If you take a walk around downtown Minot, you can still catch glimpses of days gone by on some of the buildings. Signs advertising for stores of yesterday can be found near the tops or sides of structures, the paint faded and lettering old-fashioned looking.

Have you ever wondered what businesses were there before the current ones or what happened in certain buildings when horses trotted the streets or alcohol wasn’t legal? This article will spotlight some of those buildings and happenings from back in the day.

Taube Museum of Art

Minot city alderman, radio voice for KCJB and blogger for the web site Minot Memories, Dave Lehner said the Taube Museum of Art, located at 2 N. Main Street, is his favorite historical building in downtown Minot.

Before it was an art musem, it was Jacobson-Fugelso Hardware. In the early days the deliveries for Jacobson-Fugelso Hardware were carried out by a horsedrawn wagon, according to Lehner’s blog. The hardware store occupied the main floor of the Jacobson Building on Main Street and Central Avenue. There was also the Opera House on the third floor of the building with its offices on part of the second floor.

In July 1923, the hardware store was destroyed by fire and the building was rebuilt. The hardware store eventually moved to the middle of the block east of the alley on Central Avenue and survived for many years. The store carried a full line of hardware in addition to Schwinn bicycles, Toro mowers, Delta power tools and Benjamin Moore paint.

Lehner said Boris Karloff and his company held a performance at the Opera House one time. Near the building was also the Astoria Barber Shop and Bathhouse. The barber shop was noted for giving smooth shaves and up-to-date (for 1903) haircuts. The bathhouse was noted for their shower bath and with the metal siding added to the building, made it one of the warmest bathhouses in the city. Wednesday nights were reserved for the ladies, Lehner said.

In 1905, Union National Bank bought the building, residing in the front part of the building. It was gutted by the same fire in 1923 that struck the building mentioned earlier in this article. A new building was constructed within eight months and the bank stayed there until 1963 before moving west of Main Street.

In 1977, the Minot Art Association, which later changed the name to the Lillian and Coleman Taube Museum of Art, purchased the building. Today, the museum has two art galleries and a gift shop that sells artwork created by local and regional artists.

“It’s the most historic building of downtown Minot,” Lehner said.

Clarence Parker Hotel

Originally planned as a three-story structure with another two floors of office space on top, according to Lehner, the fourth and fifth floors were not initially completed and was left open with just the supports showing. The building was called the “Sparrow Hotel” for many years since the birds were the only tenants.

Clarence Parker bought the unfinished building 20 years later and converted it to the Clarence Parker Hotel, located at First Street and First Avenue Southeast. According to the Minot Daily News files, Clarence and Lottie Parker’s parents, William and Elizabeth Parker, who had operated hotels in other states and also Devils Lake, came to Minot in the late 1800s and built and operated the Parker House that stood at the site of the former Elks Home on Main Street.

The Parker House was Minot’s first hotel and established in 1886. It was a temporary home to many travelers and many of the buffalo bone wagon drivers. The Parker House burned down in the fall of 1887 and the Parkers left Minot for a few years but returned in 1895 and rented, then bought, from Allen Tompkins the Leland House, which stood on the corner where the Leland-Parker Hotel once stood for many years.

The Leland Parker Hotel had 10 rooms with their own bath, as well as their own sewer system. It was also Minot’s first brick building. In 1904, the Leland Hotel had a fancy dining room that could seat 100 people. The Leland advertised 110 rooms, steam heat, electric lights and fine furnishings. It was remodeled and improved six times over the years.

The Clarence Parker Hotel was considered one of the state’s finest hotels. That hotel had the notoriety of hosting President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he came to North Dakota in 1953 for the dedication of the Garrison Dam.

Today the Leland-Parker Hotel is gone and replaced with a parking lot and Artspace. The former Clarence Parker Hotel is home to the Minot Commission on Aging on the first floor and the Parker Suites apartments on the other floors.

Waverly Hotel

Roosters, a bar and night club located at 101 Main Street South, was once the site of the Waverly Hotel. The hotel was built by Peter Ehr in 1905, was four stories high and a landmark in the city. On Jan. 19, 1943, with temperatures at 30 below zero, a fire broke out and filled the hotel with flames. Ehr was a resident on the top floor of the hotel and had to be carried to safety by firemen. Reports stated that the water was freezing as it was sprayed on the fire. That night, 91 people were staying at the Waverly Hotel. Lehner said four people died and their bodies remained frozen in the debris for four months, until the spring thaw.

The Jupiter Store

The Kresge Store was just south of Woolworth’s Department Store. “If I remember correctly from my Kresge history I learned during my 20 years working for Kmart, there were two Kresge Stores, The Dollar Store and Five & Dime Store,” Lehner said.

Eventually both The Dollar Store and Five & Dime Store were combined into the Jupiter Store. There was at one time a snack bar or cafeteria there as well. Lehner said many people would remember the wooden floors that were somewhat warped and creaked when you walked on them. When Kresge established the Kmart store chain, one of the names considered before the Kmart name was picked was Jupiter. Some speculate that had Kresge used the Jupiter name, the chain of stores would not have achieved the success enjoyed by Kmart.

The Jupiter Store location is now Main Street Books.

There are many more historical buildings with colorful stories from days past, but will have to wait for another installment. However, Minot State University is working on keeping history alive and preserving Minot’s heritage.

The National Endowment of the Humanities recently awarded rofessors Bethany Andreasen and Dan Ringrose of the Minot State University History Department a grant to preserve Minot’s common heritage. History students and faculty will host digitization days at the Minot Public Library and area assisted living centers, where members of the public will be invited to share photographs, artifacts, family letters and artworks related to family and community history.

Items will be digitized, along with descriptive information and context provided by the community attendees. Contributors will receive a free digital copy of their items as well as advice on preservation and tips for handling flood-damaged materials.

With the owner’s permission, the digitized materials will be made publicly available through the Digital Minot Project (digitalminot.minotstateu.edu/dm2015/). Sessions will be followed by electronic exhibits at the Digital Minot Project, as well as by a public presentation on community history in the fall.

Andreasen and Ringrose’s grant proposal identified the motivation for the project as the desire to document the community’s identity at a time when Minot is rapidly transforming after a disastrous flood and by significant population and industrial growth related to the explosion of oil activity in the region.

Andreasen has worked in local history projects for several years, supervising history students in internships as part of the Digital Minot Project.

“I appreciate the opportunity to guide history majors in interacting with the public at these digitization days, and in the research that follows, as it provides them with practical, hands-on experience in the field of history,” Andreasen said.

Ringrose’s work in digital history includes supporting the technology behind Digital Minot, the Veterans History Project and an online archival project digitizing letters from 19th century France.

“This grant supports an exciting partnership with Janet Anderson, Minot Public Library director, to preserve memories and documents from individuals across our community,” Ringrose said.

This grant is among the first of 38 national awards made under NEH’s Common Heritage grant program. Created in April 2015, this program is part of “The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square,” an agency-wide initiative that seeks to enhance the role of the humanities in civic life (neh.gov/commongood).

The digitization day at the Minot Public Library will take place in early March. For more information about the project, visit the project webpage at minotstateu.edu/history/commonheritage or contact Andreasen at bethany.andreasen@minotstateu.edu or Ringrose at daniel.ringrose@minotstateu.edu.