The Farmer’s Hotel: From furniture plant to final days

Anoka City Hall construction, as seen from the west side of the Rum River, dated April 22, 1955. The Ward Transfer building is visible in the center background of the photograph (Object ID# 2001.0268.013)

Training put on by the Anoka Fire Department for the St. Croix Valley Firemen. The building was the Ward Transfer building (formerly the Farmer’s Hotel and Colonial Upholstering Company) located on 2nd Avenue in Anoka. Photo dated August 12, 1956. (Object ID# P1664.QQQ)

Back in May, we published an article about the early history of the Farmer’s Hotel building, which was located at 2110 Second Ave. N., about midway on the block between Jackson Street and Van Buren Street, facing the river. (Please find the earlier article at abcnewspapers.com AnokaCountyHistory.org.) Since this building no longer exists, we wanted to find out more about its history. Further digging in some of our resources here at the history center (especially photographs and telephone directories) allowed us to piece together a better picture of the building’s later years.

Originally built in 1885 by Gottlieb Bossert, various owners ran the hotel until approximately the 1910s. We still do not know exactly when it ceased to be a hotel, but in 1922 the local newspaper reported it had been purchased by the Colonial Upholstering Company.

(As a clarification: Colonial Upholstering also owned what was later known as the Thurston’s Furniture building, located right at the northeast corner of Second Avenue and Jackson Street. That building still stands today and is currently home to a few businesses, including Iceberg Web Design and the 201 Tavern & Grill.)

For the next couple of decades, we know that Colonial Upholstering continued to own the old Farmer’s Hotel building, thanks mainly to what existing phone books we have from the 1920-1950 time period. We know that in 1947 the upholstery company paid $799.69 in property taxes on the building. Colonial Upholstering is still listed as the owner of the building in city phone books up through April 1949.

The property (2110 Second Avenue) does not appear in the 1950 phone book, and we are unfortunately missing the phone books from 1951 and 1952. Fortunately, the Anoka Herald fills in the gap for us here. In a Feb. 1, 1951, article about Ward Transfer Company’s 50th anniversary, it mentions that the company has recently “moved to a new home in the former Colonial Upholstering building on Second avenue north just beyond Jackson street” — the old Farmer’s Hotel building. We do have the 1953 phone book, which confirms the ownership change, listing Ward Transfer at the Second Avenue address, and again in 1957.

The building, standing tall in comparison to its neighbors, continues to appear in photographs of that part of Anoka throughout the 1950s. It is prominent in the background of the photos documenting the construction of Anoka’s current city hall in 1955-1956.

Ward Transfer owned the building until 1963, when another newspaper article fills in a few more pieces of information. Dated Dec. 27, 1963, this article indicates that Ward Transfer sold the building to a man named Paul J. McCann of Rapid City, South Dakota, who hoped to turn the building into a retail space. It also indicated that Ward Transfer purchased the building in 1950 (confirming the February 1951 article) and used it as “the firm’s terminal warehouse until 1959.”

The one thing that we do not yet know is the date the building was taken down, though other photographs in our collection lead us to believe it was in that 1963-1965 time period. If any of our readers remember the exact year the building was demolished, please contact the historical society.

The Farmer’s Hotel building was, as the December 1963 newspaper article stated, “long a landmark in this city,” as it “has been a hotel, manufacturing plant and an upholstery firm.” We are glad to know the story of this building and to have some excellent photographs of it while it was still standing.

Audra Hilse is the collections manager for the Anoka County Historical Society.