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- Butler Square is the crown jewel of the Minneapolis Warehouse District. The multi-story recesses that unify the windows and make deep shadows on the facade create this imposing brick building's distinctive look.
- Butler Square rests on a piece of property that once housed a 1,800-seat Athletic Park, home of the Minneapolis Millers and the St. Paul Saints. Historians believed that the stadium's home plate once rested at First Avenue North and Sixth Street North. The best estimate of its exact location today is that it was near Champps' main door and Butler Square's "A" elevator bank.
- In 1900 T. B. Walker (who eventually founded the Walker Art Center) bought the 1.4 acre "baseball block" and with partner Levi Butler, decided to use the site for a nine story warehouse building.
- In 1906 construction began on the Butler Brothers Building, a 500,000 sq. ft. warehouse for the Butler Brothers Company, a mail order retailing firm. It was built by T. B. Walker and was designed by architect Harry W. Jones at a time when American Architecture was shifting from the applied order of ornamentation to the directness of structural simplicity. Its thick interior masonry bearing walls, cut by vertical recessed windows and topped by corbelled parapets, give it the air of an austere medieval fortress. The interior was a true reflection of its functional intent. Heavy timber post and beam construction provided the 300 pound per square foot loading requirements of the warehouse. The Douglas Fir timbers were taken from Walker's own tree farm and lumber mill in tiny Aitken, Minnesota, precut and put together on a module measuring approximately 14' by 16'. The columns which receive the beams with cast iron brackets, gradually diminish in size from 24" square on the ground floor to a spindly 9" on the ninth floor.
- Horses were used in the warehouse operation during the turn of the century and were stabled in the basement. Also in the basement were three huge coal fired boilers. Mechanical elevators facilitated the movement of material throughout the building. Twice as long as it is wide, the building is divided in half by a 3' thick fire wall. When it was completed, the Minneapolis Journal described it as "one of the most commanding buildings in Minneapolis". It was the largest wholesale facility west of Chicago at the time.
- Selecting Harry W. Jones (born 1859, died 1935) as the architect for an industrial warehouse would have to be described as unusual. The reputation that this MIT graduate had established for himself was primarily in the field of "Church Architecture". He designed the Scottish Rite Temple, 2011 Dupont Avenue South, the Calvary Baptist Church, 2608 Blaisdale Avenue, and the award-winning Lakewood Cemetery Chapel. He also was the architect of the Washburn water tower, the old Imperial Hotel (torn down to make way for the Hyatt Regency) as well as many luxury homes in the Minneapolis area. With those commissions he displayed a gift for working with sophisticated materials and talented artisans and established himself as one of the premier architects of the area.
- When the Butler Building was completed in 1908, it hosted as one of its first tenants, the Butler Brothers, a small goods retailer with a thriving mail order business. Eventually the company started a chain of department stores in small towns in the Upper Midwest. The Butler Building served as a distribution center and showroom for the company, even boasting a rail spur for the loading of merchandise into boxcarts bound for the Butler Brothers stores. For many years business boomed. As highways were extended throughout the region and trucking started to complete with the railroads, the congested urban location and multi-story design of the Butler Building rendered it obsolete.
- The building was eventually sold to Ben Franklin Stores, which used it as a warehouse until 1962. For the next decade the
structure found use only for storage.
- In 1971, the Butler Brothers Warehouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was recognized as one of the foremost architectural designs in Minneapolis.
- In 1972, the Butler Brothers Building was purchased by Charles Coyer, a Washington, D. C. based developer, who teamed up with Arvid Elness, then working for Miller Hanson Westerback Bell, Inc., to revive the aging warehouse and make the east half into an office-retail complex, with stores on the first two levels and offices in the upper seven. Actual renovation work began in the fall of 1973 and was completed in the fall of 1974. Key decisions involved the sensitive treatment of the exterior wall (the only portion of the building governed by preservation restrictions of the National Register of Historic Places), the introduction of the central atrium and the use of the raised floor to distribute mechanical and electrical systems and preserve the natural wood ceilings. The east half of the building, upon completion, received a 1974 honor award from the Minnesota Society of Architects, the 1975 honor award from the American Institute of Architects, the Bartlett Award for buildings designed for accessibility to the handicapped, as well as being featured in dozens of publications.
- The development of an atrium in Butler Square is probably the key ingredient to its economic value and success. As a warehouse, too much interior space was trapped in the center for each floor without windows of natural light to be marketed successfully as office or commercial space. This, plus the relatively small exterior window openings, necessitated introducing more natural light into the building. The atrium concept first originated with the Egyptians, who used large clear story openings to light interior space of large one level structures.
- In 1979, James Binger, a former Honeywell chief executive officer and theater impresario, purchased Butler Square to develop the west half of the building. Special attention was given to a design that would be compatible with the first phase and improve on its performance. High efficiency mechanical and lighting systems were incorporated to minimize energy use. More of the existing structure was left in the atrium to expose the structural dignity of heavy timber construction. Three "glass-backed" elevators, located central to the atrium, provided a dramatic view of the space. Occupancy was achieved in 10 months with a "fast-track" construction system requiring the architect and contractor to begin design and construction at the same time.
- The successful rebirth of Butler Square served as a catalyst for the surrounding area and was responsible for much of the restoration that has taken place in the Warehouse District.
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100 NORTH SIXTH STREET MINNEAPOLIS MINNESOTA 55403 |
