The Grocers Wholesale Company Building in Des Moines

The Grocers Wholesale Company Building, also known as the Sears and Roebuck Farm Store, is located at 22 9th Street in Des Moines, Iowa. Completed in 1916, this building was the first of four warehouses built and owned by Iowa's most successful statewide cooperative grocery warehouse. It may have been the first statewide organization of this kind in the country.

The cooperative was organized in 1912 to allow independent grocers to compete against chain stores and survive surcharges from wholesale grocers. After leasing their first warehouse, the cooperative built a new warehouse for each successive expansion, with each being larger and more technologically advanced than the last. The cooperative grew to include parts of Iowa, southern Minnesota, northern Missouri, and eastern Nebraska.

The cooperative built its second warehouse in 1930 and moved out of this facility. They continued to own the building until 1968, leasing it to other firms. The Sears Farm Equipment Store occupied the building from 1937 until 1959. The cooperative became the Associated Grocers of Iowa in the late 1950s and existed until 1985. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons