 Quote from Philip Rose, The Black Book, reprinted in Leffingwell, The American Farm Tractor, 75; see also pages 78–79. 20 Arnold, Case Tractors: Steam to Diesel, 63; Leffingwell, The American Tractor, 109–118.

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manufacturers, was slow to enter this market even after a consultant told the company in 1922 that “a cheaper and more versatile tractor—one that could cultivate—would open up a whole new world of sales.” Case finally responded at the end of the decade after a change of leadership.21

In the meantime, Case used its well-established infrastructure to target other sectors. It embarked on the production of road-building machinery, a natural extension of its traction engine line, in 1910. In addition, Case was touting automobiles, as well as threshing machines and road machinery, as a primary product by the 1910s. While Case’s local managers served in leadership positions in the implement industry—branch manager J. E. Garner headed the Northwest Tractor Trade Association for a number of years—they were also active in promoting automobiles. Case’s six-cylinder models, developed in partnership with an array of suppliers, offered an upscale alternative to Ford’s bare-bones, four-cylinder Model T. In the words of Enos Ashley, a Minneapolis-based distributor of Case automobiles in the Upper Midwest: “The name Case stands for quality. . . . For more than three-quarters of a century the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company has been recognized as a leader in the mechanical world. Associated with it in producing the new Case Six are 24 of the best known and most responsible names in the automobile industry. This combination of talent, backed by the whole weight of the Case reputation, therefore, is the Case guarantee of a degree of excellence that has never before been approached in a motor car at so moderate a price.” While a line of cars seemed like a natural addition to dealer showrooms, though, this concept did not pan out, in part because Case did not follow Henry Ford’s mass-production model. Instead, “the company became somewhat famous for making custom vehicles to the whim of every customer,” Erb and Brumbaugh observed. “Few Case cars were completely identical.” Case stopped producing automobiles in 1927.22

Case continued to expand its line of agricultural equipment as well. The company brought out its first combine in 1920. Like many innovations, combines were greeted with skepticism by many farmers. As Erb and Brumbaugh noted, “The combine required the farmer to completely change his harvesting methods and his thinking about threshing. Combine use required allowing the grain to ripen a little longer, increasing the farmer’s vulnerability to weather conditions.” The new machines were also a substantial investment. Despite the economic depression in the 1930s, though, combines were commonplace by the end of that decade and threshing machines had shrunk to a small percentage of Case’s business. The company made its last thresher in 1953.23

21 Leffingwell, The American Farm Tractor, 10, 81–82. 22 Davison’s Minneapolis Directory 1912 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1912), 410, 2062, 2130; Davison’s Minneapolis Directory 1915 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1915), 2187, 2258; “J. E. Gardner Again Head of Tractor Trade Body,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, April 28, 1922; “Case Dealers Enthusiastic over Product,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, February 10, 1921; Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 60, 100, 304, 316, 325. 23 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 41.

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Case at Washington and Park

A late nineteenth-century Sanborn map (Figure 1) shows small two- to three-story commercial buildings packing the Washington Avenue frontage of the block between Park and Chicago Avenues, which was bisected by Fish Alley. In spring 1903, Case purchased lot 11 and part of lot 9 from Mr. and Mrs. Frank Prince for $10,000; part of lot 9 from Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Hill for $6,000; parts of lots 10 and 14 from Agnes Hull and her husband for $10,000; and part of lot 10 from the Heinrich Brewing Association for $8,500. Thorpe Brothers, a local real estate company, had assembled the site from this patchwork of owners. The south edge provided essential access to the Milwaukee spur line running midblock. In anticipation of Case’s project and “recognizing the importance of the industry, the [city] council last Friday vacated a one-time private alley which cut thru this track,” the Minneapolis Journal reported on April 28.24

The paper noted that Case “has had a northwestern distributing branch in the city for years” occupying “rather small quarters on Third Avenue North in the old implement district. The business of the company has increased. Minneapolis has grown in importance as a distributing point along with the enormous development of the new northwest; competing firms have built extensive modern warehouses to allow for expansion and to act as standing advertisements for their business. Undoubtedly all of these factors were influences toward the move made by the company, as well as a desire to maintain a reputation for keeping abreast of the times and modern ideas.” The article added that Case had considered the original and new warehouse districts and “chose . . . in favor of the latter.” The new building “will be of the heaviest construction, probably five stories high and it will cost at least $100,000. In architecture it is to surpass anything of the kind in the northwest and the architect has some admirable buildings in the city to surpass.” A Thorpe Brothers agent asserted that Case’s new facility would not only hold offices and equipment but “will advertise its business far and wide and . . . will be a credit to the city.”25

The Minneapolis Tribune reported in September 1903 that Case had applied for a permit to erect a “large $125,000 building.” The article added that “the building which will be begun soon, will be of pressed brick, six stories high.” Months went by, though, with no sign of construction. Although the reason for the delay is not known, Case’s leadership had other things competing for attention in the same year. In July, a fire at a Racine warehouse destroyed 110 threshing machines. The company was also in the midst of planning an elaborate new headquarters building in Racine, modeled after the Boston Public Library, with construction beginning the following spring. But perhaps most importantly, Case was on the verge of introducing a thresher made entirely of steel, bringing this innovative design to market in 1904. Up until that time, all manufacturers made a major component of the machine, the separator, of wood, and most were

24 Sanborn Map Publishing Company, Insurance Maps of Minneapolis, Minnesota, vol. 1 (New York: Sanborn Map Publishing Company, 1885, updated 1889), sheet 6b; “Big Warehouse on Wash. Av. S.,” Minneapolis Journal, April 28, 1903; “Real Estate Transfers,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 12, 1903, and July 7, 1903. 25 “Big Warehouse on Wash. Av. S.”

