Converts

Northland Lofts is an apartment building in North Kansas City, Missouri. Here's a slideshow of the complex, which is a conversion of the National Bellas Hess catalog headquarters. Bellas Hess was one of the major mail-order firms for much of the 20th century, along with Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, Alden's and Spiegel.

Whether you remember Bellas Hess or not, the company has had an impact on you if you buy merchandise from another state by mail or the Internet. National Bellas Hess v. Department of Revenue (1967) was a landmark case concerning the collection of sales tax by a company which does not have a bright-line, physical presence in a state. The ruling in Quill Corporation v. North Dakota (1991), a suit over a state collecting use tax, upheld the Bellas Hess case and the nexus requirement.

I never bought anything from Bellas Hess but I used to buy office supplies from Quill.