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 (former) Owatonna, Minnesota Posted by:  iconions
N 44° 05.015 W 093° 13.588
15T E 481868 N 4881181
Fireman's Hall, a three-story, brown brick, Romanesque Revival style building, is located at 107 W. Main Street in Owatonna, Minnesota. City Offices were here from 1906 until 1974.
Waymark Code: WMYGVA
Location: Minnesota, United States
Date Posted: 06/14/2018
Views: 3
The Owatonna City and Firemen's Hall is located at 107 W. Main Street near the southern edge of downtown Owatonna. The building has a prominent site on the southern side of Main Street at its intersection with Park Square. It is one of a collection of public buildings, banks, and churches built around Owatonna's one-block-square Central Park. The building was originally flanked by a vacant lot to the west and the three story brick Metropolitan Opera House (built 1897, razed circa 1938) to the east.
The City and Firemen's Hall, built in 1906-07, is a three story Romanesque Revival style brick building. It has rectangular massing and an approximately 42-foot-wide main facade. The hall is about 132 feet deep and extends southward to the 16-foot alley which bisects the block. The main facade is faced with stretcher-bonded tan pressed brick with smooth pinkish-tan limestone trim. The main facade has square brick corner towers that project above the third story roofline. The larger tower, at the northwestern corner of the building, has a belfry with rounded-arched openings. There is a series of three rounded-arched window openings below the belfry. The smaller tower at the northeastern corner has semi-circular window openings at the upper level. Both towers have asphalt shingle-covered pyramidal roofs with metal finials. (The western turret has a ball finial and the eastern finial has a pointed finial.) Across the top of the building between the towers is a parapet wall on which lettering reading "19-Firemens Hall-06" is affixed. There are simple metal cornices at the top of each of the two towers and at the top of the parapet.
- National Register Application
The Owatonna Firemen's Hall, formerly the Owatonna City and Firemen's Hall, is a historic government building in Owatonna, Minnesota, United States. It was built from 1906 to 1907 to house the Owatonna Fire Department and city government offices. The city offices were relocated to the former campus of the Minnesota State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children in 1974. The Firemen's Hall continues to serve as the headquarters for the Owatonna Fire Department.
The Firemen's Hall building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997 for having local significance in the themes of architecture and politics/government. It was nominated for serving as the government center and a key public facility in Owatonna, and for exemplifying the municipal buildings often built in late-19th/early-20th-century Minnesota. In 2015 the Firemen's Hall was also listed as a contributing property to the Owatonna Commercial Historic District.
In September 1903 the fire department bought two lots, 44 feet (13 m) wide by 132 feet (40 m) long, west of the Metropolitan Opera House (later the Roxy Theatre) for $3,126.00 (equivalent to $85,143 in 2017). On September 19, 1905, a special election was held to gauge support from Owatonna residents for a $15,000.00 bond for the construction of a new city hall and fire station. The bond was passed. On July 17, 1906, the construction firm Hammel and Anderson, with a bid of $19,643.00, was awarded the contract for construction of the fire hall. On August 17 the two lots were donated to the city by the firemen for construction of a combination city hall and fire hall on the condition that the city would spend not less than $15,000.00 for construction of a three-story building. The firemen contributed $1,000 towards capital costs and obtained a 25-year lease. The cornerstone was laid on September 8, 1906. An opening ceremony was held on October 5, 1907 and the equipment was transferred to the new site, the same year, on November 5. The team used horse-drawn equipment until 1915, when the first motorized vehicle, a 1915 Jeffery, was purchased.
The city vacated their portion of the building in 1974, moving to the new West Hills campus on the site of the former state orphanage. A truck bay was built where the old Roxy Theatre stood, which was demolished in the 1950s, along with other improvements to the building, done in the 1996 renovation. An elevator was installed and the third floor remodeled in 2008.
In February 2016 the City of Owatonna purchased two lots for $184,000 on the corner of 24th Street and Kenyon Road, in northeastern Owatonna, for the future development of a fire sub-station. The northern section of Owatonna is about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the current Firemen's Hall, which has led to longer response times. The city intended to wait for further development before any building is done. The time before any building occurs is estimated at 10 years.
- Owatonna Firemen's Hall Wikipedia Entry
Owatonna is a city in Steele County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 25,599 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Steele County. Owatonna is home to the Steele County Fairgrounds, which hosts the Steele County Free Fair in August.
Interstate 35 and U.S. Highways 14, and 218 are three of the main routes in the city.
Owatonna was first settled in 1853 around the Straight River. The community was named after the Straight River, which in the Dakota language is Wakpá Owótha?na. A popular, but apocryphal, story is that the town is named after "Princess Owatonna," the daughter of a local Indian chief who was supposedly healed by the magic waters of a nearby spring. The earliest the Owatonna area was settled was in 1854 and platted in September 1855, but it was incorporated as a town August 9, 1858, then as a city on February 23, 1865.
In 1856, Josef Karel Kaplan emigrated from a village southeast of Prague Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) Dlouhá Trebová, and selected a quarter section (160 acres (65 ha)) of land near the town of Owatonna. Kaplan described Owatonna as having just 50 small homes, but predicted 100 within a year, along with a railroad. With just four stores and a pharmacy, Owatonna quickly prospered and grew to 1500 inhabitants in just 5 years. Kaplan wrote about the Owatonna area in letters donated to the Minnesota Historical Society. In them he described often seeing Indians – people with "tough constitutions...brown skin and good dispositions", explaining: "When you read about battles between whites and Indians, it is the whites who are to blame." In 1866, Kaplan helped organize the Catholic Cemetery, and a year later, the National Bohemian Cemetery of Owatonna.
Kaplan's Woods is part of the land originally owned by Josef Kaplan, and later Victor and Anna Kaplan. The State of Minnesota created Kaplan's Wood State Park, which was later transferred to the City of Owatonna. The Kaplan's Woods Parkway contains over 6 miles (10 km) of hiking and cross country skiing trails, and nearly 2 miles (3 km) of hard—surfaced, handicapped—accessible trail. The parkway includes Lake Kohlmier, a 35-acre (14 ha) lake. Maps of the parkway are available at the Park and Recreation office.
The Minnesota State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children was built in 1886. The school took in orphans from around the state and taught them "the value of drill, discipline, and labor". The children who died in the institution were interred in the graveyard behind the school. In 1945, the orphanage was closed and in 1947 the State Public School was officially abolished and all its lands, buildings, property, and funds were transferred to the newly established the Owatonna State School, which provided academic and vocational training for the mentally handicapped. The Owatonna State School was closed June 30, 1970. In 1974, the City purchased the compound for its office space. Renamed "West Hills", it continues to serve as the city's administration complex and home to many nonprofit civic organizations including a senior activity center, the Owatonna Arts Center, two nonprofit day care centers, a chemical dependency halfway house, and Big Brothers/Big Sisters, among others.
- Owatonna, Minnesota City Wikipedia Entry
Name: Firemens Hall
Address:
107 W. Main Street
Owatonna, MN USA
55060
Date of Construction: 1906
Architect: William F. Keefe
Web Site for City/Town/Municipality: [Web Link]
Memorials/Commemorations/Dedications: Not listed
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