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skeptical about using any other material. They quickly followed Case’s lead, though, after the all-steel model proved immensely popular.26

In the meantime, there were no signs of progress at the corner of Park and Washington Avenues. In May 1905, Eustis was collared by a newspaper reporter and would only state that Case had owned the site “for a long time, and I presume [the company] intends to put up a fine building there some day, but when it is to be I do not know, nor does anyone else that I know of.” Within days, though, the newspaper claimed that “the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Co. will go ahead with their building. . . . Kees and Colburn, architects. Cost $100,000.”27

Despite this report, it was not until September 1906 that Case applied a permit for a “brick warehouse” with three stories and a basement, rising a total of 70 feet and measuring 115 feet by 132 feet. The estimated cost was $50,000. A permit for the foundation was issued separately.28

Kees and Colburn were well acquainted with both the vicinity and the requirements for warehousing. Established by Frederick Kees and Serenus Colburn in 1900, the firm was responsible for designing the Advance Thresher and Emerson-Newton buildings on block 45. In the earlier warehouse district, Kees had worked on a number of buildings with a former partner, Franklin Long, including the Wyman Partridge and Company Building (1896) and the Champion Reaper Company Warehouse (1897), and one of Kees and Colbern’s first commissions was a large warehouse for the Deere and Webber Company, completed in 1902.29

Construction of the Case building was finally underway by 1906. In February, the Minneapolis Tribune had an article titled “Case Company Builds: Big Threshing Machine Concern Will Improve Property at Washington and Seventh [Park] Ave.”—although it incorrectly reported that the address was on Seventh Avenue North rather than South. The “company will erect a fine implement building, . . . a very substantial building, in keeping with the other large wholesale structures in that section. The cost was estimated to run $50,000 to $60,000. “The property has a frontage of 132 feet on Washington Avenue and 115 feet on Seventh Avenue. The building will be three stories and basement, and will be so constructed that additional stories can be put on in the future.” Another article noted that “the building is intended for [a] ‘show room’ and will be of handsome appearance.” By December, the Tribune reported that “contractor J. L. Robinson has the brick work on the new J. I. Case Threshing Machine company’s building . . . up to the third floor.” The Minneapolis Sunday Tribune ran a photograph of the completed building in October 1907, labeling it “one of the most imposing structures on lower Washington Avenue” (see Figure 3). 30

26 “Big Permit,” Minneapolis Tribune, September 3, 1903; Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 30–31, 88–89. 27 “W. H. Eustis Denies Knowledge of Case Deal,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 16, 1905; “Building News of Past Week,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 21, 1905. 28 Minneapolis Building Permit 9552, September 9, 1906. 29 Larry Millett, AIA Guide to the Twin Cities (Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007), 51-55. 30 “Rapid Progress Being Made”; “Case Company Builds,” Minneapolis Tribune, February 7, 1906; “Building News for Week from the Bulletin,” Minneapolis Tribune, December 23, 1906; “Progress of Construction in City of Minneapolis,” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, October 27, 1907. The 1907 photograph’s caption incorrectly labels the building “J. I. Case Implement Home.”

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The city issued a permit in April 1907 for an “iron sign.” These are probably the roof signs with the company’s name topping the Washington and Park Avenue facades in the October photograph. A three-dimensional depiction of Case’s trademark, an eagle known as Old Abe, crowned the building’s rooftop at the corner at Washington and Park. It was fashioned after an eagle that had been captured as a young bird, grew up as the pet of a Wisconsin family, and served as the mascot of a Civil War regiment, where it was named after President Lincoln. Jerome Case had seen veterans carrying Old Abe in a parade after the war and decided it would be a good symbol for his growing company. Early depictions showed the eagle on a tree limb, but he was mounted on a globe in 1894 to denote the company’s international reach (see Figure 2). While no more sign permits were issued until mid-century, historic photographs show a painted wall sign on the building’s south facade with the company’s original name and a later sign for “J. I. Case Co.,” the name it adopted in 1928, on the east wall (see Figures 4 and 5). In November 1948, the city authorized the Norquist Sign Company to install two “flatwise wall signs.”31

The building at Washington and Park was Case’s first purpose-built branch house in Minneapolis. Branch houses were established, owned, and operated by manufacturers, who aggressively supported and promoted the branches. When Case had an exhibit at an annual agricultural trade show in Minneapolis in February 1922, for example, the company’s vice president of sales, vice president in charge of production, head of tractor experiments, and advertising manager all came up from Racine to assist with the effort. While independent jobbers, like the J. I. Case Implement Company, also served as middlemen between manufacturers and retailers, most jobbers were edged out as the number of manufacturers was winnowed by fierce competition. The manufacturers that survived became behemoths with strong branch-house systems. In the “branch-house method of distribution employed by these big fellows,” products flowed from “factory to factory branch house, to retailer, to consumer,” according to a writer in 1916. He added, “It has been the custom to assign to each branch house an exclusive territory. Each branch-house manager puts his men on the road to sell to the dealer.” Erb and Brumbaugh explain that “branch houses were established strategically in grain growing areas. These locations carried parts, did service and repair work, and helped close sales for the dealer, who was, in reality, just an agent. The local branch house manager was the top company representative in the area. His mechanics were often factory trained, and served in both the branch house service department and as trouble shooters in the field.” Dealers, on the other hand, often stocked “little implement inventory or parts. . . . Not even a sample was carried in some situations, unless the company sent a machine into an area where a bumper crop was assured.”32

31 Building permit index cards for 701–711 Washington Avenue South, in Minneapolis Building Permit Index Card Collection, Hennepin County Library, https://digitalcollections.hclib.org/digital/collection/PermitCards; Dave Arnold, Case Tractors: Steam to Diesel, 12. No images of the building with the 1948 signage could be located. 32 “Times on Upgrade Belief of Gittins, J. I. Case T. M. Co.,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, February 8, 1922; Barton W. Currie, The Tractor and Its Influence upon the Agricultural Implement Industry (Philadelphia: Curtis Publishing Company, 1916), 47, 49; Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 90.

