Grand Hall - History or Appleton and America

Grand Hall - History of Appleton and America

Victorians had this notion that you didn’t talk about having money:  You let your surroundings speak for you.  This hall says a great deal.

Henry Rogers had done very well…

The first part of his fortune was made in silver stocks and land deals in Denver in the Eighteen Eighties.  He formed a bank in Denver but then moved to Cheyenne in 1869 to open the first bank in Wyoming because the transcontinental railroad was coming through.  He added to his fortune by financing expansion of the railroad as well as the explosion of economic activity that followed the line.

Traveling back and forth between Cheyenne and Chicago, Rogers met two brothers, William and John Van Nortwick.  The Van Nortwick family owned the largest paper mill west of Ohio in Batavia Illinois, outside of Chicago.  The mill could not keep up supplying newsprint to the Chicago Tribune.  Literacy was exploding in America, reaching 80% by the Eighteen Seventies, and the newly literate populous was clammering for material to read.  Sensing the potential, Rogers and the Van Nortwicks formed a partnership with Rogers supplying the capital and the Van Nortwicks supplying the expertise.

The three men chose Appleton as the location to start their paper empire.  It had everything:  Vast forests to the north for pulp; large markets to the south (like Milwaukee, Chicago, and St Louis); and the brawny Fox River to supply the mechanical water power, and mills and millwrights, needed to turn the machinery.

The Rogers / Van Nortwick partnership eventually owned eight paper mills along the Fox River, some of them the largest in the world at the time.  Rogers became a paper baron who drove the creation of the “Paper Valley” and was the equal of others like Kimberly and Clark.

In 1880, Rogers and John Van Nortwick also purchased all the water rights along the Fox from the federal government and controlled the dams, canals, and the water power rights to the river.  Rogers ended up owning as many as 20 businesses in Appleton (the 19th century way to diversify your portfolio and diminish risk) and was the President of the local gas company providing illuminating gas to local households.  It is no wonder then that Rogers immediately saw the potential of using a water driven dynamo to light homes across the city.

Along with the Van Nortwicks, Rogers also helped found Combined Locks, Wisconsin.