THE GEORGE RUSHTON BAKING COMPANY, 1919-20, 1926, 1930
814 Southwest Boulevard
Ernest O. Brostrom, Architect
Philip T. Drotts, Associate Architect
Jorgen C. Dreyer, Sculptor
Register of Historic Kansas Places: July 3, 1979
THE GEORGE RUSHTON BAKING COMPANY, 1919-20, 1926, 1930
814 Southwest Boulevard
Ernest O. Brostrom, Architect
Philip T. Drotts, Associate Architect
Jorgen C. Dreyer, Sculptor
Register of Historic Kansas Places: July 3, 1979
The George Rushton Baking Company was a family owned business that had its
beginning in the City of Rosedale in 1888. George Rushton was an Englishman, born in
Manchester in 1861, who emigrated to the United States in 1881. He was the son of a baker,
and entered the bakery business in New York until 1883, when he relocated to Kansas City,
Missouri. There he and his wife Jane were employed by the Higgins Cracker and Candy Co.,
and later worked for the Boss and Smith bakeries.
In 1888 Rushton purchased a bakery on Southwest Boulevard in Rosedale from Harry
O'Neil. Originally called the Rushton Steam Bakery, it was a small, one-room establishment
where Rushton did his own baking and selling. This building was destroyed by fire in 1901, and
was soon replaced by a more modern, two-story brick structure. The bakery grew rapidly until by
1911 it was the largest incorporated bakery in Greater Kansas City, and the largest bakery in the
state of Kansas.
Rushton was active in civic affairs, being one of the promoters who secured the
development of Southwest Boulevard as a connecting link between Rosedale and Kansas City,
Missouri. His three sons, Frank, George Jr., and Richard, all followed him into the baking
business and were likewise involved in public affairs. Frank Rushton in particular served as
President of the Rosedale Board of Education, on the site selection committee for the Rosedale
World War I Memorial Arch, and worked for the eventual consolidation of Rosedale with Kansas
City, Kansas in 1922. He later served as President of the Kansas City, Kansas Board of
Education. His accomplishments were honored in the naming of present Frank Rushton
Elementary School at 2605 West 43rd Avenue.
In 1912, George Rushton retired and turned the business over to his three sons. At that
time the bakery employed approximately 120 persons in a facility with a floor area of 52,200
square feet. An output of over 12,000 pies and 25,000 loaves of bread daily required the use of
fifteen bakery wagons. Despite the obvious prosperity of the business, the Rushton family still
lived on the second floor of the bakery. Then, in 1917, Rushton commissioned architect Ernest
O. Brostrom to design a new home across the street from the bakery, at 815 Southwest
Boulevard. It is probable that Brostrom came to the attention of the Rushton family when the
First Baptist Church of Rosedale was built to his design in 1916, at the southwest corner of
Cherokee and Southwest Boulevard.
The Craftsman style Rushton residence was built of fireproof construction, in an apparent
response to the earlier fire. But the house was not yet completed when on September 8, 1917,
the second Rushton bakery was destroyed by a fire which started in the second floor storeroom
from an overheated ventilating fan . The fire was so intense that it disrupted the entire electrical
system in Rosedale, and damaged or destroyed several surrounding businesses. Brostrom was
hired to design a temporary replacement building, and began work on plans for a new fireproof
bakery building on the site of the old.
Ernest Olaf Brostrom was born in Sweden in 1888, and subsequently emigrated to the
United States with his parents. He attended public schools, but had no formal architectural
education. In 1907 he moved from Sioux City, Iowa to Kansas City, Missouri, to help open a
branch office of the Eisentraut-Colby-Pottenger Company, Architects. He opened his own office
in 1912, and made a specialty of small church designs. Just seven years later, in 1919, he
published a book entitled Churches, in which he offered advice to those about to undertake the
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building of a church. The book was illustrated with over 35 of his own designs, including
churches in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas. Perhaps the most distinguished church
designed by Brostrom in Kansas City, Kansas was the First Baptist Church of 1915-19, still
standing at North 5th Street and Nebraska Avenue.
Brostrom was a strong admirer of the architecture of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd
Wright. In 1910 he went to Chicago in the hope of working with Wright, only to find the Oak Park
Studio closed and Wright fled to Europe. He called on Louis Sullivan in the master's last days,
and later became close friends with William Gray Purcell. The Progressive influence was not
strongly evident in Brostrom's church designs, which generally utilized modified Gothic elements
but geometricized them in an Arts and Crafts manner, a style which Brostrom himself termed
"Pseudo Gothic." Nevertheless, the three buildings of which Brostrom was most proud were all in
the style which he called "Sullivanesque." These were the Jensen-Salsbery Laboratories of
1918-19, the George Rushton Baking Company, 1919-20, and the Newbern Apartment-Hotel,
1921-25.