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A catalog published by Case in 1906 listed the branch house in Minneapolis and only two other branches in Minnesota, in Fergus Falls and Mankato. The building that Case occupied in Mankato was similar in style and vintage to the 1907 Minneapolis branch but much smaller, rising only two stories (see Figure 6).33 Branches in adjacent states were at Des Moines, Mason City, and Waterloo, Iowa; Carrington, Casselton, Cooperstown, Devils Lake, Fargo, Grand Forks, Harvey, Hillsboro, Park River, and Wahpeton, North Dakota; Aberdeen, Mitchell, and Watertown, South Dakota; and Madison and Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in addition to Case’s factory in Racine. Together, these five states had twenty-one of the forty-six branches Case maintained in the United States—nearly 50 percent—indicating how important the Midwest was for its business. The remaining domestic branches were scattered, with no more than two per state, from Syracuse, New York, to San Francisco. To the north, Case had four branches in Canada, including one in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It also boasted a branch in Buenos Aires, Argentina.34

Branches came and went. By 1913, Case had added a branch in Duluth, but by 1925, Minneapolis and Mankato were the only branches in the state. The Mason City and Waterloo branches had been closed in Iowa and another opened in Sioux City. The branches in North Dakota had been rearranged and reduced as well to include Fargo, Bismarck, Williston, Minot, and Grand Forks. South Dakota retained three branches, but the one in Mitchell had been replaced by a Sioux Falls location. The Wisconsin branches were unchanged. In Manitoba, a branch was added in Brandon.35

Case and the Neighborhood Evolve

Case had been settled into its new building for a few years when tragedy struck the block across Park Avenue in May 1910. A fire fanned by a strong wind “practically destroyed the seven-story brick building occupied by the Great Northern Implement Company and the Rock Island Plow Company, at Seventh [Park] Avenue South and Third Street.” In addition, “the five-story brick structure occupied by the Waterbury Implement Company was badly damaged,” and “nearly every building in the block was burned in part or whole.” The story made national news, covered by the New York Times as well as local newspapers. The fire tried to jump across the street to the Case and Advanced Thresher buildings, but local firefighters held off the flames. The Case property did, though, experience “about $2,000 loss from windows broken by the heat of the fire

33 “J. I. Case Company, Mankato, Minnesota,” 1910, Blue Earth County Historical Society, accessed November 17, 2020, https://reflections.mndigital.org/catalog/blue:2124. The building was probably located at 202–206 North Front Street, at the corner of Mulberry (Insurance Maps of Mankato, Minnesota (New York: Sanborn Map Company, June 1924), Sheet 2). Based on a review of buildings along Front Street and a renamed section now known as Riverfront Drive using Google, it does not appear that this building is extant. This corridor has experienced extensive redevelopment, and none of the older buildings that survive match the design or configuration of the Case building. 34 J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, Sixty-fourth Annual Catalog (Racine, Wisc.: J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, 1906), 2. 35 Case Threshing Machinery, Condensed Edition (Racine, Wisc.: J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, 1913), n.p.; Case Supply Catalog (Racine, Wisc.: J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, 1925), n.p.

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across the street and on carpets and office furniture from water thrown on the building.”36 The building’s survival further enhanced its stature as a landmark on Washington Avenue.

As the agricultural industry matured in the twentieth century, companies expanded their offerings to become one-stop shops for farmers. International Harvester was a leader in this movement, consolidating smaller firms to become a “huge marketing giant” that could provide “the farmer everything he could want—from threshing machines to cream separators and electric light plans.” Case redoubled its research and development efforts to introduce new innovations in its product line and expanded its reach by acquiring the Emerson-Brantingham Company in 1928. “With this purchase came a full line of agricultural products, from fancy buggies and farm wagons to cultivators, powers, cream separators, manure spreaders and the like.” As the company moved further from its roots, “threshing machine” was removed from the name of the business, which was henceforth called the J. I. Case Company.37

In November 1928, Case applied to the City of Minneapolis for a permit to “enclose front entrance to sales room and brick warehouse.” The work was to be done by day labor at an estimated cost of $500 and would be completed in about a week. The shift in the building’s orientation from Washington to Park apparently occurred at this time. In the 1928 city directory, Case’s address is listed as 701 Washington Avenue South. In 1929, it is 233 Seventh (Park) Avenue South. Another modification of the entry occurred in 1936 when the city issued a permit to “change partition and entrance,” a project estimated to cost $3,000. Libbey and Libbey, general contractors, obtained the permit on behalf of the company. Case retained the same company in 1948 for two interior projects: installing a 20-foot by 40-foot balcony on the first floor for about $1,000 and a larger project, with a budget of $10,000, to add an office, three toilets, and a 13-foot by 40-foot balcony on the first floor.38

