Broadway fire may have destroyed piece of Minnesota's broadcast history

A massive April 15 fire that damaged a block on West Broadway in Minneapolis may yet mean the end of a little-known piece of Minnesota's radio and television history.

The three-alarm fire at 909 and 913 W. Broadway damaged a building dating back to the late 19th century. It has been a jewelry story, an optometrist's office, a printing business and an electrician's shop.

But back in 1933 it had a more important distinction: It housed the studios of radio station WDGY. And a shed on the roof is thought to have been Minnesota's first television station, W9XAT.

"There's a lot of family history there, too" said Kevin Sallblad, who owns the building. His grandfather and father ran Sallblad Electric there after buying the building in 1967. Recently, Kevin Sallblad has been running Salco, a property management company, out of the storefront.

"One of the first 'performers' on W9XAT was a bulldog belonging to a WDGY salesman, Miss Vivian Bulmer. He was black and white," according to a 1970 history of the station written by U of M graduate student Jerry Haines for his master's thesis. He wrote that the station's owner, optometrist George Young, apparently thought the two-tone dog would show up well on Depression-era TV — a crude "spinning disk" technology.

Haines wrote that the relentlessly promotional Dr. Young saw the potential for television. "He was intrigued with the idea of a model demonstrating ladies' hosiery over the air while WDGY carried an accompanying singing commercial," Haines wrote. But Young dropped the TV license in 1938, as better technology started to dominate the television market.

Young concentrated on building his radio business. He eventually moved his studios downtown to the Nicollet Hotel, although he continued to broadcast from his tower atop the building at 909 W. Broadway. His station broadcast a mix of news, music, variety shows, Minneapolis Miller baseball games and religious programs until he died of cancer in 1945, according to Haines.

Sallblad said the radio equipment is long gone. A photo from the Minnesota Historical Society shows what purports to be the antenna mast being dismantled in 1946. But until the fire earlier this month, part of the station yet remained.

WDGY's giant 3D plaster map of the world was still on the second floor of the building, with long-ago radio stations and their call letters marked, Sallblad said. There were once outlets to accommodate 24 electric clocks to show the time in every time zone around the world.

"We never took many pictures," Sallblad said. "I looked at [the map] a long time ago. I figured out a way to get it out of there, but you'd basically have to take the building apart. And I wasn't sure if [the map] would stay together. And it didn't stay together in the fire, for sure."

Gone, too, Sallblad said, is the tiny penthouse on the roof that was believed to house the television studio. Sallblad described Young as a "forward thinker" who even had an electric car.

Young's WDGY station lived on, with his initials, long after his death. His widow sold off the station to another broadcasting company, which eventually turned it into a Top 40 powerhouse, known affectionately as "WeeGee" that vied with KDWB for young audiences through the 1970s.

Still broadcasting at 1130 AM, it switched to a country format in the face of stiff competition in 1977. It turned into a news talk station, and then into sports radio station KFAN in 1991. The AM frequency is still used by Twin Cities News Talk 1130. The WDGY call letters are still in use by an oldies rock station based in Hudson, Wis.

Sallblad said property records list the building on West Broadway as built in 1910, but he thinks that's only the date of its first building permit. He suspects that the initial construction dated back to before the Chicago fire, when commercial properties were still stick-built and wood-sided — and vulnerable to the very kind of spreading fire that struck two weeks ago.

Sallblad said he fears that all of it will be gone soon. He said the building was so heavily damaged that he still hasn't been allowed back into it. "It's totally unclear what's going to happen," Sallblad said. The remnants of his grandfather's electrical business also went up in the fire.

He said it's hard to even visit the scene now. "You mourn it," he said. "It's a place where I used to hang out."