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Location DB > United States > Illinois > Rock Falls > International Harvester Building Number 3 > Whiteside county records search results

Story Info
Mon, Jun 12th, 2017
posted by tombombadom
Whiteside county records search results

Please forgive that this is a little long, but I wanted to be as detailed as possible with what I found, if you are a history buff, stay tuned!!

After my most recent explore on 01-27-17 I was scouring the web for information on this building. Not finding very much, I got the idea to write the county for property record information. On 01-31-2017 I sent a letter to the Whiteside County Clerk's office really not expecting much if anything at all for help. Very much to my surprise, a couple of days later I received an email from them saying they had found several records and were willing to help. I accepted the charges and got this large Envelope jam packed full of papers sent to my house. Needless to say I was so excited.

Many of the documents are just property deeds from when the building(s) changed hands over the years.

The earliest of these documents is dated September 19th, 1905 and it is the deed from when Keystone Manufacturing transferred ownership of the building(s) to International Harvester. That document gives a very detailed description of the location of the property from before the city was incorporated. That same description is pretty much the same throughout all of the documents. After reading it though, it leads me to believe that some of these building/properties predated that deed.

On December 15, 1960, International Harvester filed a Quit Claim deed. This is consistent with the stories that IH shut the doors not long after in 1961.

August 1, 1962 IH transferred ownership to Montgomery Investment Company based out of St. Louis. They then file a mortgage in 1963 with a promissory note of $1,000,000. It appears they restructured and refinanced it several times over the years.

On December 9, 1978, Montgomery entered a lease with Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in a 10 year lease for what appears to be the entire complex, as it lists the building numbers in the document. In my explores to this building it had painted on a door "BLDG 3" which is how it got named. This document was the only one found which indicates that after the lease was up, Goodyear must have vacated. That would have put it in sometime in 1988. This also backs up why the modern loading dock was installed, along with misc tire paraphernalia, along with the eyewitness account that Goodyear was there and possibly used the building for storage.


In 1980 it appears Montgomery re Mortgaged to another company called McNeill Mortgage & Investment Company. The document goes on for several pages defining the terms (just alot of leagalese) of the mortgauge.

Then it starts to get interesting.

The next document dated May 28, 1993 is a Form 668 from the IRS "Notice of federal tax lein under Internal Revenue laws" against Montgomery for get this, $2,442,819.30, with dates of tax periods from the 60's. So it appears Montgomery was a little delinquent.

Not trying to start a conspiracy, but it is interesting that all of these bulidings burned around that time, according to another eyewitness account.

In 1995 a "Tax Deed" was filed and awarded to a company called "First Street Develepment INC (FSD)" Very little is known about them. But they apparently took responsibility for the back taxes.

Then January 4, 1996 another document was filed "Certificate of Discharge" of the tax lein against Montgomery Investment. The document says "for said tax has attached to certain property described as [legal description of property] whereas the District Director if Internal revenue has determined that the interest of the United States in the foregoing property, under and by virtue of ts aforesaid tax lein, is now valueless." I'm assuming they figured this after the buildings burned and the city demolished them.

Then later in 96, FSD it appears filed a Corporation Warranty Deed releasing the building to the City. The city then in 2003 Sold it to BW Development.

They apparently were not very good stewards either because in 2006, a company charged with cleaning up the property filed a lein against BW for $2000 and some change. Another Lein was invoked by the city in August 2006 because they wouldn't cut the weeds. The city took action, and charged the owner $1024, which he apparently never paid. This happened again May 17,2007 in another document and they incured another $700 in fees with the city.

To further prove BW's delinquency, in 2008 documents were filed for non payment of taxes (from 2004 and again in 2005) to the city.

Finally, the last document is dated April 13, 2009, and it is a Judicial Deed between Hon Stanley Steines and the City of Rock Falls, where ownership of the building was transferred to them.

That was the last and newest document in the pile. From what I have been able to piece together, it sounds like this place was bounced around and neglected which led to its current state. A very unfortunate fate that probably could have been avoided had certain circumstances not existed. It is sad to think about how it got here, but I take solace in the fact that its history is documented so that future people who may want to know something may not have to look and scour as hard as I have to find this information.

I again apologize for the long winded story, but hope someone else is as fascinated as I was to know the history of this place. Thank you for reading!

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