During this period, Case diversified its product line by developing new and improved products in-house and buying out other companies. As farm tractors evolved in the first half of the twentieth century, Case ranked third among American manufacturers even though it was slow to introduce smaller models that were in demand in the 1930s. The industry was challenged that decade by drought and the Great Depression. In the four years after the 1929 stock market crash. tractor sales plummeted from $390 million to $90 million.39

Then came World War II, and Case’s manufacturing facilities were dedicated to the war effort. When peace returned, implement producers raced to meet pent-up demand from farmers for new equipment. Case acquired new factories and introduced a new tractor line. “By the end of 1953,”

36 “Fire Destroys Entire Block,” New York Times, May 29, 1910; “Modern Buildings to Supplant Ruins,” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, May 29, 1910. 37 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 91–94. 38 Minneapolis Building Permit 19152, November 7, 1928; Minneapolis Building Permit 22313, January 2, 1936; Minneapolis Building Permits 27937 and 27938, March 16, 1948; Minneapolis City Directory, 1928 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1928), 513; Minneapolis City Directory, 1929 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1929), 514; Minneapolis City Directory, 1936 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1936), 816, 1819. Interestingly, the 1948 permit applications used the address 701–711 Washington Avenue South. 39 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 94–95.

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Erb and Brumbaugh reported, “Case owned manufacturing facilities in many states. Diversification and expansion were by-words of the company.” But all was not well: “Hindsight points to the fact that the farm tractor market peaked about this time.”40

Historian Craig Miner explained that “in the late 1950s and early 1960s [Case] was a long- established business faced with the challenge of rapid technological and market change in the agricultural equipment industry.” Large agricultural equipment manufacturers “were hoary with tradition, but it was a tradition based on high volume, a vestige from the years when every tractor had replaced a horse, and on a capital-intensive production orientation, stable and mature technology, [and] vast networks of small dealers in small towns.” After World War II, the number of farms dropped sharply, with some 850,000 farms lost between 1954 and 1959 alone. Not surprisingly, this was reflected in the sales of agricultural implements, which plummeted by 25 percent in 1960. Farmers that survived absorbed the acreage of those that folded, then needed larger equipment to run their expanded operations. “The large traditional manufacturers, like Case, could not adjust quickly away from ‘harness age retailing,’ when over thirty thousand farm equipment dealers existed, to the demand for larger dealers with more sophisticated knowledge and better inventories, who were not required to be within a thirty-minute buggy drive of any field.”41

Case’s evolution in the 1950s was a rollercoaster ride. While the company’s factories could fulfill an annual sales volume of some $300 million, sales reached only $111.5 million in 1953 and sank to $87.1 million in 1956. One response was to merge with American Tractor Corporation (ATC) in 1957. This enabled Case to diversify into crawler-type tractors for the construction industry and gave the company access to advanced technology for automatic transmissions, soon branded “Case-o-Matic.” As significantly, Case gained ATC’s young president Marc Rojtman, a creative and flamboyant promoter, for its management team. Rojtman had boosted ATC’s sales tenfold between 1951 and 1956. He joined Case as an executive vice president and his “influence became obvious immediately in Case sales levels, stock prices, dealer enthusiasm, new managers, new policies, and new debt, all of which skyrocketed in 1957,” according to Miner. Sales reached $132 million 1957 and $160 million the following year, when Rojtman became the company’s president.42

His success was short-lived. The company’s debt jumped from $40.4 million in 1956 to $155.9 million in 1959, and its profit margins were low. In the summer and fall of 1959, Miner reported, “Case financial figures began to appear less rosy. Rojtman then came under increasing pressure to slow down and consolidate the gains—a course that he was temperamentally incapable of pursuing.” Conservative board members worried about Rojtman’s “profligate use of lines of credit to fuel the sales boom and the tendency for company sales to dealers to outrun dealer sales to customers.” Miller explained that “the latter pattern created profits on the books but inventories in the showrooms—inventories that could create a future logjam that might lead to

40 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 98. 41 Craig Miner, “The New Wave, the Old Guard, and the Bank Committee: William J. Grede at J. I. Case Company, 1953–1961,” Business History Review 61, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 243–245. 42 Miner, “The New Wave,” 250–253.

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sudden profit declines and banker panic.” In addition, board members were concerned about Rojtman’s “plan to create dealer leasing corporations and to have the company buy dealer stores at a rapid rate.” Things came to a head at a board meeting in February 1960, when Rojtman was replaced by board chair William Grede.43

It was during this tumultuous period that Case relocated its Minneapolis branch. The reason behind this decision is not known. It was undoubtedly related, though, to the trends roiling the agricultural industry that affected the types of farm machinery in demand and how they were sold. The relationship between the company, dealers, and farmers was changing as well. Rojtman had been behind the creation of the J. I. Case Credit Company, which provided financing to farmers and dealers. The direct connection between Racine and the dealers was enhanced by elaborate “world premieres” of new models, starting in 1957 with a million-dollar, six-week extravaganza in Phoenix attended by three thousand, including seven hundred Case dealers and an equal number of prospective dealers, all transported to the event at the company’s expense. Adding to this was Rojtman’s aggressive proposal to have the company acquire dealerships. All of these factors diminished the role of the branch house. At the same time, the ups and downs of Case’s financial condition throughout 1950s created pressure to reduce overhead.44

In addition, the decades after World War II were a low point for downtown Minneapolis. Increasing traffic snarled the city’s streets, delaying delivery trucks. The condition of the older building stock, already decaying by the early twentieth century, was noticeably worse after years of deferred maintenance during the depression and war. Washington Avenue was a well- entrenched main street of “Skid Row,” an uncomfortable setting for Case’s workers and agricultural clientele. As in other communities, Minneapolis’s problems were intensified as businesses and families were drawn to suburbia. The city suffered a particular blow in 1955 when one of its largest corporations, General Mills, announced it would relocate its downtown headquarters to a sprawling campus in suburban Golden Valley.45

