Steel Frames and Soaring Skylines

Why is Jamestown's Wellman Building an important link in the city's architectural and development history?

The corner of 3rd and Cherry was, in 1897, one of the priciest spots in the city. Adjacent to a streetcar hub and just two blocks from the train station, it was highly accessible and flooded with foot traffic -- a perfect place for the three Wellman brothers to locate their drug store and stationary shop. And a perfect place to stack four levels of speculative office space -- reachable by elevator -- with modern washrooms on each floor.

When it was completed, the Wellman Building was the city’s best commercial property and a financial boon to its builders, who added a six-story annex on Cherry Street in 1910 to meet the needs of their own businesses and the demand for rentable space.

Although the two parts of the Wellman Building have similar Italian Renaissance Revival styling and are considered a single property, they represent the fundamental leap in tall building construction taking place at the time. The 1897 portion is a load-bearing masonry building, with the exterior and interior walls providing structural support to each floor. The 1910 portion, however, uses a steel frame to support the building like a skeleton, making the brick exterior a mere curtain that encloses the building’s adaptable interior spaces.

Largely vacant and obsolete by the 1970s, the building was redeveloped and reopened in 2012, with the office floors converted to residential use.