The Winnebago Paper Company

John R. Davis immigrated from Wales to North America and landed in Quebec in 1840.  Six years later Mr. Davis was in Milwaukee and meet Jane Jones also a Welch immigrant.  The two were married in 1848, later that year John visited Neenah and purchased some real estate and moved there the next year.  Mr. Davis was a great entrepreneur and engaged in wagon building, a trade he had plied before arriving in Milwaukee.  In 1852 he acquired the old Government Mill and went into the flour milling business until the mill burned in 1874.  He then organized the Winnebago Paper Company and built a new mill near where Main St. bends to become West Wisconsin Ave.  The paper company was very successful which helped support his family of six and the families of many workers.  Shortly before his death in 1885 Mr. Davis commissioned William Waters to design his home on East Wisconsin Ave.

The passing of John Davis Sr. didn't stop the company from growing, his son John Jr. took over and expanded the company to Eau Claire.  In 1893 the younger Mr. Davis asked William Waters to plan an office building for the mill.  Architect Waters produced plans for a Romanesque Style building with arched window openings on the first floor, a chamfered corner entry and living quarter on the second floor.  The structure was built of red pressed brick with roughhewn limestone arches, sills and lintel.  The corner entrance featured a door flanked by two diminutive columns on tall plinths supporting a lintel and pediment of intricate stone work.  Above the door was recessed bay window with limestone bartizans on either side, which rose to top of the parapet.  Just below the gable was a set of arched triplet windows, a favorite component of Mr. Waters.   

In 1904 the mill was purchased by the Bergstrom Paper Company and not long after the office was expanded to double its original size.  Waters was called upon to draw the plans as he had drawn the originals and had designed Mr. Bergstrom's house.  The addition was sympathetic and seamless; one would have been hard pressed to discern the alteration.  The building served the company for many years but when the business was sold and the mill closed the structure was razed and replaced by a monument made up of bits and pieces of the building. 

The Kimberly Clark Office

In 1872 four enterprising individuals, namely; John Kimberly, Havilha Babcock, Charles Clark and Frank Shattuck all of Neenah, Wisconsin, formed a partnership for the purpose of making paper.  The company was very aggressive and soon was the largest paper manufacturer in the mid west with mills not only in Neenah but Appleton too.  It was only right and proper that the company have a suitable office from which to conduct it's affairs.  So it was that in 1880 Kimberly  Clark sought the services of William Waters.  Mr. Waters was the preeminent architect in the area and had by that time designed identical dwellings for Messrs. Clark and Shattuck and would eventually plan the home of Havilha Babcock.

The company had a parcel of land fronting on Ceder St. along side a canal, a fine place to build an office.  In March of 1880 the construction contract was let to Watkins Gittens of Neenah and work started shortly after that.  The Oshkosh Times, in an article about Kimberly Clark, published on November 27th 1880 mentioned that the firm had just moved in to it's fine new office building which had been designed by William Waters.  The notice also stated that the two story brick building measured 28 x 60 with heating apparatus in the basement and offices on the first and second floors.  It was indeed a handsome structure of cream colored brick with dark courses and lintel accents.  The building was capped by a steep hipped roof with a Gothic arched window occupying a dormer, front and center.  The fenestration was regular and symmetrical with rosettes  carved into the keystones and springers of the lintels.  

Sometime around 1906 an addition was erected on the west and south sides of the building.  There is no written account of the addition or its planning, just fire insurance maps showing an expanded structure about that time. Surely the addition was penned by Mr. Waters as it was sympathetic to the original facade.  The addition however had no hipped roof or dormer to match the original, this gave the building a somewhat unbalanced look.  Kimberly Clark built a new office in 1956 but the old building on Ceder, cum Commercial Street still served the company.  With the demolition of Neenahs' city hall in the early 1970's the old office building became the temporary city hall from 1972 to 78 and was razed when the city moved in to a new building.