Loop Back: Printing Company Where NFL Hall Of Famer Worked
The historic building at 607 Washington Ave N has had many different signs painted on its south wall in 115+ years, and each one fades a little more each year.
Along the very top, you can still barely make out the name of the company that built it in 1910, the Parlin & Orendorff Plow Company.
But the building is best known historically as one of the busiest and most successful printing companies in the Twin Cities, Holden Industries.
Holden was here for nearly 50 years, starting in the 1950s, and among its employees: Vikings Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton, who took a side job here during his playing days. More on that later.
Parlin & Orendorff was an Illinois-based farm implement manufacturer that built this 7-story warehouse to keep up with high demand from settlers moving into the “northwest” region.
To make room for the new structure, it tore down a few rickety buildings along Washington Avenue (above) that included a house mover’s office and a coal yard.
In the 1912 photo above, you can see part of the original Parlin & Orendorff Plow Co. banner in the distance.
And you can still see the P&O logo at the front entrance to the building, which was converted into The Copham apartments in 2012.
International Harvester bought out P&O in 1919 and used this building for about five years to showcase and service trucks, while also selling other farm-related products.
Harvester owned a building directly across the street as well, where it also sold vehicles until 1925 when the company opened a new showroom in southeast Minneapolis.
In the following decades, a variety of different businesses moved in and out of the warehouse at 607 North Washington.
They included Martin-Parry Bodies, a company that built several different styles of auto bodies, designed to be placed on Model T chassis. The company was here in this building from 1921 to 1929.
1979 photo courtesy of Hennepin County Library
It was during that period, in 1926, that an annex was added to the building for vehicle storage–a building that many decades later would be converted into the acclaimed Smack Shack restaurant in 2013.
1965 Minneapolis Tribune photo
The combined companies of Holden Printing and Holden Business Forms moved into the building in 1957. Founder Harold Holden was featured in several newspaper articles hailing his creative insights and ideas.
That included the hiring of Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton in 1963, when the average NFL salary was less than $25,000.
Tarkenton wasn’t exactly hired for his knowledge of printing. Holden knew, though, that prospective clients would agree to lunch if a pro athlete was going to be there.
Harold Holden retired in 1976 at the age of 70 and turned the business over to his two sons. The company was sold in 2008, and its primary printing operations were moved to Arlington, Texas.
Please explore the Historic North Loop section of this website for many more fun photos and articles about our neighborhood’s history.
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)