Art Collection of the Honorable T. B. Walker, July 24, 1925-March 11, 1926

Thomas Barlow (T.B.) Walker was a lumberman born in Xenia, Ohio on February 1, 1840. He was the son of Platt Bayless and Anstis Keziah (Barlow) Walker. He attended Baldwin University in Berea, Ohio where he moved with his family in 1856. He met his wife, Harriet G. Hulet, in college and they married in 1863. He first taught school and then later became a traveling salesman. Walker moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1862 on the suggestion of James J. Hill, whom he met in St. Paul in 1862. Based on inside knowledge he gained during an 1862 surveying project for the St. Paul and Duluth Railway, under the employment of George Wright, as well as other future projects among the pine forests of northern Minnesota, Walker got his start in the lumber industry.

Walker formed his first logging company, Butler, Mills and Walker, in 1868. Though he pulled his money out of Butler, Mills and Walker and paid off his debts before the Panic of 1873, when the economy turned around later in the 1870s, he was well positioned to reinvest. He formed a second larger company, Camp and Walker, which expanded northern logging operations, acquired the Pacific Mill in Minneapolis, and built mills at Crookston and Grand Rapids. Camp and Walker shut down operations in 1887, and later that year, Walker went into partnership with H. C. Akeley of Michigan. Their firm, Walker and Akeley, built logging railroads across Itasca County to the Red River to get their company's logs and lumber out of northern Minnesota. Walker founded his other firm, the Red River Lumber Company, with his sons in 1883.

Walker was known as an honorable man who paid his employees well. He experienced very little unrest among his workers related to wages or working conditions.

Walker was the largest operator in timber lands and lumbering operations in the forests of Minnesota, and had extensive interests in California white and sugar pine. He was the projector and builder of St. Louis Park suburb and the trolley line to it. He was the builder of the Central City Market and the Wholesale Commission District, which are among the chief commercial features of the City of Minneapolis. Walker was the originator and builder of the Minneapolis Public Library and served as President of its Library Board for thirty years. He also improved the Academy of Science and Museum of Science and Art. Walker was also an avid collector of art and owned a splendid collection of paintings which filled the large Art Gallery of the Public Library, and had quite an extensive collection of ancient art in the Museum room in the Public Library building.

Most notably, he founded his own museum, which, for a time, was the only actually free art gallery in both the U.S. and Europe. The gallery was attached to his house at 8th Street and Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis and allowed the public to see it for free. As his collection grew, he decided to found his own museum, the Walker Art Gallery, which was built at 1710 Lyndale Avenue South on land Walker purchased from Thomas Lowry. The gallery was completed in 1927, before Walker's death on July 29, 1928. The gallery was reorganized into the Walker Art Center in 1939.

Sources:
Huber, Molly. ""Walker, Thomas Barlow (T. B.), (1840–1928)."" MNopedia, Minnesota Historical Society. http://www.mnopedia.org/person/walker-thomas-barlow-t-b-1840-1928 (accessed March 29, 2022).
Art Collection of the Honorable T.B. Walker. San Francisco: California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1925. Exhibition catalogue.