Case joined the exodus in 1959 when it moved to 2735 Highway 55 in Eagan, a Saint Paul suburb. The Park Avenue building became a warehouse for Minneapolis House Furnishings, which hired architects Liebenberg and Kaplan to design an addition. In September 1959, a contractor applied to the city for a permit to build a “concrete blox [sic] warehouse” measuring 40.5 feet by 153.5 feet. This construction enclosed an elevated loading dock extending from the south side of the building. The permit gave the addition’s volume as 86,000 cubic feet, indicating that it was about 14 feet tall. On the permit, the number of stories is noted as “18,” apparently indicating feet rather than stories and including the height of the loading dock.46

43 Miner, “The New Wave,” 263–265. 44 Miner, “The New Wave,” 250–265. 45 A discussion of the decline of Minneapolis in the first half of the twentieth century is in Charlene Roise and Erin Hanafin Berg, “Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 2005, Section 8. 46 Minneapolis Building Permit 33838, September 15, 1959. Information from 1959 and 1960 city directories provided in an email from Hennepin County Library Special Collections to Charlene Roise, November 13, 2020.

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The property remained a furniture warehouse and showroom until the 1980s. In the early 1990s, the building was remodeled into offices and a restaurant, the Old Spaghetti Factory, which opened in 1994. After operating for twenty-five years, the restaurant closed in 2019.47

The Significance of the Case Building

Criterion A: Commerce

Based on the above, the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company Building is locally significant under National Register Criterion A for its role in Commerce. As the regional marketing and distribution point for one of the nation’s biggest farm equipment manufacturers, the property exemplifies the industry’s adaptation to changes during a transformative period in American agriculture and society.

In 1900, the country’s population reached 76 million, double what it had been thirty years before. In four key states in Minneapolis’s trade area—Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana—the aggregate population surged from about 475,000 in 1870 to nearly 4.5 million in 1930. Some of these were farmers, and all were consumers of the crops that the farmers produced. The mechanization of agriculture was critical to sustaining this growth. Around World War I—just a century ago—there were over 25 million horses and mules in the United States, an all-time high, and they were the primary source of power on many farms. If farmers had continued to rely on them, agricultural production could not have kept pace with the needs of the mushrooming population.48

“With the adoption of mechanical forms of power in engines, tractors, and electric motors and development of more and more types of adapted equipment to use that power, American agriculture entered a new era of sharply rising productivity,” historian Arnold observed. This ultimately led to “horseless farming,” which was “derided, denounced, and resisted by many who solemnly predicted various evils that would befall agriculture and the Nation in the wake of mechanical power instead of animal power on American farms.” Within a decade of the war, though, “enough had been done . . . in developing combinations of tractors and integrated implements to do satisfactorily all of the major farm operations, that horseless farming began to be demonstrated as practical.” Case was an important player in the mechanization of agriculture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period that “has come, in retrospect, to be viewed as the first in a series of worldwide revolutions in agriculture.”49

47 Hannah Sayle, “After 25 Years, Old Spaghetti Factory Closing in Downtown Minneapolis to Make Way for Pinstripes,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 16, 2019. 48 Erb and Brumbaugh, Full Steam Ahead, 87-88; Valle and Nordstrom, Public Merchandise Warehousing in the Twin Cities, 55; Harold E. Pinches, “Revolution in Agriculture,” in Power to Produce: The Yearbook of Agriculture, 1960 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Government Printing Office, 1960), 4–5. 49 Arnold, Case Tractors: Steam to Diesel, 7; Pinches, “Revolution in Agriculture,” 4–5.

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Changes in the design and function of farm machinery were readily visible aspects of this revolution, but new systems for manufacturing, selling, and distributing these machines were equally significant. This affected many facets of American life. “After the Civil War,” historian Don Kleinhesselink explained, “a mass-market culture developed. . . . Production units became larger, more complex, and more impersonal. . . . Systems of marketing and distribution spread nationwide, aided by the growth of rail transportation and newspaper circulation.”50

This fomented a bumper crop of entrepreneurs like J. I. Case who sought to capitalize on these emerging markets. The company he founded was more successful—far more successful—than most. Kleinhesselink reported that “the number of establishments producing agricultural implements decreased by 50 percent during the latter half of the nineteenth century, yet the value of goods produced increased by 3300%.” Case came into the twentieth century with a substantial lead in the production of steam-powered implements and remained a tenacious survivor in the brutally competitive industry as equipment and market conditions evolved in the twentieth century. Historian Williams noted that “in 1937 the three largest implement houses— International Harvester, Deere, and J. I. Case—sold three-quarters of the farm implements purchased in the United States.”51

In the nineteenth century, equipment was often distributed by jobbers, middlemen between manufacturers and retail dealers. By the turn of the twentieth century, as the industry matured, Case joined other companies in establishing a branch house system to control distribution. Manufacturers developed, owned, and operated branch houses in key locations. Each branch “is in an important regional center and carries a large stock of the equipment and repair parts that may be needed in the territory,” historians E. M. Dieffenbach and R. B. Gray explained. In addition, branches supported the company’s sales force and provided an invaluable knowledge base for dealers in the region, who were sometimes challenged by the operation and maintenance of the company’s ever-evolving machinery. Manufacturing a new labor-saving machine was a major accomplishment but was only the first step in putting it to use. A prospective user had to be convinced to buy it, receive the equipment, and be trained to use it.52

A branch was also an important physical representation of the company and Case was well aware of the building’s symbolic importance. While Case’s Minneapolis branch was smaller than other implement company warehouses in the southside district, it claimed a far more prominent location on Washington Avenue, a major downtown artery, and its classically influenced design was modern compared to the nineteenth-century motifs displayed by the buildings of competitors.

