Today’s installment of Throwback Thursday takes us to the southeast corner of North Main Street and Seventh Avenue.
In 1912, Joseph Baker opened a bakery at 600 S. Main. It was called Baker’s Bakery. Business went so well that in 1916 he decided to build a new larger brick building at 7th & Main and move his bakery there. On Jan. 29, 1917 his new location opened and was called “Modern Baking Co.”
In 1919, Andrew Cripe and his brothers from Garnett purchased the Modern Bakery, called it Cripe’s Bakery and quickly expanded it from a daily output of 2,400 loaves of bread a day to more than 8,000 loaves and called it Perfection Bread and became a wholesaler. In 1928, Cripe’s sold out to a larger baking concern and the facility became known as the General Baking Co. and their bread was named Bond Bread. The first photo shows the building in 1953.
The company continued to be a wholesaler through the 30’s through the 60’s. In the 1970’s, times became tough and the facility closed in 1977. After being vacant until the late 1980’s, Perry Reger bought the property for excess rental storage. The two story brick building was razed in 2008. The property today at 630 N. Main is still owned by the Christina Reger Rev. Trust.
