Former Candy Factory, and Later Ice Cream Cone Factory in Dallas TX

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The Hughes Brothers Manufacturing Building was constructed as the largest building in a domestic and manufacturing complex in a residential area known as The Cedars, beginning the neighborhood's transition to industrial uses. Designed by Dallas architect Harry Overbeck, it is an excellent and intact example of circa 1900 warehouse design using elements from the Chicago School, and simplified Romanesque and Classical design.

The Hughes Family and Hughes Brothers Manufacturing Company

The extant Hughes Bros. Building is the only remaining component of a complex of commercial and residential buildings first established by Dr. Frederick E Hughes (1830-1895) after his arrival in Dallas in 1872. Dr. Hughes was an accomplished physician who worked to improve public health policies in Texas and served on Dallas' Board of Health soon after it was created in 1873.

Born in Springfield, Kentucky, Hughes received his medical education at the Medical College of St. Louis, 1848-49, and in 1851 attended medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania. In between his studies and a period farming and practicing medicine in Virginia, Hughes spent time in New Orleans, attending the wounded during the Civil War, and living in Indianola, Texas. A pre-Civil War term running a cotton plantation in South Texas was profitable, but he returned to medicine. He is credited with formulating effective quarantine laws for Texas, working with his nephew, the noted Dallas surgeon Henry C. Leake. Leake served as Hughes' assistant quarantine officer at the federal hospital in Indianola. Hughes was also a partner in a drug business in Indianola, perhaps his first venture into the production of goods for sale. When the business was destroyed by fire in 1872, he moved to Dallas, arriving that same fateful year as the railroad.

Hughes first settled downtown. He began a private practice, but also opened a free clinic with Dr. Leake in 1875. Dr. Hughes was a leader in Dallas' medical community and volunteered time in other civic capacities. In addition to serving on Dallas' Board of Health, he was a charter member of the Dallas County Medical Society in 1876 and became its president in 1877. He was active in promoting education, serving on the board of directors of Lawrence's Commercial College in 1878 and overseeing the construction of a building for the Dallas Male and Female College in 1873.

Meanwhile, he purchased 12 acres of land in the Cedars neighborhood, just southwest of the new City Park and Browder Springs. The FE. Hughes Homestead Addition, created in the 1880s, began as a residential site. Dr. Hughes had six children with his wife, Mary Elizabeth Veneble Hughes. Dr. Hughes and son John V. Hughes joined the heyday of elegant home building in the Cedars, erecting two houses facing Ervay St. In 1890, Dr. Hughes contributed to the widening residential nature of the neighborhood by erecting Dallas' first apartment residence, Belleview Place, on Hughes Circle, the principle street of the family compound, near Browder Street. It is shown on the 1992 Sanborn map as a masonry boarding house, southwest of the family's vinegar department and three other dwellings.

In 1878 sons John Hughes and George Hughes were operating the Hughes Brothers' Grocery Store downtown at 741 Elm Street. Neither had chosen to follow their father into medicine, but John did complete his college education at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. There is no record of exactly how and why the Hughes brothers moved from grocery retailing to production. A laudatory biography of John Hughes records that after his father's 1880 retirement from medical practice, he pursued his "natural fondness for chemistry and hygiene" by teaching his sons "the art of combining and manufacturing pure and healthful food and beverages."

Such a shift would be in keeping with nineteenth-century trends in nutritional reform. Both Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg were trained doctors who created and produced new food products intended to improve American health. The late nineteenth century was also a period when branding and large-scale production were becoming standard in the grocery business, which was on the brink of being formalized and nationalized by large companies such as the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, A & P.

In 1885 the family formed the Hughes Brothers Manufacturing Company, and constructed a three-story brick building. The new building is shown on the 1888 Sanborn map as located behind the two family dwellings, a boarding house and two shops, all of which faced Ervay Street. The retail and residences were separated from the production building by a back yard with single-story outbuildings and storage areas. Behind the brick building was another complex for the vinegar works, with other dwellings behind. The Hughes family made an early contribution to the blended nature of the Cedars as both a residential and manufacturing neighborhood. Their Homestead Addition grew increasingly commercial.

