by William Beyer, FAIA

Our architectural firm — Stageberg Beyer Sachs, Inc. — was responsible for designing and administering construction of the University’s Elmer L. Andersen Library. The Northwest Architectural Archive (NAA) was one part of our unusual, nine-headed client.

As a practicing architect, I have exercised my interest in writing, contributing almost a hundred articles to Architecture Minnesota magazine over 30 years. About a decade ago, I began writing for both Ramsey and Hennepin County history magazines and became a trustee of the St. Louis Park Historical Society, eventually editing and writing its quarterly newsletter, the ReEcho.

Material from the NAA has grounded my writing for several articles over the decades, most recently regarding our Society’s research on the 1874 Globe Mill on Minnehaha Creek. William P. Day and son Horatio N. Day, who had come to Minnesota in 1849, built the Globe Mill in 1874.

Minnesota History magazine had published an article by noted Minnesota architect and historian Foster Dunwiddie in 1975 which had been oft-quoted over the years. Based on our Society’s more recent research we had already determined that Foster located the Globe incorrectly, and we knew approximately where it had been.

But after reading an article in the St. Louis Park Dispatch from 1951, we learned that the architects of a new warehouse and headquarters building on Excelsior Blvd for Salkin and Linhoff Industries had been Liebenberg & Kaplan Architects-the celebrated firm that designed many of Minnesota’s landmark theaters such as the Uptown, the NorShor in Duluth along with Temple Israel in Minneapolis.

An email to NAA Curator Cheryll Fong last summer gave us a chance to examine the architects’ Salkin and Linhoff files which had been saved at the NAA along with many of the firm’s more well-known projects.

In less than an hour, we struck gold. A project site plan at 1” = 50’ scale was among the drawings in the file. It included existing site topography, reference to a benchmark on Excelsior Blvd, and dashed lines noting existing foundations to be removed prior to construction. The largest foundation and its location and orientation on the site along with aerial photo evidence from Minnesota Historic Aerial Photos Online (MHAPO) left no doubt that it belonged to the elusive Globe Mill.

In 1951, construction of the Salkin and Linhoff building erased all physical evidence of the mill. Around 1987, the warehouse/headquarters itself was in turn demolished to provide a parking lot for the next-door company, Japs-Olson Printing.

We are grateful to the NAA for preserving one fragile pencil drawing on white tracing paper — among thousands in its collections — that helped the St. Louis Park Historical Society more fully tell the Globe story.

The Rise and Fall of Minnehaha Creek’s Milling Industry

Like the other mills, the Globe Mill passed through several hands of ownership until Peter Schussler became the sole operator and owner of the mill from 1882 until he sold it in 1896. The mill was ultimately dismantled in 1898.

The Globe Mill was a small frame structure with an attached cooper shop that made the barrels in which the flour was shipped in. The Globe Mill ran a profitable business, operating a yield of 125 barrels of flour per day with a six man crew. A rail spur extended to the Globe Mill, which proved to be very helpful when the mill landed a contract to ship 80 barrels of flour daily to a company in Scotland.
— From Minnesota Historian. “The Rise and Fall of Minnehaha Creek’s Milling Industry” by Josh Biber. Aug. 14, 2022.