Martin Capp was born in 1916 to immigrant parents and spent his formative years living in St. Paul's West Side, a hardscrabble neighborhood in those days.
Fifty years later, workers hoisted his name in tall letters atop downtown hotel towers and imprinted it on St. Paul's Jewish Community Center. Thousands of families would live in houses built by his company, Capp Homes, which pioneered affordable prefabricated housing in the postwar years.
Capp's name eventually came down from the towers in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but it remains prominently displayed on the JCC, which Capp and his wife, Esther, helped build by making the lead donation in 1963. The Capps aided scores of charities in the Twin Cities over the years, including the Minnesota Children's Museum, which got a truckload of lumber to build its first exhibits after moving to Bandana Square in 1985.
"He came from meager beginnings. I think he just felt that, because he could help, he should help. If he didn't, who would?" said one of his daughters, Lisa Capp, who is president of Capp Industries. "He wasn't a warm, touchy-feely guy. That's not him. But he cared, about the Jewish community and the non-Jewish community."
Martin Capp died June 25 from natural causes at the age of 99.
Capp lived his very early years in Wabasha, Minn., but moved to St. Paul's West Side when he was 9, living among the factories that populated the immigrant-heavy neighborhood at the time.
After a stint in the Coast Guard during World War II, he ended up in Omaha, Neb., working for a lumber company, where he learned about the industry and became inspired to start a new kind of housing company.
He moved back to Minnesota and borrowed a small sum from a friend — about $1,000, the family story goes — to start Capp Homes in 1947. The company offered a more affordable route to the American dream by selling pre-cut lumber to build houses pictured in the Capp Homes catalog. Some owners chose to build their homes themselves, while others hired workers through Capp.
