The Eagle, My Father, and the Warehouse

I remember when the Case building on NP (Northern Pacific) Avenue in Fargo looked the way it did in that photo.

I’d better explain.

I’m old, but I’m not that old. The F. O. E. (Fraternal Order of Eagles) parade on NP Avenue was in the summer of 1910. I wasn’t born until the fall of 1951.

Besides, the building I remember didn’t look exactly like the one in the photo.

I don’t remember either the water tower or the “J. I. CASE THRESHING MACHINE CO.” signage. Someone probably took the lettering down in 1928, 0r a little after, when “J. I. Case Company” became the outfit’s moniker.¹

But otherwise, the Case company’s Fargo warehouse hadn’t changed much in the half-century between that 1910 parade and the time my father took me for a ride on the building’s freight elevator. Not on the outside, anyway.

A Dad Moment: Riding a Freight Elevator

I’m not sure how — or when, for that matter — my father arranged for us to get into the Case warehouse.

Whenever it was, the building was mostly empty: no people, a lot of open space lit by sunlight coming in through the windows.

There wasn’t much to see apart from columns and the beams and joists overhead.

We went in through the south door. I’m pretty sure about this, although it’s been a long time and I was young. We walked the building’s length to the freight elevator at the back.

Then we rode the open timber platform up to the top floor, looked around, and took the elevator back down.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like much. Not compared to, say, a trip to Disneyland.

But seeing the inside of a warehouse and riding a freight elevator was fun. And, at least as important, it was something my father and I did together.

The Curious Case of the Vanishing Eagle

The Case building I remember was topped by a globe set on a small platform.

An eagle perched on the globe, gazing down NP Avenue.

At some point, both disappeared. I don’t remember exactly when.

The Case eagle logo dates back to 1865. I don’t know if the globe was part of the logo then. J. I. Case probably got the idea of using an eagle in his company’s logo from the 8th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment’s mascot, Old Abe; but I haven’t confirmed that.

At any rate, the Case globe and eagle perched atop of the Case building are part of my memories of Fargo’s NP Avenue.

And then they were gone.

Maybe the eagle and globe got taken down as part of the corporate shuffle that started in 1967 and went into overdrive in the 1980s. Or maybe someone got the notion that the logo was imperialistic and had to go. That was an interesting period.

Without them, the Case warehouse was just another building on NP Avenue.

I thought the Case building’s logo was gone for good. But it looks like someone donated it to an open-air museum in West Fargo. Or maybe the museum had it all along. Either way, the sculpture was on display in Bonanzaville by February of 2018.²

The Old Case Building and Downtown Fargo: Catching Up

Someone converted the Case building to office space in the late 1980s to 1990s.

About a decade back, folks running a regional flood control project apparently wondered if they could tear it down safely. An engineering firm said, basically, ‘yes’.

But Google Street View includes images of the Case building taken in January of 2022.

Google Maps says there’s a law firm with offices there.

On the other hand, Google Maps also says that Case Plaza is “Permanently closed”.

Gripping as a legal firm operating out of an abandoned warehouse might be as a whodunit’s setting, my guess is that Case Plaza — or at least the building — isn’t entirely “closed”.

For me, that’s good news. I’d be sorry to see the old Case building destroyed, and don’t see the point in tearing it down. It’s near the Red River, but not much higher or lower than the rest of downtown Fargo.

Granted, precious few places in Fargo are higher or lower than any other. Fargo is on what used to be the bottom of Glacial Lake Agassiz: some of the flattest land on Earth, and I’m wandering off-topic.

Before moving on, a quick look at how I caught up with the Case building’s story.

I knew what to look for because I grew up across the river, in Moorhead, Minnesota.

The Internet gives me access to occasional nuggets of useful information, along with mountains of drivel, and that’s definitely another topic.³

This is the sort of thing I found:

Downtown Fargo Historic Case IH Office
Grain Designs

CLIENT: Enclave Companies
LOCATION: Fargo, ND
COMPLETION:
NOV. 2015 | 2018 expansion | 2020 expansion
PROJECT SCOPE:

• 14 reclaimed douglas fir L office desks and U desks
• 4 sit stand desks
• 4 live edge office meeting tables
• metal and wood binder storage shelves
• glass top CASE steam engine door table
• design+build+delivery & installation

Based on that, I figured that someone was converting the Case warehouse to offices around 2015.

Unless the Grain Designs job was for someone remodeling existing office space. I found the vague ‘late 1980s to 1990s’ conversion date in an engineering report.⁴

Change, Personal Limitations, and a Few Good Ideas

I enjoy getting out and seeing places, which is another way in which my wife and I are profoundly unlike. There’s a world of difference between “compatible” and “identical”, and that’s yet another topic.

