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History
Within ten years of the Columbia Branch Railroad’s arrival in 1867, a stockyard for holding and shipping livestock stood in this part of north central Columbia. In 1930 W.E. Rader and Thomas Diggs started the Rader Packing Company here, renting space in the Wright Brothers barn and using the Wabash Railroad tracks next door to bring in cattle from the Kansas City stockyards. They bought the whole barn in 1933, and for more than 75 years the Rader and Diggs families’ business brought meat packing, livestock sales and eventually a retail butcher counter to the corner of Fay Street and Hinkson Avenue.
As the company grew in the 1960s, it put up new buildings near the original one. The first was this 1,800-square-foot brick building, built around 1959. By 1960 it was the headquarters of Wilson’s Wholesale Meat Company, which moved here from West Broadway and West Boulevard. Buying its beef straight from Diggs Packing, Wilson’s supplied restaurants and hotels, ran a retail storefront and grew to more than 30 employees, a trusted source of quality meat for Columbia families and businesses. Diggs Packing bought Wilson’s in 1985, and the business carried on here until it closed in 2006.
The Project
After Wilson’s closed, the building spent about a decade as a haunted house. We bought it from the Diggs family and began our renovation, restoring the brick building and turning it into space for local businesses.
Today it’s home to Ozark Mountain Biscuit, Pasta La Fata, Party Perfectly and Nail Couture.
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