B.F. Nelson (History of Minneapolis, 1893)
If you grew up in Northeast from the 1930s to the 1960s, chances are you had a relative or knew someone who worked at B. F. Nelson Co., a manufacturer of paper and roofing products. The smell of hot asphalt emanating from the building at 401 Main St. NE permeated the neighborhood, but residents didn’t mind. In the words of Connie Szczech, “The smell of B. F. Nelson was a scent that didn’t bother any of us. It smelled like tar. In fact, we enjoyed it because it meant food on our table.”
There was a man behind the name on the building, one of Minneapolis’ early civic leaders. Although he didn’t have the name recognition of a Pillsbury or a Dayton, Benjamin Franklin Nelson was a Mill City mover and shaker.
He was born in Kentucky, and fought for the South during the Civil War. He was captured and held as a prisoner of war until just before Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. He decided to build a new life in Minneapolis, where he became involved in a business he already knew – lumbering.
Pre-war, he had cut logs and floated them down the Ohio River. He started out in Minnesota by cutting and delivering cord wood for heating, then worked at a sawmill. He soon received a contract for making wooden shingles, which paid more money. Next, he secured a contract to cut timber for the federal government. “By cutting the logs out of the ice when the mercury was forty-three degrees below zero,” Isaac Atwater wrote, “he had no trouble keeping himself warm from six o’clock A.M. to eight o’clock P.M.” Nelson’s profit was $56 per day, or $1,500, enough to set up his own business.
He bought a planing mill in 1873 and began manufacturing lumber. One year, the company produced 100 million board feet. Nelson told the Minneapolis Daily Times in September 1892, “We are running two of our large mills night and day, and one of them during the day, and still we could cut more, had we the facilities. The demand for lumber is greater now than I have ever known it to be in this season of the year.”
As the northern Minnesota forests fell to the loggers, however, the lumber market began to dry up, so Nelson turned his attention to papermaking.
He purchased three struggling mills. One, in Fergus Falls, was not profitable, and it closed. Another in Little Falls thrived and became the Hennepin Paper Company. The third, at Fourth and Main, was the B.F. Nelson Company. The company manufactured roofing felt and asphalt shingles.
Nelson wasn’t interested only in paper manufacturing. He was a director of Northwestern National Bank (now Wells Fargo) and Northwestern National Life Insurance Company. He owned the Bray Iron Mine near Nashwauk.
And he was a leading citizen. As Atwater pointed out in History of Minneapolis, “Unlike many men of enormous private business interests, Mr. Nelson has always found time to devote to the service of his community.”
He served on the Minneapolis City Council from 1879 to 1885, and was instrumental in obtaining concessions for James J. Hill’s Northern Pacific Railroad, making Minneapolis a transportation hub.
Nelson was one of the first Minneapolis Park Board commissioners, and helped plan the city’s park system. He was one of three commissioners who selected Logan Park as the site of the first park in what was then called the East Division of the city, according to the MPRB website.
A man who had little formal schooling, Nelson took a great interest in education. From 1881 to 1894, he served on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. In 1905, he became one of the regents of the University of Minnesota and was its president in 1914. He was on the board of trustees for Hamline University for 40 years. To make up for his own lack of education, he disciplined himself to read for three hours a day, the Minneapolis Journal reported in his 1928 obituary.
Nelson was president of the State Agricultural Society (Minnesota State Fair) in 1907-08, a member of the Minnesota Historical Society and the Minneapolis, Minikahda, Lafayette, Minnesota and Automobile Clubs and a Mason.
The paper company continued to prosper. By the time of Nelson’s death, the Journal reported, “This industry has grown in its 60 years of existence to an annual output of $3,000,000, employing 700 persons, and is the only felt manufacturing plant between Chicago and California.” The paper noted the plant burned 180 tons of coal per day and consumed 500 tons of raw material daily.
The company diversified in 1920, creating a folding carton division that now runs a 375,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing plant in Savage, creating retail packaging and displays for companies as diverse as L.L. Bean, Home Depot’s Husky contractor cleanup bags and Rollerblade.
The B.F. Nelson Company also manufactured vermiculite insulation, which it marketed as MasterFil. A 1937 Minneapolis Journal ad featured the Leamington Hotel as one of the company’s customers.
In 1971, the company was acquired by CertainTeed, which planned to move roofing manufacturing to Shakopee. A replacement for the Main Street plant, it was expected to produce 200,000 tons of finished asphalt and 60,000 tons of roofing felt annually. CertainTeed sold the folding carton business to investor Percy Ross the following year.
The Main Street plant was shuttered, and sat empty for many years. The ground beneath it nearly became part of the freeway system when the Minnesota Department of Transportation attempted to build I-335 through Northeast. Neighborhood opposition succeeded in shutting down further land acquisition and demolition in 1972; the U.S. Department of Transportation removed 335 from the interstate highway system in 1978.
The site was acquired by Minneapolis Parks and Recreation in a purchase and trade with the Minnesota Department of Transportation in 1987. According to minneapolisparks.org, “as Boom Island Park to the north of the site and the West River Parkway across the river were being developed by the park board, the state contacted the park board with an offer to sell the B. F. Nelson land.
“Plans for I-335 had been abandoned, so the state no longer needed the land. It had also learned that a proposed change in federal policy made it wise to sell the land quickly. When the land was acquired for a freeway, the federal government paid ninety percent of the $5 million cost, with the state paying the rest.” The new policy would have required the state to reimburse federal funds.
MPRB bought the site from the state, plus land at The Parade and polluted land near North Mississippi Park for a little more than $200,000 in regional park funds.
A path, river overlook and fishing dock were built in 1996, in part with $41,524 from the city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program through the St. Anthony West Neighborhood Organization.
In 1998, Walt Dziedzic, then a park board commissioner, ordered truckloads of dirt from a construction project to be dumped on the land to create ballfields – without park board approval. St. Anthony West neighbors protested, and State Rep. Phyllis Kahn noted that Metropolitan Council policies prohibited formal athletic fields from being built on the land. Dziedzic hastily apologized.
Today, B.F. Nelson Park is a tranquil place for walking and enjoying nature. It may, perhaps, look something like it did when its namesake decided to build a paper mill there.
The Nelson Paper Company building in the early 1900s. (Hennepin County Library)
B. F. Nelson manufactured insulation as well as roofing felt and shingles. The advertisement above is from the Aug. 15, 1937 Minneapolis Journal. (Newspapers.com)
Sources:
Atwater, Isaac, History of Minneapolis,
Vol. 2, 1893
Kiely, Genny Zak, Pride & Tradition: More Memories of Northeast Minneapolis, 2000
Smith, David C., “Name That Park,”
minneapolisparkhistory.com. Dec. 1, 2011
“B. F. Nelson Reviews the Situation—The Weyerhausers to Build Here,” Minneapolis Daily Times, Sept. 5, 1892
“B.F. Nelson, Early Leader Here, Dies,” Minneapolis Journal, Jan. 11, 1928
“Road Cost Could Be Cut,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 5, 1970
“Nelson plans asphalt plant in Shakopee,” Minneapolis Star, May 10, 1972
“Neighbors bring halt to dumping of fill,” Star Tribune, Sept. 5, 1998
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