50 Don Kleinhesselink, Reapers and Mowers, Nineteenth-century Iowa Material Culture Series (Des Moines: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1982), ii. 51 Kleinhesselink, Reapers and Mowers, 3; Williams, Fordson, Farmall, and Poppin’ Johnny, 174. 52 E. M. Dieffenbach and R. B. Gray, “The Development of the Tractor,” in Power to Produce: The Yearbook of Agriculture, 1960 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Government Printing Office, 1960), 41.

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J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Criterion A: Community Planning and Development

The property is also eligible under Criterion A in the area of Community Planning and Development. With its prestigious occupant and a corner site on busy Washington Avenue, the building was a strong endorsement of the area’s transformation into a reputable business district. Even before Case started construction, the Minneapolis Tribune acknowledged the project’s role in bolstering the area’s rebirth: “The fact that the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company is about to build a handsome building on the northwest corner of Washington and Seventh [Park] Avenues South in a region which years ago was shunned like a pestilence by pedestrians and police alike, shows how ‘trade’s unfeeling train’ has wrought wonders in the dark nooks of Minneapolis.” In addition to sustaining this positive momentum, the Case building demolished the courtyard of Fish Alley, a center of crime and vice that had challenged efforts to reclaim the area for more reputable commerce. While construction on other parts of the block had weakened the alley’s influence, it took the Case project to eliminate it.53

In the broader context, the new Case branch contributed to a significant surge of construction that reflected Minneapolis’s commercial growth in the early twentieth century. In February 1906, the Minneapolis Tribune ran an extensive article on the “immense increase in building operations” including “plans for constructing more wholesale houses. Minneapolis will build more than ever this year.” The article singled out noteworthy “business blocks, costing all the way from $50,000 to $150,000,” including “two agricultural implement warehouses and office buildings to be put up, one by the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, at Washington Avenue South, and the other in the North Minneapolis wholesale district by the La Crosse Implement Company. Each of these buildings will be of the most modern type of fire-proof warehouses and when completed they will cost upwards of $100,000.” In calling out the Case building, the article highlighted its prominence in the development boom that characterized this important period and left a physical legacy still visible today.54

Period of Significance and Integrity

The period of significance in the areas of both Commerce and Community Planning and Development begins with the building’s completion in 1907 and ends in 1958, the last full year that Case occupied the property. The company moved to suburban Eagan in 1959, joining other businesses in abandoning a decaying urban core that no longer served their needs.

The building has had very few alterations since it was erected. The entry at the corner of Washington and Park Avenues was altered in 1928 and 1936, both projects done during the period of significance. A non-historic, 1959 concrete-block enclosure of a loading dock on the south side covers a common-brick wall and has only a small frontage on Park Avenue. Its utilitarian design has minimal visual impact on the original building, which generally retains very good integrity of location, design, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.

53 “Rapid Progress Being Made.” 54 “Early Spring Activity in the Minneapolis Real Estate Field,” Minneapolis Tribune, February 18, 1906.

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Demolition and new development have altered the building’s setting, no longer a dense concentration of warehouses, but remnants of the historic setting remain. The Case building continues to edge Washington Avenue, a busy transportation corridor. The neighboring Advance Thresher and Emerson-Newton Implement Company Buildings, built before the Case building, as well as the 1910 Great Northern Implement Company Building, rebuilt after the 1910 fire, still stand, reinforcing the physical context of the early twentieth century.

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______9. Major Bibliographical References

Bibliography (Cite the books, articles, and other sources used in preparing this form.)

Anderson, Rolf. “Minneapolis Warehouse Historic District.” National Register of Historic Places nomination form, January 1987.

Arnold, Dave. Case Tractors: Steam to Diesel. Osceola, Wisc.: Motorbooks International, 1990.

“Big Permit.” Minneapolis Tribune, September 3, 1903.

“Big Warehouse on Wash. Av. S.” Minneapolis Journal, April 28, 1903.

“Big Year for Jobbers.” Minneapolis Tribune, January 1, 1896.

“Building News for Week from the Bulletin.” Minneapolis Tribune, December 23, 1906.

“Building News of Past Week.” Minneapolis Tribune, May 21, 1905.

“Building Permits.” Minneapolis Tribune, June 4, 1898.

“Case Company Builds.” Minneapolis Tribune, February 7, 1906.

“Case Dealers Enthusiastic over Product.” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, February 10, 1921.

“Case Started Farm Factory 80 Years Ago.” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, February 5, 1922.

Case Supply Catalog. Racine, Wisc.: J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, 1925.

Case Threshing Machinery, Condensed Edition. Racine, Wisc.: J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, 1913.

“Changes Its Name.” Minneapolis Journal, May 14, 1903.

Currie, Barton W. The Tractor and Its Influence upon the Agricultural Implement Industry. Philadelphia: Curtis Publishing Company, 1916.

Davison’s Minneapolis City Directory 1895. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1895.

Davison’s Minneapolis City Directory 1896. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1896.

United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Davison’s Minneapolis City Directory 1906. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1906.

Davison’s Minneapolis Directory 1912. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1912.

