As Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota prepares to move out of its suburban Minneapolis headquarters, the company has discovered two time capsules buried underneath the building, Twin Cities Pioneer Press reported July 11.
The payer said in March it is leaving its 443,000-square-foot headquarters in Eagan because of "low utilization and occupation" since switching to a hybrid work model. As crews worked to go through the building's archives, they found blueprints indicating that two capsules labeled "1950" and "1970" were buried underneath the building's cornerstones.
"Having walked by these cornerstones in our main building for days on end in all of the years I’ve been here, I had no idea there was something so cool buried beneath these cornerstones," Monica Engel, senior vice president of government markets at BCBS, told the Pioneer Press.
The company extracted the contents of the capsules, which had been buried and sealed in metal. Inside the two capsules was content that dates back to the 1930s, including photos, letters from members, internal company documents, marketing materials and media reports.
On July 11, the documents were given to the Minnesota Historical Society, where they will be preserved and open to the public, according to the report.