Historic North Loop

Loop Back: Buttery Caramels Produced In Mass Quantities

Though it was built in 1903 for an elevator manufacturer, this complex in the 500 block of North Third Street had a sweet, wildly successful run as a candy factory from 1922 to 1929.

In fact, a 1924 article in the Minneapolis Journal referred to the J.N. Collins Company as “the largest concern in the world manufacturing butter scotch caramel candy. Its distribution probably is wider than that of any other candy manufacturing company in America. It goes into every state and many foreign countries.”

Collins produced just two types of candy, Honey Scotch caramels and Walnettos (caramels with walnuts), individually wrapped in 5-cent containers that were sold in drug stores and other retailers.

The company had an attention-grabbing promotional campaign, sending “lads and lassies” with kilts and bagpipes into cities across the country to sing, dance and hand out free samples at major intersections and movie theaters.

In some cases, they were traveling in unusual vehicles such as an REO Speed Wagon.

But in least one case, they actually went up in an airplane to drop candy from the skies over Columbus, Ohio in 1926.

The company’s founder, James N. Collins, had a fascinating background, as detailed in a 1926 article in the Minneapolis Daily Star.

As a 7-year-old boy, he would shine shoes and sell newspapers on the streets of Minneapolis after school. At 16, he went to work for a cigar distributor.

And on his visits to smoke shops, he would notice how well 5-cent candies were selling. At the time, butterscotch candies were only sold in bulk, so he came up with the idea to package nickel versions, and started producing them in a shanty on Plymouth Avenue in north Minneapolis in 1913. He was the company’s only salesman for the first four years.

Ultimately, his candy became so popular, he moved into the production facility on North Third Street in 1922. By 1924, he had distribution facilities in Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco shipping train car loads of candy–and he built an additional production facility in Philadelphia to keep up with the east coast demand.

He sold his company for more than $1,250,000 (the equivalent of $23 million today) in April of 1929–just six months before the Stock Market Crash–and said he had decided to retire from the candy business.

The company that purchased Collins, Peter Paul, produced Mounds and Dreams (later renamed Almond Joy) candy bars. It continued to produce Honey Scotch and Walnettos after the sale.

—————-

As for the elevator manufacturer that built this facility in 1903, it was owned by a Swedish immigrant named Gustaf Lagerquist, who went by Gust.

During its 16 years on North 3rd Street, the company built more than a thousand freight and passenger elevators here, with “speeds up to 400 feet a minute,” according to one newspaper article.

Lagerquist decided to move its foundry and production to new facilities in Northeast Minneapolis in 1919 and 1921 respectively.

Gust Lagerquist died in early 1922 at the age of 66 and his two sons, Frank and Carl, took over the business in Northeast Minneapolis.

We have many more pages of neighborhood history in our Historic North Loop section.

By Mike Binkley, North Loop volunteer*

(*not an actual historian; I just pulled together information from newspaper archives, public records, online searches and most helpfully, the digital archives at the Hennepin County Library)

2025 photo

Subscribe to our Newsletter