This must have been particularly striking, given the property's location across Ervay Street from City Park, close to the party pavilion. The presence of the manufacturing facility did not prevent the Park Hotel, "the city's first suburban luxury hotel," from being built across Ervay Street. City Park served as its rear lawn. The red brick building was praised for its thoroughly modern interior, including both luxurious fittings and the latest technology, and was "decidedly the social center of the city. Now known as the Ambassador Hotel, that building is a protected Dallas landmark. The two buildings are pictured together on a postcard, circa 1909.

In January, 1903 a fire destroyed the Hughes' wooden stables and damaged the adjacent vinegar factory, by then housed in a brick building. An African-American boy died in the blaze, along with John Hughes' ten carefully bred teams of horses and mules. The fire coincided with the completion of the excavation for a new building, the surviving Hughes Bros. Building. John Hughes, president of the company after his father's death in 1895, expected to occupy the new structure by April, 1903. Describing it as six stories tall, he was cither mistaken as to its height or considered the basement to be a story. It was built facing Ervay Street on the original site of the family homes.

The company manufactured an evolving line of grocery products, and a complete list and key periods of manufacture are difficult to determine. An early advertisement in the 1885 Dallas City Directory listed several food products, including "Dr. Hughes grape baking powder," walnut catsup, barrels of cider and Victor Blueing. The 1899 Sanborn map lists "vinegar, candy, preserves, soda water, yeast powder and patent medicine", failing to note the baking powder, flavoring and fruit extracts named earlier in the 1888 map. The 1905-06 Thomas' Registry of American Manufacturers, a guide for wholesale buyers, lists Hughes Bros. as manufacturers of cider and vinegar, condiments, flavoring extracts and jams, but not as a candy producer. In 1904, Hughes advertised a full line of quality candy, along with other products including their grape baking powder, and claimed their candy plant was the "largest, most complete and best equipped in the South."

John and George Hughes' experience as grocers would have informed their decision to enter into industrial production of grocery goods. The second half of the nineteenth century saw sweeping changes in the production and sales of groceries, along with most other good for sale. These changes did not just involve increasingly industrial means of production, though that was a key factor and one that the 1903 Hughes Bros. Building was designed to accommodate. Its open spaces were optimal for mass production and for reconfiguring production facilities as manufacturing methods changed. The random strengthening of columns with iron plates suggests that such changes did introduce new machinery with increasing static and live loads.

The Hughes product line also followed changes in the packaging and promotion of groceries. After the Civil War, the business moved from the selling of bulk commodities to branded, advertised goods. Commodity groceries were the stuff of the nostalgic rural general store, the cracker barrel stocked with generic crackers, the storekeeper weighing out the requested quantity of unbranded cheese, flour, or coffee. Individual packaging offered the consumer hope of a more hygienic product, free of concerns about rodents chewing through the bottom of the cracker barrel. Quality assurance could be promised to consumers by branding the packaged products and advertising, whether the package was a small tin of baking powder or a fifty-pound sack of flour. Prior to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the government offered the consumer no protection about the production or content of the food products on the market. Familiar brand names sought consumer loyalty with the promise of consistent quality. Around 1900, as the Hughes Brothers business was thriving, "branded, standardized products came to represent and embody the new networks and systems of production and distributions, the social relationships that brought people the things they used." When the Hughes Brothers company bragged in advertisements about the size of their output and sales region, or put a drawing of their 1903 building on their stationary, smoke bellowing from chimneys in the background, they were courting consumers with their modern methods and outlook.

A side effect of this branding was the increasingly sophisticate use of label art and advertising. Hughes participated in this advertising strategy. Their smaller jugs of vinegar are imprinted with their name, as seen in one included in the collection of Dallas Heritage Village. This advertising effort reached consumers more than once, since in a more frugal era, people re-used a good stoneware gallon jug after the vinegar was gone. In soda bottling in the early 1900s, Hughes used the patented Hutchinson Soda Water capping system. It utilized an internal, pressurized stopper to avoid contamination and keep soda fizzy, and required a special "blob top" bottle with a bulbous opening. Bottlers created printed and raised logos for their bottles to capture consumer loyalty. Hughes sodas featured an image of a young woman holding a bunch of grapes, in keeping with the widespread use of pretty young females on these early product labels.

