At the turn of the century, Mark A. Means, who had arrived by horseback in 1881 and stayed to amass a fortune, hired Lewiston architect J.H. Nave to build a white pressed-brick structure on the former site of the Valley Lumber Company to house various enterprises he had in mind. Built in 1906, it became the headquarters of the Mark Means Seed Company and remained so until 1953. In the basement laboratory, Ardie Gustafson, a one-time Lewiston mayor and world-renowned agronomist, experimented with the genetics of peas.