The California Gold Rush produced many things that were not meant to last. A man’s dream went about as far as his dollar, and that wasn’t far considering what it cost to live and work at the river’s edge, panning for gold in the 1850s. Likewise, the towns that were built contained wooden structures that were raised quickly and were easily burned to the ground in the event of a fire.

In 1856, Augustus Jacoby had more permanent plans in mind when he constructed his storehouse in the small community of Union, now Arcata. Taking advantage of local resources, Jacoby built his building with bricks made by local people in Union and stone hewn from a quarry nearby.

Carpenters working in Union at the time were not accustomed to building brick and stone structures, so it was necessary to call in an outside contractor to do the work. Clark W. Durkee, a “Jack of all trades” and well-known contractor of that period, was hired to build Jacoby’s storehouse. The structure was hailed as the first brick building in Union and the first fireproof structure in Humboldt County.

After its completion in 1857, Jacoby’s building was used to store groceries and supplies, which were shipped by pack train to the mines of the Klamath-Trinity area. It was used as a shelter for women and children during the Indian troubles from 1858 to 1864, and miners could also store their belongings there while seeking riches in the hills beyond.

In the late 1870s ownership of Jacoby’s storehouse changed hands a number of times until it was bought by a young businessman, Alexander Brizard, in 1879. The company of A. Brizard has owned the building ever since, making it the longest surviving family-owned business in Arcata. [ED. NOTE FROM 2025: While this may have been true in 1988, it is true no longer. The Storehouse is now owned by an LLC headed by local entrepreneur/restaurateur Bill Chino.]

In addition to the Arcata store, Brizard eventually opened nine branch stores in Humboldt and Trinity counties to serve the needs of miners and ranchers far from supply sources.

Today, Wallace C. Appleton is president of what is now Brizard Company. He is married to Josephine Brizard, granddaughter of A. Brizard, the original owner. In an interview in his office on the fourth story of Jacoby’s Storehouse, Appleton described some of the development that has taken place on the structure since its original foundation was laid in 1857:

The building was about 100 feet long and 35 feet wide originally. Then in 1907 they enlarged it. They took out the east wall, the north wall and the south wall and left the west wall which is still there. Then, they enlarged the building to 185 feet by 50 feet wide and added the (three) additional stories. They made the bottom into a mercantile and on the second floor, where the shops are now, they had shoes and all types of clothes. On the mezzanine floor they had furniture. The same original store was kept intact until 1974.

In 1974 Brizard Co. made some major decisions concerning the branch stores and Jacoby’s Storehouse.

In 1974, it was decided to close the business out. The branch stores, of course, had roads to them way back in the 1900s but it was hard to drive down because of the old cars and the roads were just one-way with turnouts and there were all kinds of twists and turns. In took from two to two-and-a-half hours to drive from Willow Creek to’ Arcata. So people did most of their shopping at the stores up in the hills. Then, as the roads improved, it was kind of a treat for people to get out and shop in Eureka and Arcata, and the business at the branch stores gradually dropped off, so they had to be closed up.

At the time of closure, Brizard Co. had no plans to renovate the Arcata building, but seeing that there were many possibilities, the company hired professional help to give them advice concerning their options.

We hired a consulting firm from San Francisco and had them do an economic survey of the area and they came up with a recommendation of what we should do. What you see here today is pretty much what they recommended as far as the types of businesses and offices we have.

The $1.3 million project was financed solely by Brizard Company without any grants or low-interest loans from the government. This was in accordance with Appleton’s strong beliefs about the government’s role in restorations such as these.

I, frankly, don’t believe in grants and low-interest loans because the federal government is so far in debt. In my opinion, they don’t have the money to do that. If the deficit keeps going the way it is, we could wind up with a big collapse of the economy.

So, I know a lot of people are for those, but I never was for them. We’ve always done our own thing. We’ve used all our own funds internally or borrowed from banks.

The initial reconstruction plan was drawn up by Beacom Construction Co., a firm from Fortuna, but it was not until a local craftsman, James A. Groeling, came onto the scene that the full potential of the renovation was realized.

“When I came into the storehouse,” said Groeling in an interview, “The project had already begun. They had an the time the Appletons assumed they (Beacom) were going to do the finish work. I then had run into Hank Appleton (son of Wallace and Josephine) and started discussing the possibilities of actually doing something quite special as opposed to what the architect had hauled out, which was a basic shopping center in this building.”

Groeling, a 39-year-old cabinetmaker’s son originally from Lakewood, Calif., has studied architecture for close to twenty years, starting in high school where he won awards for his work. He studied under two talented practicing architects at Cerritos Junior College, and went on to work in nearly all the trades, ranging from construction to model making.

I kind of fell into an interesting position with the storehouse in that I had a well rounded background. Not only am I a cabinetmaker and a fine woodworker, but I know construction and that allowed me to fit right in. It gave me a little bit of merit when it came to discussing the project with Beacom Construction.

We had already contracted them to do the whole project, but they really had no way to create what needed to be created. Something had to be created or the project was going to be rather flat. So they were a little skeptical of me at first.

Groeling worked with five craftsmen and a number of people from a local guild — Savoy Studios, which included the best glass workers, painters and lamp-makers from Humboldt County and abroad.

It was pretty interesting in the beginning. Mr. Appleton, being the pleasant fellow that he is, was able to give us a certain amount of faith that we needed to attempt the project. He felt like we could do it and that says a lot for Mr. Appleton because without that, we would have never gotten the project going.

To provide the best possible working conditions for Groeling and his woodworkers, a large barn at the corner of Union and Seventh streets in Arcata was converted into a workshop. From here they produced the beautiful entries that are now seen throughout the structure and proved their qualifications as craftsmen.

Groeling recalls one memorable experience he encountered while working on the project

We were sandblasting the outside of the building, and Hank and I were standing out there and we looked up and we could barely see the word ‘Studebaker.’ I asked Hank about it and he said, ‘Ya, they sold Studebaker wagons here.’ Those letters were underneath the paint and when they started sandblasting it off, you could make it out, which I thought was pretty amazing.

They had a wagon store in the basement and there was a tunnel that went all the way through. So you could actually drive through the building. There was hardware there and rough plumbing and that’s where they had the wagons.

The biggest problem that Groeling encountered while working on the project was dealing with time constraints.

The grand opening celebration was set for Nov. 4, 1977.

From the point when we agreed on the date for the opening, all our crews had to really begin to push. What we ended up doing, because there were so many people and so many crews working, was to arrive at about 5 p.m. and work a second shift.

By Nov. 1, the crews were working around the clock to finish before opening day. On the afternoon of the fourth the project was completed and ready for the grand opening that evening at 8 p.m. A barrier had been constructed to keep the entrance from public view. Groeling described his feelings upon completion of such an extensive project:

I’ll never forget it. The whole crew, as soon as the opening was beginning at around 8 o’clock and it was just starting to rain a little bit, went across the street and sat on the bus stop, sitting there in the rain, just looking at this thing. I had designed the whole front, and we had gone in and built it, all the doors and the glass tiles and everything, but we had never seen it in its entirety. So they tore the barrier down that day and it was really neat. It turned out better than I had hoped.

With 37,000 square feet of space, Jacoby’s Storehouse now contains over thirty businesses and private offices including two restaurants, a dessert shop, a bank, a hair salon and assorted novelty and clothing stores. It was designated California Historical Landmark #783 at the time of the A. Brizard Centennial in 1963, and on June 17, 1982, it was placed on the “National Register of Historic Places.” It continues to serve Arcata and the surrounding area as a place of business and a building of prestige, just as it did in the beginning.

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The story above is excerpted from the July-August 1988 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.