The same period saw the growth of similarly unregulated, branded over-the-counter medicines. The best known such home treatment was castor oil. Hughes dabbled in this industry as well, as proven by a lawsuit against them in 1898 for stealing a competitor's label design. The leading marketer of castor oil, or "Castoria," was Fletcher, who sued several firms for copying their label in order to grab some of their loyal customers. The Hughes product was called "Dr. Hughes' Castoria." The side label says that it was produced according to an original formula by the company's "Pharmaceutical Department," which does not appear in other advertising. The label included an "official signature" of John V. Hughes. The Hughes brothers were taking advantage of their father's status as a doctor, four years after his death, to lend credibility to a consumer product line. In 1887 the also advertised a branded "nerve food," which they claimed could cure alcoholism and serve the purpose of temperance. They were fully invested in the emerging ways of manufacturing and selling.

The company was often primarily identified with the production of candy, despite their many other products. When John Hughes' wife, Anna Laura Hughes, died in 1940, her obituary referred to her late husband as the "pioneer Dallas candy manufacturer."

Greater Dallas Illustrated, a frankly self-promotional publication of Dallas business leaders from 1908, lists both candy production and grocery wholesaling as important areas of local business. "Dallas leads the southwest in the manufacture of candies and sweets," and also has "sixty traveling men" peddling its grocery products throughout an expanding regional "circumference of trade, of which Dallas is the center."

Candy was first mass produced in England in 1850, and was one of the many areas of production the United States mastered during the Industrial Revolution. Early products focused on hard candies rather than chocolates. They were easier to store and ship without damage or melting. Nationwide, there were numerous local producers, with giant firms like Mars and Hershey's not achieving national supremacy until the 1920s and 1930s. Worleys City Directory for Dallas of 1904 lists three major candy manufacturers; Trinity Manufacturing Co. in West Dallas, Brown Cracker and Candy Company located in the West End and Hughes Brothers Manufacturing. Subsequent directories indicate that Hughes and Brown were the only large candy manufacturers in Dallas from 1904 until 1927. Hughes Brothers letterhead in use in 1905 listed other products next to a picture of their new building, but named "chocolates and Bon-bons" in larger type, and once again proclaiming themselves the "largest, most complete and best equipped candy plant in the south". The difficulties in making chocolate in changing weather conditions and delivering it to customers would serve to elevate its value and the need for local production.

With the rise of national firms, profitable local candy production became more challenging. In 1924, the Brown Cracker and Candy built an eight story addition; and advertising as the "largest and most complete factory in the South in the production of crackers, cakes and candies." However, by 1927 Brown was listed in the city directory only as a bakery, no longer advertising as a candy manufacturer. Hughes proudly advertised that they supplied candy to a leading downtown Dallas hotel, the Adolphus, but ended those advertisements in 1928.

From 1903 to 1907 the Hughes complex hosted Dallas' first significant medical school, the Baylor Medical College. The school resulted from the merger of the young medical department at the University of Dallas, started in 1900, and Baylor College, and its legacy today is the Baylor University Medical Center in east Dallas. The temporary home was a three-story brick building with a large center bay with arched motif, formerly the location of storefronts. It was still connected at the rear to the earliest brick structure in the complex, the three-story building that contained the bottling and preserves areas. John Hughes served on the board at the founding of the school.

John's partner in business, George V. Hughes, did not leave a similar record of civic achievement. When he remarried in 1904, the Dallas Morning News described him as "a wealthy manufacturer," and "one of the prominent businessmen of Dallas," so the quieter partner had achieved his own success.

In 1934 R.L. Thornton, president of the Chamber of Commerce and future mayor of Dallas, listed the Hughes Bros. Manufacturing Company as both a leading early manufacturer in Dallas and as one of the current important ones, destined to lead Dallas to increasing output. The company was not able to fulfill that promise. In December of 1937 they offered for sale their candy-making equipment "at sacrifice prices," and three months later were even more anxious to sell as they only had one week left to occupy the building. The address given is 1401 South Ervay, but City Directories show that Hughes occupied that rear addition of their complex from an unknown date until 1935, suggesting their business was shrinking. Perhaps the loss of leadership due to the death of John Hughes in 1924, after that of his partner and brother Charles Hughes in 1909, combined with the Depression, doomed the once important company. In May of 1936 a local Ford dealer opened a used car lot at 1401 South Ervay. Official records of the Hughes business and family end at in 1938, and local descendants know little of the family business. Only one building remains as their legacy.

