Hawkins Building
A Salvation Army band performing in front of the Hawkins Building
Built: 1872
Architectural Style: Italianate
Currently: Mandy’s Coffee & Cafe/Shear Perfection
William E. Hawkins built the building that would bear his name in 1872. His varied career was known more for civil service than business. Hawkins was one of Red Wing’s early fire chiefs, started the town’s first known labor union, and served as mayor for two separate stints in the 1880s.
Rather than Hawkins, the name that mattered the most in this building was Enz. For 40 years, one or both of the Enz brothers, James and George, owned a bicycle shop in this space.
But Red Wing’s bike history is more than just the Enz brothers.
First, there was Will Newton. Newton was a Red Wing native who in the mid-1880s traveled the world racing and performing exhibitions of “fancy” riding on bicycles and unicycles.
Among the stunts performed by Newton during an 1884 performance in Red Wing, The Republican reported, were riding with no hands, riding side saddle, dropping his cap on the floor and getting off the bike to pick it up, and, most impressively, balancing on top of four chairs.
A year later, in another hometown performance, Newton, The Advance-Republican said, “seems to exhibit the possibilities of human nerve and muscle, and which” they added, “called forth hearty cheers from staid, considerate gentlemen of mature years.”
A lot of Newton’s riding likely took place on a penny farthing, the classic bicycles with the large front wheel and small rear wheel. But in 1885, the “safety bicycle,” the bikes most common today, hit the market. Only five bicycles were owned in Red Wing in 1885, but biking was now more available to the masses.
Enz Bicycle Shop
So by 1897, cycling had grown so popular that laws were passed to keep cyclists off the town’s sidewalks, and there was an attempt to build a bike path to Lake City. The route was eventually abandoned when farmers, fearing that the bicycles would scare their horses, protested and subsequently plowed up a portion of the trail.
Capitalizing on this popularity, the Enz brothers opened their first bike shop in the 1890s and moved into the Hawkins building in 1898. Nowadays, just down the street, Red Wing Bicycle Company is keeping people in the saddle.
Biking culture still thrives locally, shown in the Cannon Valley Trail, a 19.7 mile ride from Red Wing to Cannon Falls, or in the Bicycle Design and Fabrication degree at Southeast Technical College. Nearby Memorial Park hosts excellent mountain biking trails, and both bikers and horseback riders enjoy the Hay Creek/Goodhue Pioneer State Trail.
