(Previously known as: Tighe Building, McKibbin, Driscoll and Dorsey Company, and Cardozo Warehouse - 300 5th St East)

This large and plain six story brick building has a classical cornice with dentils. The main entrance is located at the southeast corner of the building. The building was built by architect J. Walter Stevens in 1902 at a cost of $85,000 as warehouse by Neumann and Hoy Contractors and it’s original owner was Ambrose Tighe, a lawyer who was the president of the Minnesota Waterworks Company in Brainerd and Vice President of both the Conrad Gotzian Shoe Company (located at 5th and Wacouta in Lowertown), and the Security Trust Company. Tighe was married to Harriet F. Gotzian, a daughter of Conrad Gotzian. Though it is known that Tighe financed the construction of the building, the first occupants of the building and its original name have not been identified. By 1906 the building was known as the Broadway Company and from the 1920’s through 1944 it was the McKibbin, Driscoll and Dorsey Company. From 1945 until the 1970’s it was known as the Cardozo Furniture Company Warehouse. This company was in existence as early as the 1880’s and went out of business in the late 70’s.

In the early 1980’s the building had been proposed as the potential “Broadway Center,” which would have contained 26,000 square feet of retail space for a year-round farmers’ market, 3,200 square feet for a restaurant, and 65 apartments. This potential development project was linked with plans for the block bounded by 5th, Broadway, 4th, and Wall Streets, a parking lot in the early 1980’s which was once the site of the Lindeke, Warner and Sons Dry Goods Company which eventually merged with Finch, VanSlyck and McConville Dry Good Company who built the Finch Building on Mears Park. This block would be known as Broadway Square and become the new site of the St. Paul Farmers’ Market. (The site where the Farmers Market was formerly located at 10th and Jackson Streets, north of Lowertown, had been cleared for the construction of a hotel). Today the Market House contains the apartments (ended up condos) in that original development plan and multiple restaurants. 

*Large portion of content sourced from Lowertown Historic Registry Application 11/30/1981