1023 E. Walnut

History

1023 E. Walnut is part of a cluster of grocery warehouses built by John Creber of Poole & Creber. Creber, who grew up in his father’s grocery business, moved his family to Columbia from Streator, Illinois, in 1923, and in 1926 he built a small wholesale house behind a Victorian home on Walnut Street. The location was all about the railroad: a Wabash spur ran right up to the back, so groceries could be unloaded straight from the train.

The complex kept growing. A bakery came in the early 1930s, and in 1939 a big expansion added offices, a cork-lined cold storage room and a tunnel linking the basements. The street-facing upper level of 1023 dates from that year. It was built behind a 19th-century house that faced Walnut, which is why its loading dock sits at an angle. A long, narrow room on the east end followed in 1950.

Creber sold the Walnut Street warehouse in 1958. In the 1990s a moving company used part of the space, and the basement later became a speakeasy known as the Catacombs. Today the old warehouses are home to eleven businesses, including Wishflour Bakery down in the Catacombs.

COMO Magazine’s Tahlia Heaton wrote a great history of these grocery warehouses. Read the full story: A World Beneath Walnut Street.