Pillsbury A Mill - History

History

In 1879, after five years of secret planning, Charles Alfred Pillsbury announced to the public that he would build the largest and most advanced mill the world had ever seen. He had traveled to mills all over the world, searching for the best technique for milling flour on a large scale. Despite the convention of the time, Pillsbury decided that he wanted his new mill to be designed by an architect in order to make the building visually appealing. Architect LeRoy S. Buffington, with the loose advice of several engineers, carried out the design. Construction started in 1880 and was finished in 1881 under a contractor named George McMullen. The mill was built to put out 5,000 barrels a day when a 500-barrel mill was considered large. It attracted a lot of attention from many people who thought that there was no practical need for a mill to ever exist due to the demand of flour in the day. For some years the mill was not run at its intended capacity. Part of the building was used as a warehouse and other purposes.

Due to vibrations of milling machines and poor design in 1905 the mill was fortified and certain sections were rebuilt. To this day the walls bow 22 inches (560 mm) on the top. Unlike other similarly large mills in the area, most notably the Washburn A Mill, the Pillsbury A Mill never exploded or caught fire. And as a result, it still contains its original wood frame.

As the years progressed, mill output picked up due to technological advances in the milling industry. Other larger mills, however, were created elsewhere and the sparkle that once surround the great mill left.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966 and is a National Historic Landmark.

On the outside the Pillsbury "A" Mill is a rectangular structure 175 feet (53 m) by 115 feet (35 m). The foundations are of Platteville limestone. The exterior wall thickness varies from 8’-0” (2.4 m) thick at the basement to 2’-0” (0.6 m) thick at the top of the building. The outside walls are of load bearing stone with heavy timber framing on the interior. (Timber was added after the completion of the building.) There are six chimneys on the roof of the building. The roof itself is flat with gravel.

When it was still in use, the seven floors and the basement of the mill all had specific purposes. The basement held a transformer vault, water inlets, and an electrical room. On the first floor there was a small floor-mounted sifter, a larger ceiling-hung sifter, and a pressure tank. On the second floor there were conveyor belts and a staff lunchroom. The third floor contained more belts and bins and the fourth floor held a dust collector, centrifugal machine, gyration shifter, grinder, scale, and a packing bin. The fifth floor held a sifter, separator, and a centrifugal machine. The sixth floor held flour bins and the seventh floor was an electrical room.