By Jim Winnerman, Photos By Darius Bryjka
If you were a business owner in a small Colorado town between 1880 and 1910, the Mesker family had the solution for quickly improving the appearance of your storefront to attract more customers.
In keeping with the Victorian architectural craze sweeping the nation, the Meskers were producing elaborate pressed metal panels and other architectural pieces back East. These components could then be shipped anywhere and immediately transform a typical wooden building into the most admired business in town.
Many of these Mesker buildings have disappeared due to redevelopment, fire or neglect. Often, however, if the facades have been painted and maintained as those in Ouray, Silverton, Telluride and other Colorado towns have been, they remain as architecturally interesting and significant buildings.
“Colorado has one of the finest maintained collections of Mesker storefronts in the United States,” says Darius Bryjka, the national expert on the facades. “The West was rapidly expanding in the late 1800s, and eastern and southern states were still rebuilding after the Civil War. Merchants everywhere wanted their businesses to have an impressive and fashionable front.”
Budgets were tight, particularly in smaller towns, where architectural services were also limited. But Mesker panels were lightweight and could be easily and inexpensively sent throughout the United States.
They could also be custom ordered to fit any structure size, and they were easily installed with local labor in just a few days at only one-fifth the cost of a brick or cast-iron facade. Perhaps most importantly, the Industrial Age had allowed mass production of the pressed metal pieces to be reasonably priced.
“The ability of the Mesker brothers to produce their facades in manageable sized pieces and in a way they could be joined together so no one could tell it was not solid wood or stone was important for the most impressive facade,” Bryjka says. “Mesker pieces were actually nailed to an intricate wood frame, and then each piece was overlapped so the seam is almost invisible from a distance.”
Other architectural items were also sold. A 1902 flyer on Mesker letterhead lists pressed tin ceilings, fire escapes, balcony railing and columns, and window sills and lintels for brick buildings among the other products. There was something for every building, and it is estimated that there may have been as many as 45,000 buildings with some type of Mesker component at one time.
Other firms produced pressed metal facade storefronts, but the Mesker family was by far the largest supplier manufacturing a wide variety of motifs on an unprecedented scale. In Telluride, for example, a few fronts were produced locally by the Telluride Mine Works, according to Bob Mather, who is the Telluride historic preservation architect. “However, they were primarily supplying what the mine needed,” he says.
The origin of the Mesker business can be traced to about 1844 when German immigrant John Bernard Mesker settled in Cincinnati and trained as a “tinner” working with tinplate. By 1850 he was producing stoves, copperware and tinware in Evansville, Indiana. Soon after he was teaching his sons the trade.
Eventually Mesker’s sons began their own iron works, concentrating on the production of storefronts. George continued the family business in Evansville, Indiana, while Bernard and Frank Mesker opened the competing Mesker Brothers Iron Works in St. Louis.
Since 2004, Bryjka has been on a personal quest to document every remaining Mesker, as well as documenting through photographs those that no longer exist. Of the more than 2,400 Meskers he has so far located nationwide, 78 are in Colorado situated in 26 towns, which places the Centennial State sixth nationwide.
In 2008, the Ouray Historical Society invited Bryjka to town to deliver a seminar on the history of the town’s 14 Mesker fronts. He also conducted a walking tour of the buildings, which included the 1888 Wright Opera House, one of the best examples of a Mesker anywhere. A pressed metal cornice, window hoods, Greek columns and other ornamental pieces cover the front of the building from the roofline to the sidewalk.
To ensure both the inside and outside elegance of the Wright, the building is undergoing a renovation. Doug MacFarlane is the architect in charge of the High Victorian Gothic style building.
“The Mesker system was a very good, attractive product that can last a very long time, and all the owners of the Wright have always been good caretakers,” McFarlane says. “It was an innovative idea from ‘way back when’ that was ahead of its time in terms of some prefabricated buildings we see today.”
There has been an outpouring of local support at every level among Ouray’s citizens, MacFarlane says. “There is an amazing grassroots-based interest in keeping the Wright the community treasure it is, and to continue to use it as a cultural center as was originally intended when it was built over 110 years ago,” he says. “It is fun to work on a project with such support and with a history like the Wright enjoys.”
As is true with all Mesker fronts, to the viewer the intricate design of the Wright’s facade appears to be either wood, stone or terra cotta instead of the individual panels of pressed metal. “People love to look at it and the facade makes it fun to attend events there; but other than those intimately involved with its history I do not believe most people realize how the front is made,” MacFarlane says.
But not only is a Mesker facade unusual, so was the way the building fronts were ordered. There were no traveling Mesker salesmen. Instead all orders were mail order. At the height of the storefronts’ popularity, more than 500,000 catalogs were being mailed yearly just by the Mesker Brothers in St. Louis.
Criticism of the facades came from architectural purists who were not enamored with the imitation materials. By about 1910, the Mesker storefronts began to lose popularity as building design shifted away from the use of pressed metal facades.
But many of the elaborate-looking building facades have lasted through the years. And, luckily, in Colorado the emphasis has been on saving and celebrating these old buildings. Each Mesker building remaining is a local treasure, and an example of a very unusual period in American architecture.
Jim Winnerman is a freelance travel writer who has written more than 500 articles published in 30 magazines and newspapers.
At 512 Main St., Ouray, paint reveals how the detail stamped into the Mesker panels can be highlighted.
A plaque on the Mahr Building at 129 West Colorado Ave., Telluride, states the facade was made by the Mesker Brothers Front Builders in St. Louis.
In Silverton, Colorado, a Mesker panel at 1159 Blair Street incorporates a dolphin motif. The design was very popular in the early 1900s.
This drawing of the A.M. Collins & Co. building in Amethyst, Colorado appeared in the 1906 George Mesker catalog.
This selection of pressed metal cornices and pediments appeared in the 1904 George Mesker catalog.