Davison’s Minneapolis Directory 1915. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1915.

Dieffenbach, E. M., and R. B. Gray. “The Development of the Tractor.” In Power to Produce: The Yearbook of Agriculture, 1960, 25–45. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Government Printing Office, 1960.

“Early Spring Activity in the Minneapolis Real Estate Field.” Minneapolis Tribune, February 18, 1906.

Erb, David, and Eldon Brumbaugh. Full Steam Ahead: J. I. Case Tractors and Equipment, 1842– 1955. Saint Joseph, Mich.: American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 1993.

“Fire Destroys Entire Block.” New York Times, May 29, 1910.

Insurance Maps of Mankato, Minnesota. New York: Sanborn Map Company, June 1924.

Insurance Maps of Minneapolis, Minnesota. New York: Sanborn Map Publishing Company, 1885, updated 1889.

“J. E. Gardner Again Head of Tractor Trade Body.” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, April 28, 1922.

“J. I. Case Company, Mankato, Minnesota” (photograph). 1910. At Blue Earth County Historical Society, accessed November 17, 2020, https://reflections.mndigital.org/catalog/ blue:2124.

“The J. I. Case Plant Sold.” Minneapolis Tribune, October 13, 1897.

J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, Sixty-fourth Annual Catalog. Racine, Wisc.: J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, 1906.

Kleinhesselink, Don. Reapers and Mowers. Nineteenth-century Iowa Material Culture Series. Des Moines: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1982.

Leffingwell, Randy. The American Farm Tractor: A History of the Classic Tractor. Osceola, Wisc.: Motorbooks International, 1991.

Millett, Larry. AIA Guide to the Twin Cities. Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007.

United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Miner, Craig. “The New Wave, the Old Guard, and the Bank Committee: William J. Grede at J. I. Case Company, 1953–1961.” Business History Review 61, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 243– 290.

Minneapolis Building Permits and Permit Index Cards for 701–711 Washington Avenue South and 233 Park Avenue South.

Minneapolis City Directory for 1882–1883. Minneapolis: C. Wright Davison, 1882.

Minneapolis City Directory, 1929. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1929.

Minneapolis City Directory, 1936. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1936.

“Modern Buildings to Supplant Ruins.” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, May 29, 1910.

Oliver, John W. History of American Technology. New York: Ronald Press, 1956.

Pinches, Harold E. “Revolution in Agriculture.” In Power to Produce: The Yearbook of Agriculture, 1960, 1–10. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Government Printing Office, 1960.

“Police Gave Fish Alley Lasting Name.” Minneapolis Tribune, February 25, 1906.

Pripps, Robert N., and Andrew Morland. Threshers. Osceola, Wisc.: Motorbooks International, 1992.

“Progress of Construction in City of Minneapolis.” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, October 27, 1907.

“Rapid Progress Being Made in Redemption of the Notorious Fish Alley District.” Minneapolis Tribune, February 18, 1906.

“Real Estate Transfers.” Minneapolis Tribune, May 12, 1903, and July 7, 1903.

Roise, Charlene, and Erin Hanafin Berg. “Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 2005.

Sayle, Hannah. “After 25 Years, Old Spaghetti Factory Closing in Downtown Minneapolis to Make Way for Pinstripes.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 16, 2019.

“Times on Upgrade Belief of Gittins, J. I. Case T. M. Co.” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, February 8, 1922.

United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Valle, Roland S., and Alvin L. Nordstrom. Public Merchandise Warehousing in the Twin Cities. University of Minnesota Studies in Economics and Business No. 3. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1932.

Wendel, C. H. 150 Years of J. I. Case. Sarasota, Fla.: Crestline Publishing, 1991.

Westbrook, Nicholas. A Guide to the Industrial Archeology of the Twin Cities. N.p.: Society for Industrial Archeology, 1983. Prepared for the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

“W. H. Eustis Denies Knowledge of Case Deal.” Minneapolis Tribune, May 16, 1905.

Wik, Reynold M. “Some Experiences of an Early Wisconsin Industrialist.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 35, no. 1 (Autumn 1951): 3–6, 4–67.

Williams, Michael. Farm Tractors in Color. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1974.

Williams, Robert C. Fordson, Farmall, and Poppin’ Johnny: A History of the Farm Tractor and Its Impact on America. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

“Young Man for General Office Work.” Help-wanted advertisement. Minneapolis Tribune, October 25, 1903.

______

Previous documentation on file (NPS):

_X__ preliminary determination of individual listing (36 CFR 67) has been requested ____ previously listed in the National Register ____ previously determined eligible by the National Register ____ designated a National Historic Landmark ____ recorded by Historic American Buildings Survey #______recorded by Historic American Engineering Record # ______recorded by Historic American Landscape Survey # ______

Primary location of additional data: ____ State Historic Preservation Office ____ Other State agency ____ Federal agency ____ Local government _X__ University _X__ Other Name of repository: James K. Hosner Special Collections, Minneapolis Central Library

United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Historic Resources Survey Number (if assigned): _HE-MPC-9842______

______10. Geographical Data

Acreage of Property _.44______

Use either the UTM system or latitude/longitude coordinates

Latitude/Longitude Coordinates Datum if other than WGS84:______(enter coordinates to 6 decimal places) 1. Latitude: Longitude:

2. Latitude: Longitude:

3. Latitude: Longitude:

4. Latitude: Longitude:

Or

UTM References Datum (indicated on USGS map):

NAD 1927 or X NAD 1983

1. Zone: 15 Easting: 479618 Northing: 4980461

Verbal Boundary Description (Describe the boundaries of the property.)