Beginning in 1941 the Gulf Cone Company, a subsidiary of Maryland Baking Company, occupied the building. The flexible industrial structure was readily adapted to the fully-automated production of ice cream cones and cups with 25 employees. By 1961, the facility produced 30,000 cones per hour, and made drinking straws under the Sweetheart brand on another floor, and by 1969 they employed 100 workers. In 1997, the business and the building were sold to the largest ice cream cone company in the country, Ace Baking Company. When that company declared bankruptcy in 1999 and was taken over by Keebler, the machinery was removed from the Hughes Bros. Building and manufacturing ceased there. It remained unused, except as a party rental facility, until purchased by the current owner, a developer who plans to restore it for mixed use. Once again the building leads change in the Cedars neighborhood, as several nearby older structures are also in the process of restoration for new commercial, cultural and residential uses.

The Cedars Neighborhood of Dallas

After its founding in 1841, Dallas' growth as a commercial city was slowed by war and isolation. The war ended in 1865 and the isolation was given a decisive end in 1872, when the Houston and Texas Central Railroad (HC&T) connected Dallas to Houston and Galveston. Within a year the Texas and Pacific Railroad (T&P) provided connections east and west, and Dallas' future in manufacturing, banking and wholesale and retail commerce began, along with its expansion of residential options outward from the original city core.

The Cedars neighborhood, just south of the downtown area, was the first area of residential and civic expansion and the home of early manufacturing efforts. The Hughes family was among the earliest purchasers of land in the Cedars neighborhood after it was established in the 1870s. This neighborhood became the first fashionable housing district outside of downtown Dallas, built around the city's first public park. In the absence of zoning or other restrictions, manufacturing facilities soon appeared in the Cedars. When the Hughes family began their grocery plant near their residence, they began this process of industrializing the neighborhood.

The neighborhood was named for the red cedar forest in the area. The original boundaries were Wood Street, Akard Street, Pocahontas Street and South Harwood Street. The area contained Browder Springs, a natural water source. The forest and the springs attracted picnickers from central Dallas. In 1876, J.J. Eakins conveyed his holdings near the springs to the city, to establish City Park, a clear sign of Dallas' civic maturity. Though Dallas was slow to improve the park, by 1886 it included controlled streams, paths, bridges and plantings. The City Park Pavilion hosted Dallas residents for a variety of activities, including musical programs, church services, parties and political events.

City Park was the catalyst that promoted growth southward from downtown. Wealthy and middle-class citizens built houses in popular styles such as Queen Anne. District Judge George N. Aldredge, director of the National Exchange Bank of Dallas, built two houses in the Cedars, both now lost to the encroachment of downtown development and highway construction. Transportation to and from the city core was insured in the 1890s by Dallas' widening network of streetcars, including one travelling Ervay Street. This allowed for the development of respectable boarding houses near the park for downtown office workers.

The Cedars was the first home of Dallas' growing Jewish community. In 1898 the second Temple Emanu-El synagogue was built north of City Park. The architects of the Moorish building with an octagonal tower were J. Riely Gordon, Roy Overbeck and Harry A. Overbeck, the architect of the Hughes Bros. Building. It became a center of the upscale segment of the Cedars' Jewish community. The community included merchants such as Alexander and Phillip Sanger, leaders of the Sanger Brothers retail and wholesale empire. Philip and his wife, Fanny Fechenbach Sanger, were social leaders who promoted construction of the temple in the Cedars, and lived across the street from it. This development pattern of Jewish residences clustered around the temple and near the men's places of business was common.

The upscale nature of the neighborhood soon changed. Its reign as "an elegant and fashionable residential area" can be seen as focusing on the decade from 1880 to 1890. By 1905 wealthier Dallas residents preferred the new deed-restricted, exclusive subdivisions such as the Edgewood Place Addition, Munger Place and Highland Park. Many Cedars homeowners joined them. Those new neighborhoods' restrictions offered protection against the incursion of industry into residential neighborhoods. That incursion was the key factor in the early twentieth-century transformation of the Cedars.