Getting out and seeing places, physically, isn’t a practical option, so my visits are virtual. Given Google Street View’s limitations, that means my visit to Fargo’s downtown this week was actually to the Fargo downtown that existed in 2021 and 2022.

The car wash that had been across the street west of the Case building was a coffee shop and a gas station. Fargo’s downtown had fewer buildings, more parking lots, and more high-rises than I remember. And they’ve got the start of a skyway system: one over Broadway, and another over 2nd Avenue North. Maybe more.⁵

That last, I think, is a smart move. I grew up in this part of the world, and like it here: but our winters don’t encourage casual strolls in the great outdoors. And that — you guessed it — is yet again another topic.

Part of an Imperfect Family: and Loving It

I was talking with my third-oldest daughter about the Case building and my father’s way of taking me on what amounted to field trips.

He’s a hard act to follow, but she reassured me that getting taken hither, thither, and yon wasn’t something she’d yearned for.

That was reassuring, although it was a reminder of how long it took me to appreciate the gap between my enthusiasm for getting out and seeing things, and the interests — and capacities — of my wife and our kids.

This isn’t that hypothetical ‘perfect family’ Pope Francis talked about.

“…’We all dream about a beautiful, perfect family. But,’ Pope Francis recognized, ‘there’ no such thing as a perfect family,’ for each family ‘has its own problems,’ ‘as well as its tremendous joys.’…”
(“Pope’s March prayer intention: ‘for families in crisis’” , Deborah Castellano Lubov, Vatican News (March 4, 2025))

But, somehow, we’ve managed. And every day I think God that I’m part of this family.

I’ve said that before:

• “Life Lessons: Grocery Bags and a Bottle of Ketchup”
  (February 15, 2025)
• “A Crate of Oranges”
  (February 1, 2025)
• “Early Diagnosis, Tardy Treatment, and a Gimpy Hip”
  (January 25, 2025)
• “Sledding With My Dad: Good Memories”
  (June 22, 2024)
• “Another Trip to the Emergency Room”
  (May 15, 2021)

¹ The J. I. Case Company and Fargo, some context:

• Wikipedia
  • Case Corporation (1842-1999, mergers started ca. 1967)
  • Fargo, North Dakota
  • Timeline of Fargo, North Dakota (“This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.”)
  • Fraternal Order of Eagles (F. O. E.)
• Businesses, Equipment and Machinery, Fargo History, NDSU Library
  • Anderson Carriage & Wagon Shop
  • Buffalo Pitts Threshing Machine Company
  • Case Threshing Company

² An eagle, a logo, and a little lore:

• Wikipedia
  • 8th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment
  • Case Corporation (1842-1999, mergers started ca. 1967)
    • Competition in the farm_business
• Old Abe
• Bonanzaville, Cass County Historical Society
  • Pioneer Village in Alphabetical Order
• Case #1 Portable Steam Engine
  National Museum of American History, Smithsonian
• Case Portable Steam Engine “Old 44” (1869)
  Artifacts, Manitoba Agricultural Museum
• “HGB Ep. 244 – Bonanzaville”
  History Goes Bump In The Night — Ghost tours for the theater of the mind!
  (February 8, 2018)

³ Where I found what I found, and my take on the Information Age:

• Wikipedia
  • Fargo-Moorhead Area Diversion Project
  • Fargo, North Dakota
  • Information Age
  • Lake Agassiz
  • Red River Valley
• “Case Plaza Property / 117 Northern Pacific Ave / Fargo, North Dakota”
  In-Town Levees Project Phase I Environmental Site Assessment prepared by HDR for Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Authority (July 2013)
• Case Plaza
  Commercial Cafe
• Downtown Fargo Historic Case IH Office
  Grain Designs
• Nicolet Law Accident & Injury Lawyers
  Fargo Office
• Fear, “Phaedrus”, and seeking truth
  • “Not Feeling ‘Information Overload’ or ‘Loss of Identity’” (November 6, 2020)
    • Nuggets of Wisdom, Mountains of Gibberish

⁴ “…The property was converted to office space during the late 1980s to early 1990s….”:

• “Case Plaza Property / 117 Northern Pacific Ave / Fargo, North Dakota”
  In-Town Levees Project Phase I Environmental Site Assessment prepared by HDR for Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Authority (July 2013)

⁵ Looks like there is more:

• Wikipedia
  • Skyway
• Way: Fargo Skyway (316313120), Version #4 (“Updates to Downtown Fargo using Spring 2020 Imagery from ESRI. Block 9, Mercantile Garage, Adjusted Robert’s Commons, added many sidewalks.”)
  OpenStreetMap