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The Herald-Dispatch file Photo
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The Gwinn Brothers Mill was demolished in 1970.
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HUNTINGTON --
For more than 70 years, from 1889 to 1962, the Gwinn Brothers Milling Co.
was a
familiar part of downtown Huntington.
In 1883,
brothers O.E. and W.W. Gwinn built a grist mill near their general store at
Glenwood in Mason County.
By the late 1880s, the brothers were milling more
flour than they could dispose of in Glenwood. So they sold
the general store,
dismantled their mill, loaded it on a barge and floated it down the Ohio River to the foot of
10th Street in downtown Huntington. There, they were welcomed by
their brother Gene,
already established as a Huntington grocer.
From that
humble beginning grew a successful business whose busy mill at 2nd Avenue and
10th Street produced,
at its peak, hundreds of barrels of flour and corn meal
and hundreds of tons of commercial feed every day.
The only
large flour and feed mill in West Virginia, its sales territory covered southern
and central West Virginia,
southern Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia and even North
Carolina. Rebuilt and expanded over the years, the mill filled
as many as 5,000
paper flour bags a day and another 4,000 bags for corn meal and other products.
After
completing his education, D.B. Gwinn, the youngest of the Gwinn brothers, took
over the
office work at the mill and gradually assumed greater responsibility in
running the company.
After the death of W.W. Gwinn, D.B. Gwinn succeeded him as
company president.
In 1910, D.B.
Gwinn built a handsome home on the north side of 5th Avenue between 15th and
16th streets.
Designed by Edwin N. Alger, one of Huntington's best known and
respected architects of the day,
the house is now owned by Marshall University.
In April of
1962, the surviving members of the Gwinn family sold their majority interest in
the
company to a Milwaukee wholesale grocery and feed mill company. The
following July the new
owner said that competitive pressures were such that the
Huntington mill couldn't be operated
profitably. The mill was shut down and all
employees let go. The mill was demolished in 1970
as part of the city's downtown
urban renewal project.
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Note: This Article and picture appeared in the Herald-Dispatch Newspaper on Sep. 22 , 2014
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