Downtown History

Downtown History. . , History and Photos of Downtown Watertown Provided by Christy Licki and the Codington County Heritage Museum, Kemp Avenue , In 1879 Oscar Kemp filed paperwork for a homestead near today's 19th Street East. After he had plowed two furrows across the land, a workman scrawled "Kemp Avenue" on a board from an old crate and set this marker beside the road. Kemp Avenue was the start of a community., In those early days the noise of sawing and hammering must have been incredible. In two months, April to June of 1879, early settlers busily transformed a treeless prairie into a town with two bakeries, five lumberyards, three hardware stores, four blacksmiths, four hotels, two barbers, five drugstores, two billiard halls, 14 general stores, one wagon/carriage shop, two newspapers and one livery stable., In the following decades, many of these early wooden structures were replaced with sturdier, more fire-resistant brick buildings. Today over 100 buildings remain standing in the historic commercial district, many with histories dating back over one hundred years., Old City Hall , After Watertown was settled in 1879, city government did not have a permanent home for a least a decade. At first, a board of trustees ran city business wherever they could find a meeting hall large enough. In 1885, when the young town changed to a mayor/council form of government, the corner of West Kemp Avenue and 1st Street SW was chosen as a suitable site for a city hall. In the spring of 1889, ground was broken for a three-story brick building that would house city offices, the police station, the city hall, the fire department, and Watertown's first library. It was used by city government for the next 75 years., Old City Hall , The Lincoln Hotel , The Century Block, The Lincoln Hotel , In 1908, plumbers Samuel Hess and Albert Rau began constructing a large building for Schaller's Department Store on North Maple Street just south of their own plumbing shop on the corner of First Avenue NE and North Maple Street. The deal fell through when Mr. Schaller decided to build on South Maple Street instead. Undeterred, Hess and Rau continued with the construction on the site, completing the Metropolitan Theatre in 1911 and the accompanying four-story hotel in the summer of 1912. Billed as "Completely Fireproof", the structure cost $120,000 to build., Grand Opera House , A large three-story building on the northeast corner of Maple Street and Kemp Avenue was known as the Grand Opera House, the Opera House block, and the Stokes block. The cornerstone for the opera house was laid in May 1887, and construction progressed rapidly until the building opened in November 1887., Kemp Avenue's First Asphalt Paving, 1917 , The Carnegie Library , Grand Opera House , Stokes Milling Company , The Goss Opera House, Historic Downtown Buildings , The Century Block on the southwest corner of Maple Street and Kemp Avenue, was built in 1900-1901 on land owned by H. R. Pease and D. L. Kirwin. The first floor was designed for retail space, the second floor for offices and the third floor held a Knights of Pythias temple., The original building had a round tower, complete with narrow windows that protruded from the edge of the building. Today the Century Block has been restored by David and Jan Johnson and houses a law office and Artist's Gallery on the main floors., The Carnegie Library opened to the public in 1906 as Watertown's second library. The first had been a room in the old City Hall. The building was built with a grant from the Carnegie Foundation created by Andrew Carnegie. One agreement that the city made to get the grant was that the library would always be free to everyone in the community. This building served as the library until 1967 when a new library was built. It became occupied by the Codington County Historical Society in 1975 and still serves as a community museum today., The Goss Opera House was built by Charles Goss, who was born in England in 1833. He later moved to Sparta, Wisconsin and then to Watertown as one of the new town's early businessmen. By 1880 he had constructed a two-story wooden building on the southeast corner of Kemp Avenue and Maple Street where he sold groceries and drug store items., Unfortunately, his building burned in 1888. Goss immediately set out to build again on the very same spot. Other town leaders urged him to build a hotel, but Goss wanted to build an opera house – even though Watertown already had two of these. By early 1889, the new Goss block opened for business.