Every era
leaves its mark.
For more than a century, the walls at 5th & Barnett have been put to work - a dairy, an industrial plant, warehousing, construction, and now a home for makers. We're still uncovering everything this building has been, and the picture keeps getting richer.
A century of work in one line - tap a date to jump to its chapter.
c. 1910 – mid-20th century
Meyer Sanitary Milk Company.
The building was constructed in 1910 to house the Meyer Sanitary Milk Company, a Grade-A pasteurized dairy operated by F. H. Meyer. Meyer's bottled milk, cream, and ice cream rolled out of the plant for decades.
The operation is documented in the 1924 Kansas State Dairy Commissioner Annual Report, which lists Meyer Sanitary Milk twice - once as a licensed milk plant and once as a licensed ice cream manufacturer. Surviving artifacts make the era tangible: bottle caps stamped "Meyer Sanitary Milk Co. Grade A Pasteurized," a wood-and-wire milk crate marked "Meyer Sanitary KCK," and a 1940s matchbook for "Meyer Ice Cream / Meyer Milk Butter / Over 40 Years," advertising a company that by then had been pouring milk into bottles since around the turn of the century.
The dairy was eventually absorbed into Milgram Food Stores - a transition documented in Meyer Dairy v. NLRB, 429 F.2d 697 (10th Cir. 1970).
Photograph: a milk delivery of the period (1927). A representative image of the era - not the Meyer plant itself. Public domain.
Mid-20th century
Storage & distribution.
After the dairy wound down, the building turned to warehousing and general distribution - the quiet stretch between the dairy years and the Orion era. The details of this period are less fully documented; what's clear is that the building stayed at work.
c. mid-1960s – early 1990s
Orion Fittings, Inc.
613 N. 5th Street during the Orion era - the ORION name painted on the brick.
A vintage photograph of the building shows the name "ORION" prominently displayed on the facade. The building is believed to have housed Orion Fittings, Inc. - a chemical-industrial manufacturer founded in Kansas City, Kansas in 1963 and the first North American company to injection-mold a complete line of polypropylene fittings.
Orion's product line was the unglamorous infrastructure of industry: polypropylene and PVDF pipe and fittings, acid waste drainage systems, neutralization tanks, polyolefin laboratory sinks, high-purity piping for labs and hospitals. The company eventually relocated to 2850 Fairfax Trafficway, and on May 21, 2004, was acquired by Watts Water Technologies. The Orion brand still exists, now under Watts.
The Orion attribution rests on the vintage facade photo combined with the company's documented history in this geography during this era. It has not yet been confirmed against deed records or city directories - Polk's Kansas City directories from 1965 to 1995 would settle it definitively.
Present
Strawberry Hilltop Warehouse.
The building was never truly empty - but by the time Casey Bond acquired it, it had been let go. Its previous owner, winding down the business after losing his partner, was retiring and selling off what he had built, and the warehouse had grown tired and run-down. For a long stretch, no one had really looked after it.
She was, honestly, in sad shape - a grand old workhorse waiting for someone to care again. Casey took that on, breathing a little life back into her and beginning the work of converting 68,000 square feet into a multi-tenant home for makers, restorers, storage operations, and other small businesses that need real industrial space.
The building sits on the edge of the Strawberry Hill neighborhood - the century-old Croatian, Slovenian, and Slovak immigrant enclave on the bluff northwest of I-70, anchored by St. John the Baptist Catholic Church and the Strawberry Hill Museum at 720 N. 4th. The neighborhood gave the building its new name, with one syllable added: Strawberry Hilltop, the warehouse on the rise above the hill.
Kansas State Dairy Commissioner Annual Report, 1924 (E. C. Lewellen, Dairy Commissioner; Topeka: Kansas State Printing Plant) · Meyer Dairy v. NLRB, 429 F.2d 697 (10th Cir. 1970) · Orion Fittings, Inc. / Orion Enterprises, Inc. corporate history via PitchBook, Datanyze, and the Watts Water Technologies acquisition record, May 21, 2004 · Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center, 720 N. 4th Street, Kansas City, KS · Material artifacts (bottle caps, milk crate, matchbook) from private collections and eBay listings.
68,000 square feet of space for the work you do.
A building with more than a century of work in its walls - and the next chapter is yours to write.
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