The Hughes Bros. manufacturing efforts were probably not terribly objectionable to neighbors. The company had a limited number of workers, and other than vinegar, their food products would not have produced offensive odors. Other, more invasive industries were also moving in. The neighborhood was surrounded by rail lines, with spurs entering the neighborhood to offer service to commercial users. The decade 1900 to 1910, which included the construction of the Hughes Bros. Building, their largest, also saw a general increase in commercial construction in the Cedars. In 1913, the Stanard-Tilton Company built a flour mill in the Cedars, bringing the neighborhood a part of the region's leading processing industry, along with all its dangers of explosion and rodent infestation.

In 1907, the Dallas Waste Mill, a processor and recycler of cotton rags and waste fibers, began construction at a railroad junction in the Cedars, joining the large, thriving Dallas Cotton Mill, which was operational by 1895. The Gulf Refining Company and Howard Oil Works obviously represented dirtier and more dangerous industries. Sears and Roebuck's Dallas Catalog Merchandise Center was neither dirty nor dangerous, but it was big in 1906 when constructed, and grew with later additions.

Each new industrial and commercial facility brought more workers and new or repurposed housing for them. By the 1920s, the Cedars was still thriving, but with a new working-class character. Small stores, groceries and bakeries proliferated, including Kosher ones for the remaining Jewish population. The sons of a local Jewish butcher remember the area as a harmonious mix of working people of different races and religions. They also recalled the continuing importance of City Park, and the sweet odors of candy coming from the Hughes Bros. Building.

After World War II, the Cedars was cut off from downtown Dallas by new highway construction, and its residential population eroded. The majority of the houses not taken by the construction of Interstate 30 were removed, marked now by concrete steps leading to empty lots. One significant element toward revitalization was the creation of Old City Park, now Dallas Heritage Village, a museum composed of relocated historic vernacular buildings, in the park. Now celebrating its fiftieth year, the museum was joined in the 1970s and 1980s by a growing community of artists occupying the remaining structures in the Cedars. The Hughes Bros. Building is a significant reminder of the neighborhood's history visible from the museum. As of 2016, it is poised to join other extant commercial buildings in a Cedars renaissance. Adaptive reuse will bring new housing and cultural facilities, with the Hughes Bros. Building taking a central role, once again.

Harry A. Overbeck, Architect

Harry Overbeck (1861-1942) had been working in Dallas for eight years when he designed the Hughes Bros. Building. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. He trained with prominent architects in Cincinnati and did architectural work in Minneapolis and St. Paul, followed by nearly ten years in Omaha, Nebraska before coming to Dallas in 1895. His work included municipal buildings, warehouses, and synagogues, both in Dallas and other southern cities, such as the 1910 Hale County Courthouse in Plainview, Texas.

His completed Dallas buildings, other than the Hughes Bros. Building, include:

Of these, only the six starred buildings remain.

Jay Henry argues that Overbeck's work in the West End displays the "long Richardson survival" particularly noticeable in the Southern Supply Company building he co-designed with J. Riely Gordan, and mixed with a stronger Sullivan influence in his MKT building of 1914. Richard Longstreth notes that such Richardsonian influences were common in three-part vertical block buildings from 1890 on, often eclectically combined with emerging styles.

In 1903 Overbeck and contractors Knight and Kenyon were simultaneously completing the Hughes Building and the Texas Moline Plow Co. Building, only two miles apart. One of the earlier extant structures in the West End, the Moline Building represents a post-1900 change from the smaller commercial buildings of the Victorian era of Dallas' early industrialization.

The Moline Building is so similar to the Hughes Bros. Building that Overbeck may have built both from the same design, changing only some details. The form of the two buildings is the same. Both are red brick with five stories. The window and door configurations are alike. The heavy brick corbelling is similar in appearance and in the same locations on both. The Moline differs in that the main entry is arched, with a simpler, less classical, front entry feature.

