Noyes & Cutler and the "Factory Girl"
Many of the buildings around Mears Park in Saint Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood were originally built in the late 1800s to be factories. In the 1960s, the great-granddaughter of one company’s owners would be known as the “Factory Girl”.
Two brothers, Charles and Daniel Noyes were already wealthy when they came to Minnesota in 1868. They partnered with Edward Cutler and opened a drug wholesale and pharmacy company. Medicines were manufactured on the upper floors and pharmacists fulfilled orders on the lower floors.
The Noyes brothers married a pair of sisters - Daniel married Helen Gilman and Charles married her sister, Emily.
The Noyes & Cutler wholesale drug business became the largest in the Northwest and they built a new headquarters at the corner of 6th and Sibley in 1889.
Charles and Emily’s daughter Julia grew up, married Henry de Forest and moved to Long Island. Julia’s daughter Alice De Forest married Francis Minturn Sedgwick - who was very wealthy but also struggled with mental illness. It is believed he lived with bipolar depression, but no official diagnosis is known.
Although doctors warned the Sedgwick not to have children, they had eight - each who would face tragedy throughout their lives. Their youngest daughter, Edith, faced the death of one her brothers in a motorcycle accident and the death of another brother by suicide. There have been accusations that their father Francis, known as “Fuzzy”, was abusive as well.
By 1964, Edie received the money from her trust fund set up by her grandmother, Julia, and decided to leave college for New York City to pursue modeling. She met the artist Andy Warhol and became his muse. She started making films with Warhol and living at his infamous Factory. She started dying her hair silver to match Warhol’s. In 1965, she was dubbed a "Superstar" by Warhol and the "Girl Of '65" by newspapers.
She then became close friends with Bob Dylan, another Minnesota connection. She had a big crush on Dylan, but unbeknownst to Edie, he had already secretly married his first wife - Sara Lownds. Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman", "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "Fourth Time Around" from his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde are rumored to be about Sedgwick, as well as his 1965 No. 2 single "Like a Rolling Stone".
Her drug use continued and she was in and out of hospitals as she tried to break the addiction. While she was in a court-ordered rehab, she met a fellow patient named Michael Post. They married shortly after. Married less than 4 months, Edie died of an overdose at the age of 28 in 1971.
That same year, the Noyes & Cutler building was remodeled into retail shops, restaurants and offices and was renamed Park Square Court. Today, the Noyes & Cutler name is being revived by a steakhouse restaurant in the building.
