Argonne Building Rehabilitation Project

The four-story masonry Argonne Building with one-story east wing was constructed in 1919 in a Classical Revival style by an unknown architecture firm. The building is a rare-surviving auto-related building in Des Moines, and the last remaining building containing an auto showroom on Grand Avenue, once a part of a large, dense “auto row” that developed as Iowa became one of the early leaders in auto sales. It served as a retail, auto garage, and residential hybrid, with five ground-floor automotive-related sales showrooms, most with rear work rooms and an auto parking garage, and three upper stories of mostly studio apartments geared toward Ford factory workers employed at the then-new Ford auto plant across the street. The Argonne developer, hotelier and one-time Ford auto dealer E. Lloyd, moved into one of the apartments soon after construction and lived there until his death in 1934. The period of significance for the building is the interwar era: 1919 construction through 1941 end of the interwar period. The building is being rehabilitated to retain ground-floor retail and auto garage, as well as upper-level apartment units, plus new accessible apartment units in the rear ground floor of the building.

This project is an existing 4-story building that will contain retail, an enclosed parking on the ground level, (6) new residential units on level 1 and 39 existing residential units on the upper 3 levels. The building is currently occupied by Funky Finds on lower level and level one. The remainder of the building is unoccupied. The Owner is planning to put the property on the National Register of Historic Places. Photographer: Cameron Campbell