Foreign Lands: How Much for that Tomato?

I had a few minutes to spare in the general vicinity of downtown St. Paul, so I went on by to check out the Penfield. Because at the frequency at which I visit downtown St. Paul, it's still something "new" over across the river. At the risk of going a little fanboy (young people still say that, right?), it was great and if I had reason to live abroad in foreign lands, it would be a great place to live. There's a beautiful grocery store right in the building and craft beer and good pizza right across the street.

Even better, there's a nearby ghost sign!

This sign, which reads, "Produce Exchange Bank" and offers residential, auto and real estate loans, is on the side of the Produce Exchange Building. The building apparently dates to 1915 and presumably was the home of the bank. Its seems there used to be a large market next door, and the building was turned into lofts in 2004.

A newspaper called the Chicago Packer reported in December of 1927 that the bank was temporarily closed by state authorities investigating whether its funds were used by the bank's Executive Vice President to dispose of stolen bonds. The bank was involved in a 1942 Minnesota Supreme Court usury case, the facts of which sound a little interesting (there shouldn't be a question whether you borrowed money from the bank or it's president personally), so its seems that the Chicago Packer's concern for the hardship on the city's produce traders should the bank never reopen was premature.

Santo Speranza was the bank president in 1942, and it seems the Speranza family continued with the  bank for some time. Indeed, there's a scholarship at St. Kate's endowed by Mildred Speranza who was president of the bank from 1960-1980. According to the announcement for that stipend, it was a "family bank [that] helped Italian immigrants in the early 20th century secure funding to buy homes and start businesses" and she was one of the first women bank presidents.

Turns out there are interesting stories in the city's past. Who knew?

Here's another shot from flickr, Apparently you can live there. Here's the building sometime before 1920.

Foreign Lands: From The Association For Creative Building Names

This post #130, so I'm supposed to have something I can sort of call a landmark here.  And I'm also not supposed to have signs from outside Minneapolis.  But I'm having trouble reconciling those two rules right now, as I haven't got any good local landmark ideas at the moment, so I'm going to St. Paul.

The first Google result for this one calls it the "historic Minnesota building" so I'm going to hang my landmark hat on that.  (The antitrust lawyer in me will just note without further comment that the first result is also a Google+ local site.  Hey, look!  Yelp! has a site too.)

You can watch a video of the building's "grand opening" from February of last year, which includes some historical information.  But the building was built in 1929 and was built to be upscale offices, but soon became infested with lawyers.  Keeping up with my architectural credentials, I can tell you that it's Art Deco, and was the first in that style in St. Paul.  It's now mixed use, apartments (137 units with 10 reserved for formerly homeless residents), retail and office space.  Way to go St. Paul!

Wikipedia will give you detailed description of the design.  You can get more photos here and here.

Foreign Lands: Where's The Schnitzel?

We're back in St. Paul, where I found a gem of a place.  Not surprisingly, it's near the railroad tracks, but it's also right on 7th St, but over on the east side.  I'm not confident that we're going to find a lot in the history category, but it's a pretty cool building with great signs.

Today, it seemed to be low-end housing, although when I stopped there was a fancy SUV parked out front, which in my fantasy meant people planning to renovate.  We'll have to see.

Anyway, as you can see, Charles E. Eschbach seemed to have a meat market here.  It seems the Charles was born in 1890 and lived only until 1959.  His son was also named Charles and is buried in Elmhurst Cemetery in St. Paul.  It seems he might have furnished some meat to a family quarantined due to small pox in 1900, but that's about all I have.

So let's look for the flour.  It seems the Dwight Flour was from Moorhead (speaking of traitorous foreign lands), so that probably explains why the place isn't still operating.  Although this ad suggest maybe they were in Minneapolis too. So confusing.  But one thing is clear. It was made from only Red River wheat.

Someone already got better pictures than mine (better light and more capable photographer, probably) and posted them to Flickr.  It sees that some of the neighbors are gone.

