With a foundation as a sophisticated mail-order operation that began in 1889, Sears Roebuck & Company successfully created the role of “buyer for the American farm” by connecting rural people to retail goods. Its goals were to reach communities in rural areas that had limited access to retail stores and to provide affordable and quality goods that might otherwise only be found in the largest cities.

On August 8, 1927, Memphis Mayor Rowlett Paine officially opened the Memphis Sears distribution center and retail store in the Crosstown neighborhood. As one of ten nationwide distribution centers, the Crosstown facility was one of the last three catalog centers to be opened prior to the Great Depression.

The initial 650,000 square-foot facility was built in only 180 days and eventually grew to a 1.5 million square-foot complex. The catalog distribution function of the building remained in use until 1993, when all catalog sales nationwide at Sears were discontinued. Partial operations were also relocated to newer warehouse facilities in other parts of Memphis, and the building was abandoned.

In the late 1800s, Fall River, Massachusetts, had become one of the country’s leading textile regions in America and, by the turn of the century, housed more than 1 million spindles in operation, second in the world to only Manchester, England. Originally known as the Bradford Durfee Textile School, the facility opened its doors in 1904 to provide advanced courses in textile manufacturing and chemistry to educate the rapidly growing population of local mill workers.

The school was named by the school’s original landowner, Miss Sarah S. Brayton, a descendant of local textile industry pioneer and Civil War veteran Maj. Bradford Dufree. Classes initially offered included advanced designing, electrical laboratory, motor testing, hand warping, loom, mechanical drawing, and machine shop.

The school expanded over the years and started to offer additional courses of study, eventually gaining the ability to award Bachelor’s degrees. At that point, the school’s name was changed to the Bradford Durfee College of Technology. In 1960, it merged with a neighboring technical institute to form the Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute and, in 1991, was acquired and merged with several branches of the University of Massachusetts to become UMass Dartmouth, vacating the building in the transition. A local community college briefly took over some of the space for classes but left nearly 20 years ago. The building has since sat vacant, awaiting a new use.

The 74,000 square foot, five-building campus will soon become the Creative Class Lofts and provide 44 market-rate apartments, 11 affordable apartments for practicing artists, and 23,345 square feet of commercial, community, and retail space.

Anchoring the commercial portion of the building will be the Spectrum Empowerment Project and the Youth Musical Theater Corporation (YMTC). Spectrum provides autistic adults with an alternate path to college and employment through economic independence, social growth, and creative expression. YMTC is a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization that provides young people with the opportunity to participate in theatrical experiences and produces two Broadway-style musicals each year. The building will also include a 170-seat event space/black box theater to support these groups, as well as an art gallery open to the public.

Groundwork, a Massachusetts-based coworking space provider, will be opening a new site within Creative Class Lofts after celebrating five years of successful growth in their New Bedford location. The Groundwork space will provide coworking memberships and support several local businesses, including Entrepreneurship for All (“E for All”), a year-long small business incubation program.

The historic General Electric complex and its contribution to the community began in 1881 with the establishment of the Fort Wayne Electric Company. After meeting with the inventor of one of the earliest variations of arc lighting, local entrepreneur Ranald Macdonald established the Fort Wayne electric company to manufacture and sell the Jenney arc lighting system for Indiana and four other states. Within four years, the Fort Wayne Electric Works had grown from a start-up enterprise to a successful and growing business. By 1892, Fort Wayne Electric caught the eye of and was acquired by the General Electric (GE) company, one of the three largest electrical companies in the country at the time.

Upon taking control of the Fort Wayne Electric Works, General Electric invested heavily in expanding its operations in Fort Wayne. Through World War I and into the heady economic years of the 1920s, the company continued to grow exponentially. The company was at the forefront of the rise of electrical streetcar systems and the leader of electrical consumer appliances. As America electrified, General Electric grew rapidly. By the mid-1940s, the complex supported more than 20,000 employees.

However, through these decades, GE’s national footprint continued to expand and its prioritization of the Fort Wayne location began to diminish. By the 1950s, the Fort Wayne location was no longer the epicenter of GE’s key business. Over the ensuing years, production and employment levels at the Broadway campus dropped consistently and at times significantly as GE shifted production to newer, more efficient factories with cheaper and typically non-union workforces. Thus beginning in the Post-World War II years, the Broadway campus no longer served as a singular symbol of Fort Wayne’s industrial-strength, but rather one of many GE assets to be managed by GE’s corporate headquarters in Schenectady, New York. The company permanently closed the 39-acre complex in 2015 and it was acquired in 2017 for redevelopment by a partnership led by Durham-based Ancora Partners.

The history of the American Snuff Company can be traced back to 1782 with the founding of Garrett Scotch Snuff, one of the earliest producers of the smokeless tobacco product in the country and one of the first 10 patents to be issued in America. In 1900, Garrett Scotch merged with several major tobacco empires of the time, to form the first iteration of the American Snuff Company. This merger, however, created a monopoly on tobacco products and was divided into three separate companies in 1907.

The new American Snuff Company, under the management of Martin J. Condon Sr., a former Mayor of Knoxville, constructed the Memphis warehouse in 1912 to house the production, packaging, and distribution of their snuff products. Condon chose the Memphis location due to its proximity to a high-quality dark-fired tobacco farming region known as the ‘Black Patch,’ as well as its central location and well-connected rail hub.

The American Snuff Company prospered under Condon’s direction through the 1930s. The Wall Street Journal called the American Snuff Company “depression proof,” after a decision to broaden product lines to include sweet-flavored snuff resulted in higher sales than the company’s pre-depression years. During this period the Memphis plant was featured heavily in the company’s advertising campaigns as well as those for the city of Memphis.

