About this property
The American Tobacco Company Warehouses Complex is a pair of brick warehouses built around 1900 in Madison, Wisconsin. They are now the two most intact remnants of Madison's tobacco industry, and were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. Tobacco was commercially grown in Wisconsin starting in the 1850s. Cultivation here expanded during the Civil War when many of the states that were big tobacco-producers seceded, but demand for Wisconsin tobacco continued after the war, mainly for the leaf tobacco used for cigar wrappers. One region of cultivation spanned southern Dane County and into Rock and Jefferson counties. The area's first tobacco warehouse was built in 1869 in Edgerton by New York's Schroder and Bond Co. Madison was a good spot for processing tobacco because of its rail connections and because it was in the Dane and Rock County tobacco-growing region. Several firms started packing leaf tobacco in Madison about 1880: Klauber & Kohner, Mr. H. Grove, and Sutter Brothers. Later came Barnard & Wilder, F.S. Bains, Pelton & Klauber, and A. Cohn & Co. of New York. The American Tobacco Company had roots in 1874 North Carolina, where Confederate veteran Washington Duke and his sons started a tobacco-processing factory. W. Duke, Sons & Co. prospered and through a series of purchases and mergers sometimes called the "cigarette war," by 1890 had gained control of most of the American tobacco industry, naming their trust the American Tobacco Company. In 1899 American Tobacco bought a million dollars' worth of tobacco in Edgerton and two weeks later, announced that it would establish an agency and build a warehouse in Madison. Shortly, the first warehouse began to take shape. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad sold American Tobacco a strip of land along its track at Doty Street, which was then called Clymer St., in a mixed neighborhood small houses, industrial buildings, and coal yards. That 1899 east building was built by contractor T.C. McCarthy, with a 52 by 126-foot footprint on a raised foundation of rock-faced granite blocks. Above that the walls are cream brick. Windows of the second and third stories are topped with segmental brick arches. The northwest end is topped with a stepped parapet with corbelled brickwork, shown in the photo. The sides of the building were broken by loading doors facing the railroad spurs that ran alongside. Inside the 1899 building each level was a single large room, except the first story had two small rooms partitioned off on the north end - an office and a sample room. The general functions of the warehouse were to receive tobacco from the supplier, then cut, sort and pack the tobacco, and store the cases of tobacco until they could be shipped.
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was American Tobacco Company Warehouses Complex listed on the National Register?
American Tobacco Company Warehouses Complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 25, 2003.
What type of historic resource is American Tobacco Company Warehouses Complex?
American Tobacco Company Warehouses Complex is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for American Tobacco Company Warehouses Complex?
The period of significance for American Tobacco Company Warehouses Complex is recorded as the industrial era, specifically around 1900.
Can I research the history near American Tobacco Company Warehouses Complex?
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