Foreign Lands: Not The Guy From Ulysses

We've been hanging near home lately, so let's take a little trip to the east.  Let's go back to St. Paul, in the very same alley we visited before.  But this sign is going to be a little less iconic than Norwest bank.

This one says "John E. Blomquist Inc.," who apparently did "management" and were "realtors."  It's yet another local Scandinavian name, so I'm not too confident we'll find anything about Mr. Blomquist or his company, but at least this one has a slightly abnormal spelling.

Apparently there is a John E. Bloomquist (note, two Os) from Montana, who shows up in court filings from time to time.  But as there is clearly only one O in our sign, that can't be our guy.  Let's see what else we can find.

Ah hah! This looks to be our guy.  JEBCO Group, Inc., previously known as John E. Blomquist Company, was founded in 1923 in St. Paul by a gentleman of that name.  To this day, they seem to do mortgages and property management, after starting out as a full service real estate firm.  Presumably it was that old guy who commissioned the painting of this sign.  The company was able to avoid a very small award of punitive damages in 1977, when the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that punitive damages weren't available for contract disputes.  It's actually kind of hard to believe that a dispute over $500 could be cost-effective to appeal to the state Supreme Court, but then again, the company's law firm has since folded, so maybe that was typical for them.

It seems that in 2009, someone with the same name, probably not Senior unless he was very old, was the CEO of BancMidwest, which entered into an agreement with the Federal Reserve in connection with its restructuring.  My guess is that this Blomquist is the son or other descendant of our founding Blomquist.

Update:  Shortly after writing this, I began reading Steig Larsson's novels (probably the last to get around to it), and realized I probably should have gone with a reference to his works instead of the strained Joyce reference in the title.  Granted, had the thought occurred to me, I probably would have been tempted to add yet another level of obscurity and gone from Steig to The Stig and Top Gear (or The Stig and Top Gear).

Foreign Lands: I'm Not Even Gonna Comment

This is a beautiful building at a beautiful intersection in a beautiful location but, well, read that sign.  Here's a close up:

Okay, so it's not a really a ghost and it's not really paint on brick.  But still.  How could I not?  It makes me wonder about our local community.  Is it good that we take ownership of potentially offensive terms?  Or is a bad that we use them?

Anyone have some lefse?

Foreign Lands: Money Is A Ball

So my re-commitment to the mission didn't last long, but what can I say?  I went into my archive of backlogged Minneapolis signs and wasn't inspired, so it's back to strange and mysterious land of St. Paul.

Minnesotans of a certain age will remember Norwest, which was acquired by Wells Fargo in 1997.  Before there was a consolidated Norwest, Northwestern National Bank was the anchor of a multi-state bank affiliation that dated to the 1920s that helped its members survive the great depression.

I may be wrong, but in my memory Norwest was the first bank in the Twin Cities to offer free checking, which makes me remember it fondly (low bar for positive bank feelings, eh?).  The Norwest logo used to be a common site around town.

As to less common sites, Norwest's "weatherball" in downtown Minneapolis is too good not to include.  I don't have any memory of it, but apparently they had a 157 foot tower on the top of their headquarters, which was largest bank sign between Chicago and the west coast (do you think people stopped to see it after checking out the largest ball of twine?).  At the top was a color-changing ball that would give you a primitive weather forecast.  Minnesotans love a good weather prediction, so the ball grew in popularity until it became central to the bank's marketing (check him out lounging on the beach in the first link of this paragraph).  It was actually popular enough to prompt a local news report in 2007.

Alas, the ball went down with the rest of the bank's headquarters in a destructive fire on Thanksgiving day in 1982.

You can see another shot of the sign on Flickr.

Foreign Lands: Austin With A Tarpaulin? Behave!

Sometimes in this "business," signs defy your expectations. Before I Googled (sorry, Larry Page, but I'm going to continue using it as a verb), I didn't think I'd be able to find out much about Powers Dry Goods. I figured it would be a long forgotten, single-location retailer in St. Paul that the internet never heard of.

