This building was the home of the Perkins Products Company, the manufacturing and retail enterprise of Kool-Aid inventor Edwin E. Perkins and his family, from 1923 until 1931, when the firm moved to Chicago to expand production of Kool-Aid. Edwin Perkins, who had been fascinated as a boy in Hendley, Nebraska, with chemistry, printing, and products like Jell-O sold in his father's general store, came to Hastings at age thirty-one in 1920 with principal interests in patent medicines and household products. He began producing more than 125 Onor-Maid items sold door-to-door and by mail, including the popular fruit-flavored liquid concentrate Fruit-Smack. By 1927 he had developed a powdered soft drink mix called Kool-Ade, packaged it in envelopes, and sold it in grocery stores, where demand quickly grew into international sales. Before long, the Perkins Products Company focused entirely on Kool-Ade, and Perkins relocated to Chicago in 1931. In 1934 the name was changed to Kool-Aid, and the company was sold to General Foods in 1953. Kool-Aid became a household name and made Perkins wealthy, while the Perkins family also remained mindful of its Nebraska roots through generous donations to philanthropies and institutions in Adams County and elsewhere in the state, including Perkins Recital Hall and Perkins Library at Hastings College and Perkins Pavilion at Good Samaritan Village. Edwin Perkins and his wife Kitty are buried at Parkview Cemetery in Hastings.