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T.B. WALKER
Thomas Barlow (T.B.) Walker was born in
Xenia, Ohio in 1840. His parents had traveled west from New
York, and soon afterwards his father died of cholera while
preparing to join a wagon train west. Thomas finished
college at age 19, and after hearing a glowing description
of Minneapolis, he proceeded there in 1862. Within an hour
of arriving he was hired as a deputy surveyor of pine lands
in the north. As a result he knew the location of good
timber close to water transportation, and in 1868 he went
into the lumber business. He formed the Red River Lumber
Company and made a vast fortune logging the timber.
Back in 1863, in Ohio, he had married his college classmate
and boss's daughter, Harriet Granger Hulet (b. 1841), and
despite the time he spent up north while she made their home
in Minneapolis, the couple had eight children. He returned
to Minneapolis around 1881, determined to build up his
adopted city.
Walker's first strategy was to build up the industrial base
in St. Paul. Said Walker, "St. Paul had the wholesale trade,
the retail trade, the railroads and the banks. We tried five
years to arrange an amicable interest in building up the
industries of both cities." They had a false start when the
Minneapolis men tried to work with their counterparts in St.
Paul to lure a factory from the east to merge with a
Minneapolis plant, but were double crossed when St. Paul
ended up with both the eastern and the Minneapolis
factories. Another story is that the Minneapolis contingent
put considerable funds into the Midway area, only to have it
annexed by arch rival St. Paul.
It was at that point that the Businessman's Union was
formed, on March 31, 1883. Walker was its President for all
15 years of its existence. The group chose the area west of
Minneapolis for their industrial site, in order to prevent
any possibility of annexation by St. Paul. The area's
borders were Minnetonka Road on the north and Excelsior Road
on the south. Walker said that "some of the men in the union
who liked changes made a social club of it, in the Guaranty
Loan Building. This practically closed out the Business
Union."
In 1886, a smaller group formed the Minneapolis Land and
Investment Company: "gentlemen whose energy and influence have been
felt in the growth of Minneapolis." TB Walker was again President.
Others included:
Thomas Lowry
Charles Pillsbury
Louis Menage (local promoter and developer - eventually went broke and fled to Guatemala)
In 1890, the company bought up 1700 acres of land in the center of town from farmers, an area so large that it took two years to replat the land. (Several plats had been filed right after incorporation in 1886, and the replat was called "Rearrangement of St. Louis Park," a name it holds today.)
In 1892, the Minneapolis Land and Investment Company filed a
plat of 12,000 lots on their 1,700 acres. An advertising map
from the time shows a completely zoned and platted town: the
Industrial Circle was "in the marsh," the commercial area
centered on Main Street and Broadway [Dakota and Walker],
and the rest was residential.
The Industrial Circle was a tilted oblong between the tracks
and Walker Street, Monitor and Taft Avenues. The Industrial
Circle remains today; the top of the circle is the curve in
Walker Street. The intersection of Highway 7 and Louisiana
is at the center of the site, with South Oak Pond a reminder
that it was indeed "in the marsh." Residential lots were as
small as 22 feet; supposedly builders would build houses on
every other lot and leave room for gardens. Village
Roadmaster Daniel J. Falvey graded the roads. To house his
work force, Walker built about 60 so-called
Walker Houses west of the
industrial circle in South Oak Hill from 1890 to 1898.
Walker's activities during this time were prodigious, with
factories that occupied the Industrial Circle, the streetcar
line that he built from the center of the Village to
Minneapolis, the Walker/Syndicate Building/Brick
Block commercial building, his
Methodist Church, and the
hotels he built for workers and
builders of the factories.
But before Walker's plan could come to full fruition, came
the economic Depression of 1893. Businesses failed, lots
owned by the Minneapolis Land and Investment Company went
unbought, and the partners bailed out by assigning their
interests to Walker. Walker could be seen giving out food
during the Depression, but people shied away from him and
even despised him. By 1913 he owned about 600-700 of his
2,000 acres, which put him in a spot: the land was worth
less than what he had paid for it, not to mention the money
he had put out to build the factories, and he was obligated
to pay taxes on it as well. He moved on to the Pacific coast
to continue his lumbering business, and he was forced to use
proceeds of that endeavor to pay off the costs of his unsold
land. Real estate man Erling Shurson, officed in the Brick
Block, handled the last of the sales.
Thus, in the space of about 12 years, Walker's dreams of an
industrial town evaporated, and it would be another 50 years
until the Park would approximate the industrial and
residential magnet he had envisioned so many years ago.
Walker moved on to other things, namely the Red River Lumber
Company. This was a so-called railroad logging company in
California. He began acquiring land during the mid 1890s.
In 1909 he purchased property at Mountain Meadows. On
January 29, 1912, Red River and the Southern Pacific
Railroad entered into an agreement whereby the railroad
would build a line and Red River would give the railroad
exclusive rights for hauling the lumber. Red River then
proceeded to build a mill and the town of Westwood. In
Westwood, Walker may have got what he couldn’t get in St.
Louis Park: a company town. Westwood included houses,
apartments, dormitories, hotels, a community center,
churches, and a theater. All utilities were company-owned. A
big department store was provided for the ladies, and men
had their “Westwood Club” all to themselves. But for the
first 20 years, no liquor could be had in Westwood.
Walker’s son Archie Dean Walker (b.1882, d.1971) served as
secretary (1908-1933) and president (1933-ca. 1956) of the
Red River Lumber Company, but remained based in Minneapolis.
During his tenure he saw a major shake-up of company
management; labor strife and organization at the town of
Westwood, and the November 30, 1944 sale of the Westwood
mill and townsite to the Fruit Growers Supply Company, the
buying arm of today’s Sunkist. Archie Walker’s papers can be
found at the Minnesota Historical Society.
T.B. Walker must have retained a soft spot for Minneapolis.
In 1911 he was the President of the Library Board and
donated the Walker Library at 2901 Hennepin Ave. So.
He also formed the T.B. Walker Foundation, which provided
funds for the Walker Art Institute, the repository of his
own fine art collection. The main building of the
Walker Art
Gallery opened on May 21, 1927.
Harriet Walker died in 1917 while accompanying her husband
on a business trip to New York. T.B. Walker died in 1928 at
the age of 88.
Archie Dean Walker, Jr., born in 1920,
was the youngest child
of T.B. Walker’s youngest child. He died in 2008.
For a more complete biography of TB Walker and his family,
see
the Minnesota Historical Society site at
http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00093.xml
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This information comes from a variety of sources: newspapers, books, yearbooks, phone directories, interviews, etc. Given the varied sources, we cannot guarantee that all of this information is correct, and welcome any additions and corrections. Please contact us with your contributions and comments.