But no. Its even got its own wikipedia page. Powers was a department store, founded under a different name, but renamed in 1881 when it was acquired by the Powers brothers of St. Paul. In 1903, The New York Times (pdf) announced the arrival (to something) of Mr. Knox and Miss Holland of the company as buyers. At it's peak it had 7 locations in the Twin Cities.

It was acquired again by Associated Dry Goods in 1920, which itself was acquired by Donaldsons. Minnesotans of sufficient age will remember when Donaldsons and Daytons were the two rival department stores, when each of the "dale" shopping centers around the metro area was anchored by both. Those days ended when the company was acquired again in 1987 and all the locations were converted to the Carson Pirie Scott brand, which didn't work out so well. After bankruptcy, Daytons ended up buying them (an interesting development from a competition perspective), but like nearly all department store tales these days, the story ends in a ultimate acquisition by Macy's. All hail the conquering May Company!

This sign is at 4th & Wacouta in Lowertown. It's previously been featured on Writing On The Wall and Flickr, while Nokohaha has an old postcard of the Minneapolis location and some additional history. The Historical Society gives us visual evidence of the sale of war bonds to ladies in Minneapolis (no word on whether the counterman went to stag parties at the Calhoun Building) and of a monstrous, man-eating, precursor to Disney's Flounder ostensibly created as a Christmas display in 1949.

Finally, yes, I'm try to set new lows in dorky post titles.

Foreign Lands: Foreign Landmarks

For post #70, I'm breaking the rules a bit. Not that you guys would know, as these rules aren't written down anywhere, but I felt I needed to confess anyway. I'm not supposed to put foreign signs up here in the the premier, round-number spots. But right now that rule is in tension with the rule that every tenth posts is supposed to be something that can be legitimately called a landmark. It's a conundrum.

Anyway, I will console myself with the fact that it is at least beer. And, thanks to St. Paul's apparent lack of local loyalty, it's also beer we haven't covered before. So we've got that going for us. Which is nice.

It's the old Jacob Schmidt brewery. Jacob Schmidt immigrated from Bavaria in 1865, and after stints working at the Hamm and Schell breweries, moved to St. Paul and started brewing in 1884. After the original brewery burned down in 1900, they moved to this location on W. 7th St. The company stayed independent until 1955, before the first of several subsequent acquisitions. Schmidt stopped brewing at this location in 1990.

There have been subsequent attempts to make a go of it again, including by the Minnesota Brewing Company in 1991. They brewed the Pig's Eye, Landmark (as you can see, this landmark is also conveniently labelled "Landmark") and Grain Belt brands here until shutting down for good in 2002. Today there is talk of re-developing the space.

Be safe out there, because Big Jim is coming (apparently the American sportsman is afraid of him). Good thing you don't need a glass.

ETA: I can't believe that I let you down, esteemed reader, by failing to make the obvious Mongo reference. I wonder if the Candy Gram trick would work on Big Jim.

Foreign Lands: Trout Or Seat Covers

We're back in St. Paul, not far from our favorite many-signed wall, with Jax Manufacturing Co. and friends. At first, I couldn't help but think of the exciting trout "fishing" opportunities of Jax Cafe, in particular because a friend was recently ignorantly mocking Minnesota fishing by referencing trout fishing in a stocked pond, but I think this is something different.

Writing On The Wall has already been here, noting that there are actually several layers of signs here. I'd like to explore the partially-covered signs, but I can't make out enough to go down that route, so I guess I have to stick to Jax. Unfortunately, I haven't got much on them either, except that some of them made seat covers for "autos" in 1940.

No surprise, but I'm not the first to snap it at 253 E. 4th St.

