The history of Tinker House
Couples often ask us the same question on a tour: what was this building before? The short answer is a factory. The longer answer is a century of furniture makers, rag recyclers, a dairy next door, an empty shell on 16th Street, and a neighborhood that brought it back to life.
The Tinker House timeline
Before 1913
Older than the records?
The earliest record we have found is a 1913 advertisement. Our team has always suspected the brick is older than the paperwork; old city directories and fire maps are where we are digging next.
1913 to 1915
Built for bank furniture
The U.S. Bank Furniture Company made the counters and cabinets that filled bank lobbies. A 1913 ad shows the building with a wooden water tank on the roof and a rail siding alongside. By 1915, fire insurance maps recorded a freight elevator, sprinklers and a 14,000-gallon tank up top.
1920s
Wiegel Cabinet Company
The company became the Wiegel Cabinet Company, listed at 1101 East 16th Street in the 1927 city directory. Those timber beams and wood floors were a working factory floor.
Next door
The Polk dairy
Our neighbor for decades was the Polk Sanitary Milk Company, which moved to 16th Street in 1898 and ran until 1963, known for its giant milk-bottle towers. Its old stables are now COhatch Polk Stables.
The Polk dairy and the rail line, likely the 1940s.
1950s to 1990s
Rags, paper and scrap
An addition went up on the south end and the building worked as a recycling center. The giant tumbler drum sorted material on the upper floor, and the painted letters on the north wall likely date from these years.
The tumbler drum, before the rebuild.
2003 to 2015
Tinker Flats, quiet and empty
Renamed Tinker Flats, the building sat vacant and became a favorite backdrop for photo shoots and music videos. In 2015 the King Park Development Corporation bought it to bring it back.
The upper floor before the rebuild: the same windows you see today.
2016
The rebuild
Third Street Ventures and Hotel Tango Whiskey took on the redevelopment, with Site Architecture designing and TSV Construction building. The plan: something on every floor.
Construction, 2016.
2017
Tinker House Events opens
The second floor opened as an event space, keeping the brick, the beams, the wood floor and every factory part we could save.
The bar, built from the old conveyor belt and reclaimed floor.
2018 to today
Provider Café, and one team
Provider Café opened on the ground floor in 2018. In 2024 Tinker House Events took over running it, so the café and the event space are now one team under one roof.
Provider Café on the first floor, under the same factory windows.
