457 Noll Drive

From the National Register nomination

Large three-story building of American-bond brick with a metal-sheathed gable roof with asbestos-sided gable dormers. The building has segmental-arch 2/2 windows, most single but some in pairs and many bricked up. At the south end is a stepped gable parapet with dentil-like corbeling in the cornice. The basement is contained in a limestone foundation. On the first-story west (railroad side) and east elevations are segmental-arch freight openings with diagonal tongue-and-groove doors. The west-side freight doors have painted numerals overhead (1, 2, 3, and 4; 4 is above a second-story door). A one-story loading dock extends along the east side, with a flat roof supported on wood posts but originally probably cantilevered, and a basement level with brick infill and industrial metal-frame windows between concrete piers. The northeast wing, added about 1920, is similar in construction to the original section. The aforementioned loading dock continues along the wing's south elevation where it curves to encompass a squat cylindrical corrugated-metal "Buckeye" grain bin. At the wing's northeast corner is a square-section brick smokestack with a corbeled necking of buff brick (perhaps representing the original top of the stack). From the east end of the wing extends a one-story addition of painted brick with an entry with glass block sidelights and a sign advertising "archadeck," a manufacturer of wood patio decks. The addition appears to have been extant in 1924, and in the 1950s it contained an office. The northeast wing and the original section both retain considerable historic painted signage, mostly associated with the Wetsel Seed Co. (the owner since 1949) but some dating to the original owner, the City Produce Exchange. The City Produce Exchange was formed by brothers Emanuel and Gabriel Blosser and Hershey H. Weaver. The principals are thought to have acted as their own contractors in the construction of their poultry processing plant in 1908. The facility was known as a "New York dress plant," meaning the poultry was defeathered and packed in ice whole rather than eviscerated. Chickens were the main product but turkeys were in demand at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The poultry was fattened on grain and buttermilk on the upper floors and slaughtered, defeathered, and packed in the basement. The first floor was used for receiving and shipping eggs and butter. The 1912 Sanborn map labeled the basement "dry picking," the first floor "shipping," and the upper two floors "feeding." The side wing, constructed before 1924, housed an ice plant on the first floor and storage space above. The smokestack served a boiler used to heat water for defeathering. According to Emanuel Blosser's daughter, Julia Grandle, her father claimed the plant was the largest poultry processor east of the Mississippi. In 1943 historian John W. Wayland stated that the plant was "one of the largest of its kind in the United States," and a 1927 business directory went even further, claiming that CPE was the "largest fattening and packing plant in the world." The 1927 directory noted that the plant could fatten 65,000 birds at one time. Wetsel Seed Co. purchased the building in 1949 and used it to store orchard seed. According to Robert Wetsel, Emanuel Blosser closed his poultry plant in 1949 due to labor difficulties. The CPE may have employed approximately fifty workers during its heyday. (Julia Grandle; Robert Wetsel; Wayland, Men of Mark, 40-41; Stultz, "House of Wetsel Seeds")