Nevada Welding Works
The 1931 industrial shop was reportedly the first electrically welded building in the state.
The first business to be constructed on this side of the block, Nevada Welding Works literally blazed onto the scene in 1931. Reportedly the first electrically welded building in the state, the original section, considerably set back from Fourth Street, was built in November of that year. Conceiving of the building as a showpiece for the company’s technical skills, owner N.D. Selfridge went so far as to weld the steel girders at night, in order to provide the public with “a brilliant display of ‘industrial fireworks.’”
The company welded everything from steel tanks and other vessels to broken and cracked cylinder blocks. In 1939, the property was bought by Dick Wagner, owner of Wagner Tank and Manufacturing Company on nearby Alameda (Wells) Avenue. After remodeling and expanding the building, most likely at that point extending the front out to the sidewalk, he purchased the neighboring property at 555 E. 4th Street, then known as Union Iron Works. Combined, the new plant covered 16,000 square feet and was advertised as “the Most Complete Sheet Steel Fabricating Plant in Nevada.”
Wagner was so successful, particularly in securing wartime defense contracts, that he needed more space, and in 1944 moved his business across the street to the current site of Martin Iron Works. He sold 559 E. 4th Street to Dennison Tractor and Supply, which it remained through 1953. In 1954 it was purchased by Joseph Morrey, who ran his Morrey Distributing Company out of it for the next ten years. Most recently the Earl Scheib Paint & Body Shop, the building became the home of Under the Rose Brewing Company in 2013.