During the 1940s and 1950s, women comprised a majority of the American Snuff staff, many of which were members of the growing labor union movements of the time, such as the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The Memphis warehouse was the site of a major union strike in 1950 when 324 workers staged a 185-day strike in demand of better pay and working conditions. The walkout and strike resulted in workers getting a $.05 raise, dues check-offs from paychecks, and a new recreation room in the warehouse.

By 1955, the American Snuff Company was the second largest snuff manufacturer in the US employing 500 at the Memphis plant. Condon was eventually succeeded by James E. Harwood, a long-time employee of the Nashville factory. In 1965, the firm’s name was changed to Conwood Corp., a combination of his and the former president’s last name. Reynolds American acquired the Conwood Corp in mid-2006 for $3.5 billion in cash. It now generates nearly 7% of Reynolds American’s annual revenue. They used the Keel Avenue facility until 2012 when they sold the property.

Findlay Parkside is located in the Over-the-Rhine (OTR) neighborhood in Cincinnati, OH, one of the largest and most intact urban historic districts in the United States. OTR lies just north of the Central Business District in Downtown Cincinnati, boasting low-rise Greek Revival, Italianate, and Queen Anne brick buildings, primarily constructed by German immigrants in the mid-1800s. Among the neighborhood’s most notable attractions is the Findlay Market, the oldest and only surviving municipal market house in Cincinnati, which operates year-round and houses over three dozen indoor merchants offering a wide array of goods.

Through the efforts of revitalization experts like The Model Group and 3CDC, OTR has become a thriving hub of activity, home to an eclectic mix of shops, restaurants, bars, and other businesses that cater to both residents and visitors alike.

Nestled within this vibrant and historically rich neighborhood, the Findlay Parkside project consists of nine distinct historic mixed-use buildings totaling 47,000 square feet. In their previous incarnations, these buildings served various functions and businesses, including an undertaker, office, chapel, livery, and garage. As the Findlay Parkside project revitalizes and repurposes these nine underutilized historic buildings, it will preserve their unique character, create new affordable residential opportunities, and support a growing community of businesses.

The historic 54,000 square-foot Webster School opened in 1921 to support Pontiac’s population boom as tens of thousands flocked from the south to work in the rapidly growing automotive manufacturing industry that originally put the city on the map. The building was designed by Perkins, Fellows, and Hamilton, who were known for going over budget to create particularly ornate architectural designs and responsible for other local landmarks such as Lincoln Park Zoo. It originally featured 26 classrooms, a combination gym and auditorium, and an ornate foyer, all on five acres of land.

Originally an all-white school, Webster was desegregated in the 1970s and one of several schools made to participate in a bussing program after a historic lawsuit between the NAACP and the local school district. Already in a population decline as residents moved from the aging city center, the school was eventually closed in 2008 after nearly 90 years of operation.

It sat vacant for over 10 years until Micah 6 Community, the project sponsor, purchased the building in 2016 to serve as the new location for the mixed-use community-centered nonprofit hub.

The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, at the southwest corner of South Broad and Walnut Streets in Center City Philadelphia, was completed in 1904 in the French Renaissance style and was described at the time as the most luxurious hotel in the nation and perhaps the most spectacular hotel building in the world, with the most magnificent ballroom in the US on the first floor. Modeled after the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan, it boasted 19 floors, 725 rooms, and the grandest event space in the city: a 500-person ballroom that could host events for nearly 3,000 people when including adjoining spaces. For many decades the Bellevue-Stratford, the “Grand Dame of Broad Street,” was Philadelphia’s largest hotel. Thomas Edison was involved in the lighting design for the hotel, creating fixtures as well as a switchboard for the hotel’s ballroom. Throughout its time in operation, 15 presidents were guests at the hotel, including Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. 

Apart from a large addition in 1912, which brought the square footage to 657,000 and the room total above 1,000 and added the iconic cameo rooms and other function spaces to the 19th floor, the hotel remained largely unchanged until its closing. In 1976, an outbreak of an unidentified respiratory disease led to the hotel’s sudden closure. In 1978 the building was sold to the Richard I. Rubin Company, saving it from demolition. Rubin undertook a $25 million renovation, reducing the key count to 565 and restoring the public areas, before reopening it as the Fairmont. Westin later acquired an interest in the building, and the Hotel was renamed the Westin Bellevue Stratford in 1983 before closing in 1986 due to low occupancy. In 1988, a new owner reopened the building as The Bellevue, converting much of the hotel to office and cutting an atrium into the remaining hotel portion.

The historic 31-story Tower Life Building, originally known as the Smith-Young Tower, was constructed in San Antonio, Texas, between 1927 and 1928 by the renowned architects Robert and his father Atlee Ayres, who were among the most influential architects in Texas during the 20th century. Their work can be seen across the city such as the Municipal Auditorium, the Plaza Hotel, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Administration Building at Randolph Field.

For a decade, Sears, Roebuck and Company occupied the first six floors, featuring large display windows along St. Mary’s and Villita streets, while the upper floors were leased to prominent local professionals and businesses, cementing the building’s place as a focal point of commerce and innovation in the city. The Smith-Young Tower with its rich history has borne witness to many significant moments throughout the years, serving as a mooring mast for a blimp, a performance site for aerialists, the headquarters of the third U.S. Army, and a television station transmission tower.

The San Antonio Transit Company purchased and renamed the building the Transit Tower in the 1950s, and by the early 1960s, the building was sold again to the Tower Life Insurance Company where the building was renamed to what we know it as today, the Tower Life Building. It was the tallest building and structure in San Antonio until 1968 and is currently the fourth tallest building in the city and the tallest 8-sided building in the U.S.