Foreign Lands: One Wall; Several Signs: The Final Countdown

As our friends at Writing On The Wall have always recognized, this all is the side of the Master Framer's building. Naturally, they have their own sign. It's more than a little faded, but they have been offering custom picture and mirror frames, and restorations, since 1959. They are open during the light rail construction, which will one day allow me to ride in air conditioned (and perhaps more importantly heated) comfort across the Mississippi and over to Lowertown. Open, mind you, but not troubled to repaint their sign.

Foreign Lands: One Wall; Several Signs pt 2

We covered the more important beer aspects of this particular vertical fantasy of brick and paint in an earlier post. This time we have a product that "tastes better," which clearly must be a taste-sensing robot designed to surpass even the greatest sommelier in identifying the berry and citrus notes in fine wine. What's that you say? It's actually a Coca-Cola ad from the 1950s? And the whole "mistake a commonly understood statement for something else implausible schtick isn't actually funny?"

Okay, well, you don't have to be so mean about it.

Of course we also an ad for Anderson & Hedwall, which seems to have confounded prior blog attempts to identify it. Applying the best of both my google and legal fu, I can tell you they got sued. A workman's comp decision from 1940 says that some guy who was an "electrotyper" got a hernia, so I'm guess that means it was a print shop. Take that blogosphere!

Foreign Lands: One Wall; Several Signs

This wall, on the side of 262 E. 4th near Wacouta in St. Paul, has several ghost signs. I've decided to deal with them individually, but you can get a preview of them all over on Writing On The Wall.

Naturally, I've also decided to start with the beer. And, naturally, as we are in foreign lands, we also have a sign for foreign beer. Being St. Paul, you would think it would be for the local brew, but no, this is even worse. It's beer from Milwaukee. Can you image? Apparently that city simply has no pride.

Unfortunately I can't say for sure which Milwaukee beer it is, because someone decided to put a pair of windows directly in the name. It looks to me like it ends in a Z, so my guess it was either Blatz or Schlitz. Regardless, neither is from the land of the sky blue waters.

Foreign Lands: Better Than Punch Cards

Behold! The computing power of reel-to-reel tape! Nothing says high tech like guys in suits, horned rim glasses, and flat tops. Despite appearances, Control Data made some of the fasted computers of the 1960s. The company had its origins in WWII code-breaking for the Navy, but via some time as part of Sperry, by 1957 it had set up shop in an old warehouse here in Minneapolis. You will not be surprised that this early history of computing is well documented on the interwebs. Apparently web types like computers. Who knew?

Historical Society doesn't seem to have a shot of this location, but a scroll through the search results for Control Data is still interesting, if nothing else for images of the various buildings around the Twin Cities. This used to be big business. Big enough that they moved houses in the Marshall-Dale area to build its world distribution center.

The last bit of the company was sold off in 1999. I haven't been able to find out whether they have offices at this location, but I rather appreciate that the developers of this building, which looks to now be housing, left the better part of this sign for posterity. This way we all get to remember when Minnesota was a hot bed of computing (take that, Silicon Valley!).

Foreign Lands: Its Own Juvenile Joke

I still have a backlog of Minneapolis signs, and many neighborhoods left to explore, but some day those resources will be exhausted, and it's fun to explore other places too, so I'm going to occasionally bring you signs from foreign lands. This one is truly exotic, from strange and alien confines of downtown St. Paul. If any of you are ever brave enough to venture there yourselves, come prepared, it's truly the wild, um, east.

I remember radio ads for Butwinick's from my childhood. As you can imagine, it's a name that a tween would remember. I'm surprised I've not found more about the store's history on the internet, but Writing On The Wall says it was in operation from the '30s to the '90s. I'm guessing that its closure was just before everything started getting documented digitally on the web. Apparently a scion of the family now owns a mattress store.

From the Historical Society's photo archives we learn that Butwinick's store had a fire in 1949, which led to a big sale that drew a big crowd. And here's another shot from Flickr.

The sign's on the corner of 7th and Sibley, which looks like it's actually a few doors down from the original store.