ML Berg, Minot

To provide a little more background to the “blue building” being removed on 3rd Street NE, the following information might be of interest. An inscription centered above the four windows on the second floor of this building reads “19 Bettin Bros. & Marshall10.” The year 1910 is given there.

The owners are also indicated by their last names. The three owners were Albert and Edward Bettin and Herbert Marshall.

They opened their Riverside Mercantile Company, a general store, on Thursday, May 26, 1910. They offered free Minot City Ice Cream to customers from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. on that day, and they ran a ten-day sale from the opening day. Some of their specials included a dozen books of matches for 12 cents, seven bars of laundry soap for 25 cents and a gallon of apples for 30 cents.

Three years later, on Friday, May 23, 1913, they opened their Riverside Confectionary and Ice Cream store at the same location. They again offered free ice cream from 3.30 p.m. until 7.30 p.m.

This time the ice cream was Robideaux Pure Ice Cream (not the Minot City Ice Cream of 1910).

Bettin and Marshall sold their Riverside Mercantile Company to Albert Lowe on Monday, July 10, 1916, after six years in business. Albert Lowe carried on with a general store for over 29 years, but he changed the name of the business to Lowe’s Grocery after he stopped selling dry goods around the year 1930.

On January 1, 1946, Albert Lowe sold his store to Milton and Arthur Hannaford.

By 1951, a cafe had been established in the building, Martha’s Cafe run by Martha La Violette.

Three years later, in 1954, the first bar made its appearance here, the Davis Tavern run by Eugene Davis.

By 1959, the Davis Tavern had become Roy’s Tavern, owned by Alice Galvin. In 1961, the bar was renamed the Corner Tavern, owned by Art Meland and Margaret Esser. Fern’s Cafe was added to the property in 1963, with Allan and Fern Kurk in charge. In the following year, Fern’s Cafe became the Corner Cafe, with Byron and Helen Nelson doing the cooking. The cafe seems to have been closed by 1969 or 1970, at which time Ralph Johnson was the proprietor of the Corner Bar there.