While the front facade on both building is five bays, the Moline's side facade is seven instead of eight bays wide. The Moline still retains its original wood windows and dock doors. The Hughes Bros. Building includes a stronger Classical Revival influence mixed with the hybrid of the Chicago School and a simplified Romanesque style. The front entry columns and entablature, along with the pilasters, are witness to this style. It may have been added in to please the clients or to differentiate it from the Moline Building. This was not the only case of Overbeck using a design in two buildings. His 1905 Temple Beth Israel in Natchez, Mississippi, and the Hebrew Union Temple in Greenville, Mississippi of the same year are also near twins. They differ significantly in style from the Cedars Temple Emanu-El he helped design.

The Moline Building generated much public notice. Its completion was better reported in the Dallas Morning News and it alone was pictured as one of Dallas' proud accomplishments in Greater Dallas Illustrated six years later. The News did print a picture of the just completed Hughes Bros. Building in September of 1903, calling it "Another Evidence of Dallas' Growth." George Hughes escorted a conference of traveling salesmen to a private tour of the new building, transporting them from their hotel in a cavalcade of cars, accompanied by the mayor.

John Hughes may have chosen Overbeck because they were acquainted through shared public service and because of Overbeck's association with fireproof buildings, as well his general high local profile. The two men worked on public causes together, including seeking to have Dallas chosen as the location for the state's Masonic Grand Lodge in 1901. Overbeck was eventually able to oversee the construction of that building in Dallas. Overbeck stated that the Linz building of 1899 was "absolutely fire-proof … the prime motive for its construction." This was an increasingly important consideration for manufacturing buildings, with so many manufacturing processes carrying significant risks. Of course, John Hughes may have been particularly sensitive to the risk of fire after his earlier loss.

Overbeck may not have achieved national recognition, but he was significant to Dallas. During the early decades of the twentieth century, he appears regularly in the press for association with new buildings, big and small, as architect or construction administrator. He served as President of the Dallas Architects' Association and President of the Texas State Association of Architects. When he died in 1942 at the age of 80, he had just completed two projects as superintendent of construction, Dallas' Fairdale and Dixon telephone buildings. The Dallas Morning News noted that "many a building dotting the Dallas skyline stands as a memorial to Mr. Overbeck's years of work."

Building Description

The 1903 Hughes Brothers Manufacturing Building at 1401 S. Ervay is located on the southwest portion of the block bounded by S. Ervay Street, Belleview Street, Orr Street and Sullivan Drive. The rectangular plan building is five stories tall, massed and delineated as a three-part vertical block. The structural form is timber construction with original wood structural columns extant and augmented with steel reinforcements. The exterior wall is faced with dark red pressed brick. Corbeling is located between first and second and the fourth and fifth floors, with larger corbelling above, marking the bottom of the parapet. The flat roof featured a large clerestory that ran the length of the building. It was removed in 2010. At that time, the steel casement windows on floors two through five were replaced with vinyl. The first floor openings have glass block infill and steel casement windows and doors. The structure has a full basement with foundation windows located on the north facade. The exterior is in overall excellent condition, as both the brick and flat roof were restored in 2001.

The front facade faces east on South Ervay Street. It is a symmetrical facade with a clear three-part vertical block arrangement. The first floor is the "base," floors two through four are the "column," and floor five is the "capital," This facade is also divided into three five-story bays. The central bay is wider and the end bays project slightly more forward.

The main entrance located at the central bay features a classical limestone flat entablature supported by flanking pilasters with ionic capitals. The name "Hughes" is in incised in the entablature. The entry is flanked by two large single openings within the central bay, and one more in each outer bay. All the first floor openings including the entrance have been infilled with glass block. Except for the entrance, the large first floor openings would have had steel casement windows like those existing on the north facade. Each of the three central bays, floors two through four, features a three-story arch topped with a low arch. The entire arch is framed with a double step down brick detail. The vinyl windows in this strong vertical element are divided between each floor with a brick spandrel panel with a picture frame detail.

Four simple, uninterrupted three-story brick pilasters are located between and on the outside of the three arched elements. The pilasters that flank the center arch element are wider than the two outside ones. The pilasters have a simple rectangular cast stone base and a simple brick capital with a simple cast stone cap. The fifth floor central bay has three sets of double paired windows; with brick corbeling located above each pair. Smaller, shorter versions of the same pilaster design as found below with a set of double pilasters flanking the center window unit and single one located on the outside. The two outside bays are identical. The first floor has one large window that would have been a large steel casement. Floors two through four have simple paired windows with brick between them. Floor five has triple windows topped with simplified segmented arched like those used on the central three story arches on the floors two through four.

