The story behind the building on the move

The tourist attraction in Washington, Iowa, this week has been the F.B. Mills Seed Company building. Not because it's an impressive three-story, 40-by-100-foot, century-old brick building, but because the 1,142-ton structure has been on the move.

Inch by inch, beginning Monday, Jeremy Patterson Movers wheeled the building several blocks from North Seventh Street to 212 North Iowa Ave. It should be there by now, ready for Jeremy, the new owner, to reincarnate it into offices and apartments.

But the F.B. Mills Seed Company building? I never heard of it. And, according to local historian Mike Zahs, I'm not alone.

“One in 20 people in town, if that, would know the Mills Seed Company,” Mike says. “You could drive through Washington many ways and not go past it.”

But, tucked near the railroad tracks, the solid old building, vacant for 25 years, always intrigued Mike. As an area teacher, he often took Iowa history students to see it. One of them remembered.

“I took Jeremy there when he was a student,” Mike laughs.

When Jeremy invited Mike to see the building before the move, he reminded Jeremy of the early visit.

“I wondered why I was always interested in this building,” Jeremy said.

“It could be,” Mike responded, “that you paid attention in school.”

Constructed around the turn of the 20th Century, the building first served the F.B. Mills Seed Company of Rochester, N.Y. Mike has some early pictures of the building and seed catalogs.

“As far as I know, the seeds were not grown locally,” he says. Instead, they were shipped by rail.

By 1923 the name had changed to Bruns Seed Company, the mail-order house for a Davenport company.

Later the building housed the Curran Company, which printed, among other things, Valentine's Day cards children exchanged at school. By the early '60s, a plastic sign manufacturer operated in the building.

Some people think the American Pearl Button Company once occupied this building, but that was located a block north.

“There were a lot of things in the building related to the button company,” Mike says, “but I think they were just stored there. Maybe they printed the cards for the buttons.”

Makes sense to us. But it would be nice to know.

“I'd like to have an oral history,” Mike says, “to get together with anybody who worked there or whose parents worked there. It would be great to know what went on inside.”