Housed in the rear of the original
Noble Cultivators Retail Manufacturing Building is the Nobleford Museum, with the Nobleford Town Office occupying the front. While the museum is dedicated primarily to local farmer and inventor Charles Sherwood Noble and his landmark
Noble Blade Cultivator, the museum also includes items of local historical interest.
While far from ancient, having been built in 1942, the historical importance of this building lies not in its age, but its association with the invention and manufacture, by one Charles Sherwood Noble, of the
Noble Blade Cultivator, an important new tool which was instrumental in allowing dryland farming to remain profitable in areas such as Southern Alberta. Later copies of the invention were sold worldwide wherever dryland farming was undertaken.
Noble Cultivator Retail Manufacturing Building
In early 1942, Charles S. Noble started manufacturing the Noble Blade in this building. Construction of this building was done under the supervision of an English carpenter named Everett Hunt. In 1945, a cinder block structure was added to the west end for storing steel. This part was later replaced with the present steel structure. The basement part of the original construction contained a coal-fired furnace. In 1947, a vestibule was added to the front of the building and a brick chimney was added to service the office component. Mr. C. S. Noble's office was located in the southwest corner of the office are, his son, Gerald Noble's office was in the southeast corner and the receptionist's area was located immediately adjacent. The upper level was used as a storage area.
In 1951, the manufacturing component moved to a new facility to the north, currently the public works building for the Village. From 1952 to 1954, the Noble Cultivator Retail Manufacturing Building was used as a granary and a chicken barn. In 1962-63, renovations were begun again to have the building used as a retail outlet for Noble Cultivators until 1981. From 1981 to 1987, the building was purchased and used as a warehouse by the new owners, Versatile Noble. In 1987, the building was sold to the Vicon company, who use it for a very short time and in the same year sold it to New Noble Services who operated it as a warehouse until 1999 and then owned by Edward Group. In 2004 the property was purchased by Ag Growth, a publicly traded company.
The Nobleford Museum Society encouraged the Village of Nobleford to acquire the building for the purpose of restoration in 1999. The front of the building was to be used as the Village Municipal Office and the rear portion the future site of a museum.
From a plaque at the building
A transplant from North Dakota, Iowa born Charles Sherwood Noble was one of the most notable farmers of Southern Alberta, a world record holder for grain production, a soil conservationist and inventor. Arriving in Alberta in 1902, by 1909 he had relocated to Nobleford and was farming 4,000 acres. As a result of careful seed selection Noble became World Flax King and in 1915, he had achieved the title of World Oats King, producing world record breaking crop yields.
By 1922 Noble was farming 30,000 acres having become a rather wealthy man, worth approximately $2.5 million. However, falling crop prices and yields resulted in an inability to continue with mortgage payments and, in 1922, the Spokane Trust Company, to whom Noble owed approximately $600,000, foreclosed on the Noble estate. In short order, however, Noble was able to save enough money to buy back much of his holdings, again farming 8,000 acres by 1930.
It was in 1936 that Noble developed the
Noble Blade Cultivator. This was nearing the end of the Dirty '30s, and the North American Dust Bowl, a time when soil moisture retention was of utmost importance. The purpose of the
Noble Blade Cultivator was to cut weeds and stubble beneath the surface, leaving them on the surface to minimize water evaporation, while minimizing soil disturbance, which led to erosion and soil loss caused by strong Alberta winds.
Noble's blade cultivator remained in production for only a short time, quickly being superseded by similar products of other manufacturers.
In the early 1950s, Charles and his wife Margaret retired to Lethbridge. A sufferer of leukemia for four years, Charles Sherwood Noble passed away in 1957 at the age of 84.
NOBLE CULTIVATORS RETAIL MANUFACTURING BUILDING
Description of Historic Place
The Noble Cultivators Retail Manufacturing Building is a rectangular wood frame building with a stucco exterior and vault roof. It is located on one urban lot on Highway Avenue in the Village of Nobleford.
Heritage Value
The historical significance of the Nobleford Cultivators Retail Manufacturing Building lies in its direct association with Charles Noble, one of the most successful dryland farmers in western Canada and the inventor of the Noble Blade, an internationally renowned technological innovation in dryland farming. It is also significant for its association with the manufacture and distribution of the Noble Blade.
In 1909, Charles Noble acquired several sections of land south of Kehoe Lake. The rise in grain prices during the First World War helped Noble to prosper and acquire more lands. He won several world grain championships between 1912 and 1916 and by 1917 Noble was managing the largest farming operation in the region. At the end of the war, the Noble Foundation held 30,000 acres and employed up to 300 people, making it the largest dryland farm in the British Empire. Noble was more than just a farmer, however. Since growing up on a farm in Iowa, he had sold horses, managed a real estate firm, and operated both a butcher shop and a farm equipment business. He now applied much of his experience and his inventiveness to his Foundation, experimenting with different approaches to the difficulties posed by dryland farming. In the first half of the twentieth century western farmers and scientists sought effective dryland farming techniques, including different varieties of grain, crop rotation, strip farming, and the use of a protective "trash cover" of vegetation left on the soil. In 1936, while experimenting in his farm machine shop in Nobleford, and working with scientists at the Lethbridge Research Station, Noble invented the Noble Blade, a V-shaped plow blade that permitted weeding without removing the trash cover. Through its use, and other improved techniques in farm management, Alberta farmers began to at least partially recover from the effects of the Great Depression. Noble Farms Ltd. then became Noble Cultivators Ltd., as the production of plow blades soon eclipsed farming as the main focus of the company. News spread, and soon the Noble Blade was being used throughout North America. They were also developed and used in Europe and even the Soviet Union. In 1951 he became the first inductee in the Alberta Agricultural Hall of Fame.
The Nobleford Cultivators Retail Manufacturing Building is the earliest remaining structural evidence associated with the Noble Blade. Although the blade was not invented at this site, the building housed its manufacture and distribution, and was the firm's main building from 1942 until 1951. In many ways it is typical of the kind of building erected throughout the province at the time to serve various commercial, industrial and recreational purposes. Its design is very simple: a rectangular footprint, with a clear span roof that allowed for complete flexibility in the arrangement of interior spaces. This building was divided into office and manufacturing areas, but could just as easily have contained a kitchen and hall or a retail business of some sort. Its simplicity is typical of rural industrial or commercial buildings in mid-twentieth-century Alberta, and is an important component of the overall agricultural complex of the village.
Character-Defining Elements
The character-defining elements of the Noble Cultivators Retail Manufacturing Building include:
- distinctive quonset form and building scale;
- clear span roof and roof truss system;
- rectangular wood frame;
- pebble dash stucco of the exterior side walls;
- cedar shingles on vault type roof;
- sidewall flat sections are flashed with metal roofing;
- cupola roof vent;
- fenestration pattern including multi-paned wood frame on the side elevations;
- double-hung and single sash units on the front elevation and sections of the two level office portion;
- multi-paneled glazed doors and double freight doors;
- painted shiplap boarding on walls of original section;
- historic floor plan as represented in distinction between office spaces and manufacturing area;
- concrete floor slab of the interior manufacturing area;
- interior roof drainage system expressed on interior walls;
- cinder block welding shop adjoins the NW corner of the original building;
- interior plywood coverings (of roof trusses and walls);
- model Noble Blades.
From Historic Places Canada