The Peerless Building, at 1755 Broadway Street in

Fresno, California Fresno (; ) is a city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County, California, Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley (California), Central Valley region. It covers a ...

, was built in 1935. Originally built for pump manufacturing, sales and service, it was renovated and reopened 2018 as a mixed-use commercial space.

Location

The building is on the north end of

downtown Fresno ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American English, American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes Commerce, commercial, Culture, cultural and often the historical, Politics, political, and geographic heart. It is often syn ...

, adjacent to the right-of-way of the old

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad is a Railroad classes, Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United Stat ...

History

Formed in 1923 in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, Peerless Pump was one of the original companies manufacturing deep well vertical turbine pumps for groundwater applications, particularly effective for agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley. Peerless Pump quickly expanded its operations and opened a factory in Fresno on 1225 Broadway Street, closer to central downtown. Operations moved to the former More-Pak building at Sacramento and H streets in 1930 in a lease arrangement while a permanent building was being constructed a block over. In 1935, the 30,000-square-foot Peerless Pump building was completed at 1755 Broadway Street. Peerless Pump was acquired by

FMC Corp. FMC Corporation is an American chemical manufacturing company headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which originated as an insecticide producer in 1883 and later diversified into other industries. In 1941 at the beginning of US involvemen ...

in 1932 and continued to assemble, sell and service pumps out of the Fresno facility. In 1976 FMC Corp. sold Peerless Pump to Indian Head. In 2007, Peerless became a wholly owned subsidiary company of the

Grundfos Grundfos () is the largest pump manufacturer in the world, based in Denmark, with more than 19,000 employees globally. The annual production of more than 16 million pump units, circulator pumps (UP), submersible pumps (SP), and centrifugal pump ...

group of Denmark. By that time most operations had been consolidated to other locations. The Peerless Building was sold to a local developer and investor Nader Assemi, for whom the renovation of the building became a passion project. The building was re-opened to tenants in June 2018 and since then has grown to include retail, restaurants and office space. The renovation kept original artifacts such as manufacturing equipment and windows to keep some original character of the space.

Events

The building is a site for community events such as a pumpkin patch for charity and the recurring Fresno ArtHop event.

References

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External links

Peerless Building
website Buildings and structures in Fresno, California Buildings and structures completed in 1935