Mystery Building—2424 S. Graham St.

What’s that aged brick building wedged between two alleys and a street stub as though forgotten by time?

These days, it’s a warehouse for Industrial Machinery Corporation, a machinery dealer that stores metalworking equipment inside. Industrial Machinery Corporation is headquartered at 37th and National and run by Jim Zvonar, 53, and his father Cyril (Cy), 97. Jim said Cy bought the warehouse at 2424 S. Graham St. before Jim was born. Cy founded Industrial Machinery Corporation in 1939. He was the first chapter chairman of the Milwaukee Chapter of the Machinery Dealers National Association, according to the company’s website. 

What was the building before the 1940s?

In 1938 and before, it was one of the buildings of the Dings Magnetic Separator Company, which made magnetic equipment since 1899. Three Dings brothers were engineers who worked for Allis-Chalmers but started their own company building magnets that separated the iron from the rock in crushed Minnesota taconite ore, according to Brian Nahey, Dings’ current CEO.

Today, Dings is at 4740 W. Electric Ave. in West Milwaukee and is called Dings Co. Magnetic Group. Dings used to be based at 509 E. Smith St. (which the earlier street grid considered 675 Smith St.). The site of that building today houses Bell Ambulance, but Bell’s building was built in the 1960s as the Bay View Post Office on the site of the razed Dings building immediately north of the extant 2424 S. Graham warehouse, which remains a footnote to history.

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