It is important to note that the Jensen-Salsbery Laboratories, at 520 West 21st Street,
was, together with the Rushton Bakery, one of the few commercial/industrial buildings in the
United States to be designed in what is now called the Prairie Style. The only other examples
that come readily to mind are Wright's E-Z Polish Factory of 1905 (a design probably unknown to
Brostrom), Purcell and Elmslie's International Leather and Belting Corporation of 1917-18, and of
course Wright's Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo, completed in 1906 and the
evident inspiration for both the Jensen-Salsbery and Rushton designs. The laboratory building is
a simple three-story brick structure marked by brick piers that terminate with banded brick
courses. Two figurative sculptures by the Norwegian-born artist Jorgen C. Dreyer add further
emphasis to the central entry. This entry is a flattened version of the end elevation of the Larkin
Building, while the flanking portions of the front facade are derived from the Larkin side walls.
In 1920, Brostrom entered into a short-lived partnership with Phillip T. Drotts, and Drotts
was consequently listed as an associate architect on the Rushton project. The major Brostrom
and Drotts commission was for the Newbern Apartment-Hotel at 525 East Armour Boulevard,
probably the best known of Brostrom's works. It is a designated Kansas City, Missouri,
Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The two towers were built in
1921-23, with the connecting entry and lobby added in 1925. Unlike the Rushton and JensenSalsbery designs, elaborate Sullivanesque ornament is used throughout, at cornice and parapet,
on the pier capitals, and in the marvelous surround of the entrance with its highly inventive iron
and stained glass light standards.
Construction of the George Rushton Baking Company finally began in 1919, after the end
of World War I. While it has many similarities to the Jensen-Salsbery Laboratories (which it
apparently preceded in conception), it is arguably a more accomplished design. Where JensenSalsbery is blocky and the entry does not appear to be well integrated with the remainder of the
front facade, the Rushton Bakery is strongly horizontal with all its parts carefully subordinated to
the overall design. The Rushton Bakery as it presently stands extends some twenty bays in
length along Southwest Boulevard, the seven easternmost bays being later additions. The
materials of the two-story, fireproof structure were limited to a golden-brown, rough-faced brick
and natural colored cast stone (reinforced concrete).
The actual division of the original structure was as follows: a distinctive corner bay,
framed by broad, flat pilasters extending the full height of the building; five identical window bays,
separated by brick piers terminating in banded brick courses and supporting a continuous
parapet wall; the entrance, some two bays in width, which reads as an elaboration of the corner
bay; then five more window bays. The result was thus subtly asymmetrical, which allowed the
later additions to be carried out without throwing the original composition out of balance. The
horizontality began at the base, in the form of a continuous water table or plinth, and continued in
the long lines formed by the alternating strips of parapet and windows. The feeling was further
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enhanced in the handling of the brickwork, with the horizontal joints being deeply raked while the
vertical joints were mortared flush with the face of the brick.
This same careful attention to detail was evident in the decorative elements. The central
pair of piers flanking the entry were pulled forward to support a pair of diminutive bakers sculpted
by Jorgen C. Dreyer. The figures were similar but not identical, one holding a measuring scale
and the other a pie and a rolling pin. The figures were noticeably finer than the pair executed by
Dreyer for the Jensen-Salsbery Laboratories, and were clearly decorative whereas the JensenSalsbery sculptures seemed to perform as caryatides, holding on their shoulders a weight much
to great for their slender mass.
The corner bay of the bakery was lent strength and distinction by a cast stone plaque
which replaced much of the first floor window area and which read as follows:
FIRST1888
A SHELTER, JUST A HOME
THEN 1917
BRICK AND TIMBERS,
BURNED TO EMBERS.
FAITHFUL HEARTS,
ENERGY WITH INDUSTRY
ARISING FROM CALAMITY,
STRIVING TOWARD IDEALITY,
THIS BUILDING HERE.
ERECTED,
1920
THE GEORGE RUSHTON
BAKING CO.
The inclusion of this idealistic motto was very much in keeping with the tenets of the Arts
and Crafts movement, and precedent could again be found in various works of Frank Lloyd
Wright. The plaque is visually tied into the wall surface by an interlocking grid of raised brick
bands, cast stone squares, and recessed strips of green glazed brick, the only bit of color on the
building.
The only other decorative elements were the name "RUSHTON'S," spelled out in
individual bronze letters on the parapet wall above the entry, and the flag pole centered above,
which with its decorative top of horizontal disks lends an almost Art Deco flavor to the design.
