When the Parsons & Scoville Building opened on January 1, 1908, an Evansville newspaper reported that 10,000 visitors attended the festivities, with coffee, sandwiches, and cigars “served in abundance.â€
The company, located at 915 Main Street, was the largest wholesale grocery in Indiana, and its success prompted the addition of another story in 1914. The building was the first in Evansville to be made with concrete, rather than timber, and cars from the nearby railroad yard could enter the building.
Founded by two Civil War veterans, the business epitomized the city’s booming commercial trade around the turn-of-the-century, and it finally dissolved in the 1930s.
Today the structure is more commonly known as the Curtis Building.
