Preservationists work to maintain Washington landmark

Fixer-Uppers is a three-part series highlighting ambitious building preservation efforts happening around Washington. This article is the first installment.

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WASHINGTON — The Old Calendar Factory Building has long stood as a landmark in the city of Washington. The household basement business turned-industrial powerhouse put Washington on the map to thousands of buyers across the nation, before its eventual closure in January of 2004, according to the National Historic Registry.

At its peak in the ‘80s, the Registry said the factory was Washington’s number one employer, churning out 40 million calendars a year. While it was long the only licensed printer of Playboy and Monkeyshines calendars in the U.S., the company’s core sources of revenue were religious calendars and those depicting hot rod vehicles, a testament to its diverse clientele.

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It still stands today, after almost two decades out of use. Though it no longer churns out high-definition prints of cars, Christ, monkeys or models, the monument to Washington’s history remains intact thanks in no small part to an effort from Washington resident Terry Philips.

Philips, along with roughly a dozen other investors from across Eastern Iowa, bought the building in 2021. Their goal since then has been straightforward: preparing the structure for sale to someone who won’t demolish it.

"We want to find someone who wants to develop it that respects the history of the building,“ Philips said. ”By ‘respect the history,’ all I mean is you won’t tear the building down and build something different. A great possibility would be a microbrewery, for here, with all the open windows.“

Nobody involved expects to make substantial cash from flipping the property.

Philips — whose portfolio also includes the Mills Seed Co. Building a few blocks away — said he simply wanted to maintain a piece of history, and hold out against the environmental impact of building demolitions.

"All the energy used to manufacture and build this building, all the carbon from that is absorbed by trees and grass now. So if you wanted to build the same-sized building, you’d have literally tons of carbon going into the air,“ he said. ”We need to be reusing old buildings more than building new ones … I’ve got two grand kids. One’s seven, one’s five. I don’t have a problem with climate change, it’s not going to effect me, but it will them.“

Since the calendar factory shut down its presses, the building has served its owners in other ways.

Philips said a rock band had traveled to town to take promotional photos in the long-abandoned halls, and that some very tentative plans were in the works for a holding window-making class on the main floor.

With its wide-open layout, the space has also provided storage. First for lumber and construction equipment, now for a variety of historical building parts, from detached metal storefront facades, to retired Methodist church pews, to the original handrail of the Washington County Courthouse staircase.

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“If someone came along and said, ‘OK, we want this in 60 days,’ then we’d get all this stuff out,” Philips said. “But in the meantime, we’ll let it stay … there’s a little bit we’ve been able to gain from the building, without tearing it down.”

His work is certainly cut out for him.

The building’s windows contain some 1,500 panes of glass, many of which require repairs. Several walls are marked with graffiti, tagged by vandals who managed to sneak inside with bottles of spray paint. Some of the roofing leaks, and the elevator shaft is perhaps permanently damaged from a fire.

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Much of the process, however, is already underway. In the last year, Philips and others have rebuilt the property’s front steps, repaired most of the windows, patched up parts of the roof, and have cleaned up some of the debris inside.

“It’s rough, very rough, and we’re not trying to sell this as a ready-to-move-in kind of thing,” he said. “We save it, try to maintain it, and see who comes along … with historic tax credits, you can take care of literally 45% of what you spend on it, and get that returned to you. And if you were to build something of similar size here, you’d be talking millions of dollars anyway.”

Exterior work has taken a priority.

Philips said he wanted to maximize the building’s curb appeal as upkeep on its insides continues.

“What we’re trying to do is do the things people can notice, ‘OK, somebody’s doing something,” he said. “And there’s a lot to do, but we don’t have tons of resources to do all of that … we’re trying not to do stuff that somebody would come along in three years and tear out.”

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Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com