The large, nearly square window openings were filled with standard factory sash, the multiple
rectangles reinforcing the overall geometry of the design.
The other street facade, on Cherokee Street, repeated the pattern established on the
front. The corner bay retained its distinctive treatment, though with a full size window on the first
floor level. This was followed by two two-story bays with a slightly different articulation from the
front, and eight one-story bays accommodating the large doors for the bakery trucks. The pier
between the two-story bays does not project as on the front but holds to the wall plane, allowing
the parapet wall above the one-story bays to extend to the corner bay, effectively interlocking the
composition.
A small addition was apparently made to the building in 1923, and in 1926 Rushton's
purchased the adjoining Naschold Bakery, said to be the oldest bakery in Rosedale. With this
second addition the bakery then occupied a full square block on Southwest Boulevard. These
expansions added seven bays on the east end of the main facade, four two-story bays and three
of one story. Brostrom was the architect for these additions, as well as for a third addition in
1930 to house refrigeration machinery. The additions very carefully repeat the design vocabulary
of the original building, and to the casual observer, only a slight difference in brick color gives any
clue that they were not part of the original design.
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The George Rushton Baking Company continued in operation until 1946, when it was
sold to the C. J. Patterson Company of Kansas City, Missouri, presently a food additives
company. The Patterson Company operated the bakery as American Research Kitchen (ARK)
Bakers Inc. In approximately 1956, the name was changed to Holsum Bakers of Kansas City. At
this point the RUSHTON'S letters were removed, and a rather inappropriate pylon sign placed
atop the one story portion of the addition. In 1972 the building briefly housed Taystee Bakers
following Holsum's demise, then in 1973 it was sold to Modern Warehouse Inc., a carpet
warehousing operation which still owns the property. Sometime between 1964 and 1975 the
Dreyer sculptures were removed by the Patterson Company. They are reportedly now in the
possession of the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas. Also at the time of either
the Taystee or the Modern Warehouse acquisition, a totally inappropriate (and easily removable)
wood mansard was tacked up over the central entry doors. The only other exterior change has
been the replacement of some of the factory sash with large glass windows set in bronze-colored
frames. These new windows in themselves relate well to the overall design, but their spotty
placement and the contrast that they make with the original sash necessarily detracts from the
overall appearance of the building.
None of these changes are irreversible, nor have they damaged the basic building fabric.
The mansard and pylon sign could be easily removed, the windows and the RUSHTON'S letters
replaced. It is also technically possible that castings could be made of the Dreyer sculptures and
the reproductions put in place, but this would obviously require the cooperation of the present
owners. Should these actions be carried out, the building would be restored to its original
exterior appearance at relatively small expense.
The George Rushton Baking Company vies with the Newbern Apartment-Hotel for
consideration as Ernest O. Brostrom's finest design. It represents a substantial contribution to
the efforts of the Prairie School to develop a new American architecture in the Midwest, and
deserves to be more widely known than is the case. It is hoped that the means may be found to
restore the building to its proper place in the history of Kansas City and indeed of the United
States.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brostrom, Ernest O. Churches. Kansas City: The Lowell Press, 1919.
City directories for Kansas City, Kansas and/or Kansas City, Missouri, 1908 et seq.
Ford, Susan Jezak: "The Influence of the Chicago School on the Work of Ernest Olaf Brostrom."
Unpublished Master's Thesis, School of Architecture and Urban Design, University of Kansas, no
date (1996).
Hoffmann, Donald L. "Ernest Olaf Brostrom (obituary)." The Prairie School Review, Vol. VI, No.
3, Third Quarter, 1969: 26.
----------. "Kansas City's Lost Heritage From the Chicago School."
Architect, February 1964: 13-21.
Landis, Margaret. "The Winding Valley and The Craggy Hillside:"
Rosedale, Kansas. Kansas City, Kansas: self published, 1976.
Skylines and Midwest
A History of the City of
Lawson, Patricia. "The Stones of Jorgen Dreyer." Historic Kansas City Foundation Gazette, Vol.
5, No. 7, August/September 1981: 1.
Piland, Sherry. "Early Kansas City Architect: Ernest O. Brostrom." The Historic Kansas City
News, Vol. 5, No. 2, October-November 1980: 5.
----------. "A Kansas City Architect: Phillip Drotts." Historic Kansas City Foundation Gazette, Vol.
7, No. 3, July/August 1983: 10.
Western Contractor/Mid-West Contractor, Volume 29, No. 784, January 5, 1916 to Volume 78,
No. 2086, December 25, 1940 (multiple listings).
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