The north facade is configured like the east facade, with all of the same details, but is longer and divided into eight bays. The two easternmost first floor openings, toward the front facade, are filled with glass block. The remaining six first floor openings have steel casement windows. The six central bays, floors two through four, feature three-story arches topped with a flattened arch. The entire arch is framed with a double step down brick detail. The vinyl windows in this strong vertical element are divided between each floor with a brick spandrel panel. All windows on the north and west facades have a tall, three bricks long, low arch lintel over each window opening. Four simple uninterrupted three-story brick pilasters are located between the three arched elements. The pilasters that flank the center arch element are wider than the two outside ones. The pilasters have a simple rectangular cast stone base and a simple brick capital with a simple cast stone cap. The fifth floor central bay has three sets of double-height paired windows with brick corbeling located above each pair. Smaller, shorter versions of the same pilaster design are found below with a set of double pilasters flanking the center window unit and single one located on the outside. "Gulf Cone" is incised on the stone cornerstone located on the northeast corner.

The west facade faces Orr Street. The loading dock was located on the first floor of this facade. The central door has been boarded up and the two doors flanking the central door have multi-lite wood garage doors. The two outer openings nearest the corners have been infilled with glass block. The windows on this facade, floors two through five, are installed in a grid pattern five across and four up. The fifth floor windows are separated from the lower floors with the same corbeled brick course found on the north and west facades up. Also, the same corbelled brick course is located between the first and second floors. All the windows on this facade have the same flat-arch lintels as the other prominent facades. The brick work around these windows is very plain with a shorter brick fan design over each window.

This facade faced Hughes Circle (now Sullivan Street) and had other buildings abutting it. This brick facade is flat without any brick detailing. The heavy corbeling also ends at this facade. In 2001 the previous owner hired Spray-O-Bond Masonry Repair company of Milwaukee to repair all the exterior brick walls. The unstable parapet was rebuilt and brick repair and tuck pointing was completed on the entire building. The company punched new windows into this facade where it had been historically covered by other buildings. Seventeen narrow single windows and twenty double windows were added to the blank facade in a grid system taken from the existing windows still left on the fifth floor. The windows today are vinyl and match those on the other facades. A two-story rear addition constructed of painted concrete block remains from the later addition to the factory. New brick was installed in portions of this facade to repair damaged areas resulting from the removal of rear additions over the years.

The interior of the building reflects its design as a flexible production facility for a manufacturer of a large variety of food products. Floors two through five feature open floor planning for manufacturing processes, interrupted by 28 evenly-spaced square columns. They are spaced approximately 14' on center, and are graduated in size from 14" by 14" on the first floor to 8" by 8" on the fifth. Many have steel plates bolted to them, apparently for structural reinforcement. Their application is not at all uniform, so the additional support may have been placed where large equipment exerted force. All of the structural elements are in good condition, and two structural engineers consulted agree that the steel plates may be removed without harm.

The ceiling height on the first floor is 12'-5", on floors 2-4, 9'-4", and on the fifth floor the ceiling is defined by the roof structure, sloping from a maximum height of 15' down to 13'-3". The only walls on the open-plan floors are exposed brick. Floors are all wood, mostly old-growth 1-inch pine over a subfloor of old-growth 2-inch pine. Some areas of finished floor have been replaced with hardwood.

The building currently has two stairways and a large platform freight elevator. It is doubtful that any are original. The stairways are not located where the early Sanborn maps indicate. Current office enclosures on the first floor are also not original, their material and construction suggesting that they were installed between 1960 and the 1980s. They can be easily removed. The interior is very much intact, and able to give an excellent impression of spatial nature of a "modern" production facility in 1903.

East facade (front) (2015)

Detail on front (2015)

Northwest (2015)

North facade (2015)

West facade (2015)

Addition to south facade (2015)

South facade (2015)

Interior - Entrance (2015)

Interior - Floor 1 (2015)

Interior - Floor 1 (2015)

Interior - Floor 2 (2015)

Interior - Floor 3 (2015)

Interior - Floor 3 (2015)

Interior - Floor 4 (2015)