International Harvester Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker on the International Harvester Building tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, when J.P. Morgan merged several harvesting companies back in 1902, he created something called the International Harvester Company.

That right there is the kind of consolidation that changes the shape of an industry, and eventually, it changes the shape of a city. The company rolled into Amarillo in 1919, and by 1925 they were already looking around and thinking, we need more room. Demand was climbing, and a building that couldn't keep up wasn't worth keeping.

So they made plans to enlarge their facility, and they didn't hire local for the design work. They went all the way to Chicago, brought in an architect named W.D. Price, and paired him with H.W.

Underhill Construction Company as the contractor. Now that is a combination that means business. What they put up was a red brick, three-story, two-part commercial block building.

Completed in 1926. It had office space, a warehouse, and a display room, which tells you something right there. This wasn't just a place to store things.

It was a place to show things, to sell things, to be seen. And that building was, as the marker puts it, symbolic of an agricultural and trade boom of the 1920s. Amarillo was growing, the Plains were producing, and International Harvester was right there in the middle of it.

They stayed in that building until 1969. Fifty years of harvests, of business, of a city becoming what it is. That red brick still stands to account for all of it.

What the marker says

Founded in 1902 when J.P. Morgan merged several harvesting companies, the International Harvester Company came to Amarillo in 1919. By 1925, the company made plans to enlarge their facility to meet increasing demand. Architect W.D. Price of Chicago was hired to design the building with H.W. Underhill Construction Company as the contractor. The red brick three-story, two-part commercial block building was completed in 1926 and included office space, a warehouse and display room. The building, symbolic of an agricultural and trade boom of the 1920s, was home to International Harvester until 1969.