Commercial & Industrial Buildings, Kretschmer Manufacturing Company, Factory & Warehouse, 220 East Ninth Street, Dubuque, Dubuque County, IA

Significance: Herbert C. Kretschmer was born in Dubuque on August 2, 1866; his brother, Frederick N. Kretschmer, was also born in the city, on October 19, 1869. Herbert began his working career at age fifteen as a plumber's assistant for Morrison Brothers and then worked as a shipping clerk, and later as a traveling salesman, for the A.Y. McDonald Manufacturing Company, Dubuque's mammoth plumbing fixture manufacturer. Frederick, meanwhile began his employ as a clerk in a Dubuque bank, and was eventually elected to the position of county treasurer. In February 1907 the two brothers joined with a man named Morrison (first name unknown; perhaps one of the Morrison Brothers, plumbers) to incorporate the Morrison and Kretschmer Manufacturing Company. With capitalization of $40,000 the firm produced and marketed plumbing fixtures and supplies, most notably the "double-flush" water closet and bath and basin traps. The association with Morrison lasted only a short time, however, and by 1910 the firm was known simply as the Kretschmer Manufacturing Company. "They started out in a small way," Dubuque' historian Franklin Oldt stated in 1911, "but by shrewd business management prospered until today their establishment is regarded as one of the solid and substantial houses in the city." By that time the company employed forty men and occupied the immense four-story, 15,000 square-foot facility of the defunct Pitts-Thompson Foundry on the corner of Washington and Ninth streets. On July 31, 1911, the factory was destroyed by a block-wide fire, and within a year the brothers had built this three-story building as a replacement. In reality, the Kretschmer Company was one of the smaller manufacturers in Dubuque's huge iron fabricating industry. Dwarfed by such nationally known firms as the A.Y. McDonald Manufacturing Company, the Iowa Iron Works and the Novelty Iron Works, Kretschmer's production was relatively minor. With its flat-slab concrete construction and steel jacket-formed mushroom columns, the 1912 factory reflected the current fireproof technology for industrial and commercial structures. It was built at a time in which concrete frame construction for buildings was beginning to gain rapidly in popularity as an innovative application of a developing technology: one of Dubuque's earliest truly fireproof buildings.
Survey number: HABS IA-160-AL
Building/structure dates: 1912 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1950 Subsequent Work