Morris and Co., a meat packing company from Chicago, opens a modest office and plant at 124 South Jefferson in Spokane, seen here in a 1911 photograph. The company only stayed in the building for a half dozen years, but other wholesale meat companies used the refrigerated space over the next century. In the 1920s, the company merged with Armour Meats, which built a large plant on East Trent. (Libby Collection/The Eastern Washington Historical Society / Courtesy)
The old Morris and Co. building at 124 S. Jefferson, built in 1911 and seen here photographed Tuesday, July 30, 2019, has housed the Pacific Pak Wholesale Ice plant since 1969. For almost 60 years before that, it was a meat packing plant and where hanging beef sides would be unloaded from rail cars and carried through the building on hooks riding on steel rails from room to room. (Jesse Tinsley/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW / SR)
Nelson Morris was born in Chicago in 1891 to a meat-packing family. He was 20 and working in the family business, Morris and Co., when the company put a plant at 124 S. Jefferson in Spokane in 1911. When he went off to Europe to fight in World War I, Morris was placed in charge of a refrigeration plant in France. He stayed for a few years afterward to learn to fly airplanes and marry a French actress.