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<br /> Downtown Elk River, Minnesota
<br /> Phase II Historic Resources Inventory
<br /> April 2002
<br /> Draft
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<br /> • Main Street from Quincy Street,looking southeast to Jackson Street,ca. 1910. The Oddfellows Block at
<br /> middle left is no longer standing,but many of the other buildings in this photo remain. SCHS photo.
<br /> Summary of Findings
<br /> Elk River seems to be peculiarly unfortunate in the matter of fires for a town of its size,
<br /> for besides three disastrous conflagrations in recent years it has in the course of its
<br /> history lost by fire two flouring mills, two or three saw mills,planing factory and
<br /> adjacent machine shop, two large stores and several smaller ones at upper town,a brick
<br /> school house and numerous residences.
<br /> Sherburne County Star News clipping,ca. 1902.
<br /> Elk River's commercial architecture over the past 150 years has been of generally simple
<br /> and utilitarian character.The first small stores built by Ard Godfrey and others in the
<br /> 1850s were of frame construction,with gable roofs and flat trim. By 1900,several two-
<br /> story brick blocks housed banks,stores,and offices.
<br /> Several fires between 1887 and 1914 destroyed the record of much of Elk •River's
<br /> nineteenth century commercial architecture. The Romdenne Block(now Sunshine
<br /> Depot) appears to the earliest survivor of •Main Street,but its later neighbors such as the
<br /> W.H. Houlton Block(1906)and the Bank of Elk River(1915) are also local landmarks.
<br /> All have had exterior modernizations,but a fair amount of historic fabric probably
<br /> survives behind the changes.
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