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Par~ Two <br />Phase II Downtown Commercial Area Study <br /> Elk River, Minnesota <br /> <br />Main Street from King Street, looking southeast to Jackson Street, ca. 1910. The Oddfellows Block (I.O.O.F.) at middle <br />left'is no longer standing, but many of the other buildings in this photo remain. SCHS photo. <br /> <br />Elk River seems to be peculiarly unfortunate in the matter of fires for a town o, fits size, for besides <br />three disastrous conflagrations in recent years it has in the course o/tits 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 smaller ones at upper town, a brick school house and numerous residences. <br /> <br />Introduction <br /> <br />Sherburne County Star News clipping, ca. 1902. <br /> <br />Elk River's commercial 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 blocks near the railroad <br />depot housed banks, stores, and offices. <br /> <br />Between 1887 and 1914, several fires destroyed the record of much of Elk River's 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 />Houlton Block (1903; 304 Jackson Street) and the Bank of Elk River (1915; 315 Jackson Street) are <br />among locally significant downtown commercial buildings. Al1 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 [I Downtown Commercial Area Study <br /> 49 <br /> <br /> <br />