Block 1, lots 1 and 3 of the Washington and Chicago addition to the City of Minneapolis.

Boundary Justification (Explain why the boundaries were selected.) Legal and historic definition of property.

______11. Form Prepared By

name/title: ___Charlene Roise and Jenna Rempfert______organization: ___Hess, Roise and Company______

United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

street & number: __100 North First Street______city or town: _Minneapolis______state: _MN______zip code:__55401___ [email protected]; [email protected] ______telephone:__612-338-1987______date:__December 1, 2020______

______

Additional Documentation

Submit the following items with the completed form:

• Maps: A USGS map or equivalent (7.5 or 15 minute series) indicating the property's location.

• Sketch map for historic districts and properties having large acreage or numerous resources. Key all photographs to this map.

• Additional items: (Check with the SHPO, TPO, or FPO for any additional items.)

Photographs Submit clear and descriptive photographs. The size of each image must be 1600x1200 pixels (minimum), 3000x2000 preferred, at 300 ppi (pixels per inch) or larger. Key all photographs to the sketch map. Each photograph must be numbered and that number must correspond to the photograph number on the photo log. For simplicity, the name of the photographer, photo date, etc. may be listed once on the photograph log and doesn’t need to be labeled on every photograph.

Photo Log

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_001 West and north facades, looking southeast.

United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_002 North facade, looking south.

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_003 Detail of main entrance on west facade, looking east.

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_004 West and south facades, looking northeast.

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_005 South and east facades, looking northwest. The loading dock addition is left; loading dock to the right is part of the East End Apartments.

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert

United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_006 View of the first floor with elevator shaft in background, looking southwest.

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_007 View of the third floor, looking south.

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_008 View of the freight elevator shaft, looking south. Elevator equipment left in situ.

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_009 View of historic doorway and fire doors in basement, looking southwest.

Name of Property: J. I. Case Building City or Vicinity: Minneapolis County: Hennepin State: Minnesota Photographer: Jenna Rempfert Date Photographed: October 28, 2020 MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_010 View of south stair at first floor looking to basement, looking north.

United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No. 1024-0018

J. I. Case Building Hennepin, Minnesota Name of Property County and State

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NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 1

J. I. Case Building 233 Park Avenue Minneapolis, Hennepin County, Minnesota Coordinates: 44.977336°, -93.2584974°

LEGEND

J. I. Case Building

1,000 ft.

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 2

LEGEND

J. I. Case Building

100 ft.

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 3

Exterior Photo Key

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 4

First Floor Photo Key

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 5

Third Floor Photo Key

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 6

Basement Photo Key

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 7

INDEX TO FIGURES

Figure 1: An 1880s map showing Fish Alley on Block 45, accessed from Washington Avenue (label added) to the north. The alley accessed a courtyard that was eliminated by the construction of the Case building on the block’s northwest corner, ending the criminal activities that had been concentrated there. (Detail from Insurance Maps of Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1885, updated to 1889, vol. 1, sheet 6)

Figure 2: An advertisement for Case “kerosene tractors” in an issue of Minnesota Farm Review from December 8, 1919, emphasizing the company’s advantages as a major implement manufacturer and features the trademark eagle, “Old Abe,” atop a globe.

Figure 3: A newspaper photograph from 1907, the year the building was completed, shows roof signs on Washington and Park Avenues and “Old Abe” capping the corner. The caption calls the Case building “one of the most imposing structures on lower Washington Avenue.” It incorrectly labels the building “J. I. Case Implement Home,” reflecting the long-standing confusion between the manufacturer-owned J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company and the jobber J. I. Case Implement Company. (“Progress of Construction in City of Minneapolis,” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, October 27, 1907)

Figure 4: A loading dock projected from the south side of the Case building, providing convenient access to the rail spur. A painted sign on the wall identified the property. (City of Minneapolis)

Figure 5: Figure 5: A painted sign is visible on the east side of the Case building in this 1941 view, which looks west on Washington Avenue. (Minnesota Historical Society)

Figure 6: Case’s Mankato branch on Front Street with “Old Abe” on the roof is in the foreground of this 1910 photograph. (“J. I. Case Company, Mankato, Minnesota,” 1910, Blue Earth County Historical Society, accessed November 17, 2020, https://reflections.mndigital.org/catalog/blue:2124)

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 8

Washington Avenue

Figure 1. NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 3

Figure 2.

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 4

Figure 3.

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 5

Figure 4.

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 6

Figure 5.

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Control No. 1024-0018

United States Department of the Interior J. I. Case Building Put Here National Park Service Name of Property

Hennepin, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places County and State

Continuation Sheet Name of multiple listing (if applicable)

Section number Additional Information Page 7

Figure 6. MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0001 1 of 10 West and north facades, looking southeast. MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0002 2 of 10 North facade, looking south.

MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0003 3 of 10 Detail of main entrance on west facade, looking east. MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0004 4 of 10 West and south facades, looking northeast. MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0005 5 of 10 South and east facades, looking northwest. The loading dock addition is left; loading dock to the right is part of the East End Apartments. MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0006 6 of 10 View of the first floor with elevator shaft in background, looking southwest. MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0007 7 of 10 View of the third floor, looking south.

MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0008 8 of 10 View of the freight elevator shaft, looking south. Elevator equipment left in situ. MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0009 9 of 10 View of historic doorway and fire doors in basement, looking southwest.

MN_Hennepin County_J. I. Case Building_0010 10 of 10 View of south stair at first floor looking to basement, looking north.