Baker-Devotie-Hollingsworth Block, in the East Village of Des Moines, is the building you are looking at. This building is a patchwork of history: the eastern two-thirds were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 as the Studio Building, while the western one-third was added in 2008 and the name was changed then. In 2019 the entire building was included as a contributing property in the East Des Moines Commercial Historic District.
Walk this façade in your imagination and you’ll see the handiwork of Duane DeVotie and George R. Baker. Baker opened his grocery in at least the corner commercial space and likely occupied both eastern storefronts. DeVotie, who owned the land, added the third commercial block in 1883 at the same time the Hollingsworth Brothers Block was built to the west.
Over the years these addresses hosted the basics of urban life: at the end of the nineteenth century drug and grocery stores; later, funeral parlors and furniture shops. From 1912 to 1967 the Spring Hub Bicycle Manufacturing Company filled the western storefronts — the only Des Moines company that manufactured bicycles. Picture bicycles once rolling out from the Spring Hub Bicycle Manufacturing storefronts here.