Development Projects

History

The four-story masonry Argonne Building with a 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 the 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.  Upon the completion of the rehabilitation, the building will contain 45 apartments and almost 7,000 square feet of commercial.