Commercial & Industrial Buildings, McFadden Coffee & Spice Company, Factory & Warehouse, 145 First Street, Dubuque, Dubuque County, IA

Significance: James and Edward McFadden formed the McFadden Brothers Grocery and Provisions Store in 1884 on the southwest corner of Fifth and Main streets. Two years later, in August 1886, they dissolved the partnership and formed the McFadden Coffee and Spice Company with Joseph McFadden and John A. McKinlay to import, manufacture and import coffee, ground spices, coconut, chocolate, hops, soap and baking powder. After an initial period of hardship, the company began a period of continuous expansion that would culminate with the construction of this structure. With its office and plant in the Bush Building on Main Street [HABS NO. IA-160-BG], the firm took over one of its competitors, the coffee and spice business of J.P. Farley, in 1890 and hired more salesmen. McFadden shortly thereafter added tea to its product line and took over the plant of the Pritchard Buggy Top Company [HABS IA-160-BH]. As the McFadden company expanded its sales rapidly throughout Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas during the 1890s, the firm moved into the double store of the defunct Mitchell Tranfer House and then occupied three more buildings. In December 1902 the McFadden Coffee and Spice Company was incorporated with a capitalization of $100,000. With James McFadden as president and Joseph McFadden as secretary, the firm was finally able to consolidate its operation on October 1, 1910, when it moved into this immense factory and warehouse - "a model of perfection," according to a 1911 Dubuque business gazetteer. Built at a time in which reinforced concrete frame construction for buildings was beginning to gain rapidly in popularity, the McFadden Factory and Warehouse is architecturally significant as a novel and innovative foray into the new use of a material: one of Dubuque's earliest truly fireproof buildings. It is historically significant for its association with the McFadden Coffee and Spice Company, a successful representative of one of the city's secondary industries.
Survey number: HABS IA-160-H
Building/structure dates: 1910 Initial Construction