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Part Two <br /> Phase II Do Commercial Area Study <br /> Elk River, <br /> .. :, ,-,,, -_----- --- .--3,-, -iff x 't �� 4 <br /> s <br /> t "*q, <br /> • Main Street from King Street,looking southeast to Jackson Street,ca.1910.The Oddfellows Block(LO.O.F) at middle <br /> left is no longer standing,but many of the other buildings in this photo remain.SCHS photo. <br /> Elk River seems to be peculiarly unfortunate in the matter of fires fora town of its size,for besides <br /> three disastrous conflagrations in recent years it has in the course of its history lost by fire two <br /> flouring mills,two or three saw mills,planing factory and adjacent machine shop,two large stores <br /> and several smatter ones at upper town,a brick school house and numerous residences. <br /> Sherburne County Star News clipping,ca.1902 <br /> Introduction <br /> Elk River's commerciai architecture over the past 150 years has been of generally simple and <br /> utilitarian character. In the 1850s,Ard Godfrey and other early business owners built small <br /> frame stores near the Elk River dam. By 1900,several two-story brick near therailroad <br /> depot housed banks,stores,and offices. <br /> Between 1887 and 1914,several fires destroyed the record of much of Elk River nineteenth- <br /> century commercial architecture. The 1898 Romdenne Block(now Sunshine Depot)at 701 Main <br /> Street,appears to the earliest survivor of Main Street,but its later neighbors such as the W.H. <br /> H.ulton Block(1903;304 Jackson Street)and the Bank of Elk River(1915;315 Jackson Street)are <br /> among locally significant downtown commercial buildings.All have had exterior <br /> modernizations,but a fair amount of historic fabric may survive behind the changes. <br /> • <br /> Elk River Historic Contexts and Phase 11 Downtown Commercial Area Study <br /> 49 <br />