page_title: Hartington City Hall and Auditorium
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hartington City Hall and Auditorium / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of city auditorium in Hartington, Nebraska: entrance lobby, facing southeast. The doors at the top of the stairs both lead to the basketball court: the one partly visible at left directly (though it is now blocked), and the one at right via a second door at right angles. The door obliquely visible behind the stairs apparently leads down to the lower level of the building. The door to the right of that one was locked, and there was no indication of what lay beyond it.
context_page_description: The Hartington City Hall and Auditorium, also known as the Hartington Municipal Building, is a city-owned, brick-clad, 2-story center in Hartington, Nebraska. It was designed between 1921 and 1923 in the Prairie School style by architect William L. Steele.
  Prairie School architecture is rare, and this rural Nebraska specimen is particularly unusual for being designed and built in the 1920s, subsequent to the Prairie Style's rapid loss of popularity after 1914.
  The building originally housed city offices, a fire house, an armory, and an auditorium. It is currently used for events, meetings, sports, recreation, and social functions.
context_section_description: The land which would become Cedar County, Nebraska was held for thousands of years by various Native American tribes, most recently by the Omaha, with the Ponca somewhat to the west and the Yankton Dakota generally north of the Missouri River. On March 16, 1854, the Omaha were forced to surrender Cedar County and most of the rest of their territory, and were restricted to what by 1882 would become their reservation, now primarily within Thurston County, Nebraska.
  This paved the way for the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway (later Chicago and North Western Railway) to build westward to Cedar County, which in turn led to the founding of Hartington in 1883. As the railroad reached Cedar County, it first founded Coleridge as one of the locations needed every seven to ten miles (11 to 16 km) for trains to take on water and fuel. After laying down seven more miles of track, the railroad founded Hartington as its next stop, naming it after the English statesman Spencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington. In a hotly contested election on January 20, 1885, just less than a year after incorporation, Hartington wrested the county seat from St. Helena, 16 miles (26 km) north on the banks of the Missouri River.
  For over 35 years, Hartington had no large indoor venue. In 1919, after a series of prosperous years resulting from high grain prices during and immediately after World War I, voters passed a bond issue of $25,000 for the purpose of erecting a new city hall with multiple uses, including an auditorium. When that amount proved insufficient, a second bond issue of $25,000 was approved in 1920.
  In 1921, the city council selected William L. Steele to be the architect for the building. Trained at the University of Illinois (now University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign), Steele had worked as a draftsman in the offices of renowned progressive architect Louis Sullivan from 1887–1900, and then in four more conservative offices, before settling in 1904 in Sioux City, Iowa, about 60 miles (100 km) east of Hartington. By the time Hartington chose him, he was the most prominent architect in the region.
  Known to work in a number of styles, Steele had recently been concentrating on the Prairie School style of architecture originally developed by Frank Lloyd Wright and others inspired by Sullivan. Upon first arriving in the region, Steele had been unable to convince any of his clients to try his progressive designs. However, beginning with his Prairie-influenced Ben and Harriet Schulein House (Sioux City, 1913), he had begun tentatively moving in the Prairie School direction.
  Steele’s skill with Prairie Style designs and his success in interesting clients had markedly increased as a result of his three-year collaboration with famous Minneapolis-based architect George Grant Elmslie. With Elmslie as principal designer and with some assistance from Elmslie's partner William Gray Purcell, Steele had erected the Prairie Style Woodbury County Courthouse (Sioux City, 1915-1918). About 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest in Lake Andes, South Dakota, Steele had designed the Charles Mix County Courthouse (1916-1917), also in the Prairie Style. Steele’s success is particularly noteworthy since the Prairie School was in decline by this time, losing ground rapidly to a resurgence of more conservative styles after about 1914, and particularly after World War I.
  The leaders of Hartington would have been familiar with these and other Steele-designed Prairie School style buildings; there would be no surprise in what they were getting. What is surprising is that they agreed to the progressive design. There was considerable public outcry against the Woodbury County Courthouse just five years earlier (including demands from one group for “a courthouse of ordinary and usual design”), but no record of dissent in Hartington. This design “as compared to other known civic buildings in the surrounding counties, stands as a progressive building in an otherwise conservative community.”
  Steele drew up initial plans in 1921, then made revisions at the requ
caption: Architect Steele continued the semi-circular motif from the front (west) facade into the doors and archways of the lobby.
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