Photographic journey offers look at downtown Sioux Falls of years gone by

By Jill Callison, for Pigeon605

Second-graders at Laura B. Anderson Elementary ventured out on their first field trip this fall, one that took them back in time.

The youngsters were among the first to officially tour the exhibit “Scenes of Sioux Falls — A Photographic Journey” at the Old Courthouse Museum, even though it has been finished since April 2020.

Students walked out of the museum with a firm understanding of how their lives can be affected by things that happened decades before, said their teacher, Sheila Orlando.

“The first words they said were like, ‘Whoa!’ All 27 of them. They were absolutely amazed,” Orlando said. “The thing that floored them the most were the (photographs of) floods; the second was the amount of snow. And the fires absolutely shocked them.”

The 54 second graders were divided into three groups, and staff members from the Siouxland Heritage Museums’ education department explained the various exhibits, including a display of antique toys and the large bison in the lobby area.

The time spent in the photographic exhibit was especially meaningful for museum staff, however, because “Scenes of Sioux Falls” was designed to meet South Dakota’s elementary-school standards on learning the history of their community.

“Kids are visual learners, and it’s an easy way for them to grasp how history has changed,” said Kevin Ganz, the curator of education. “When we put this together, we were hoping this was something that would be enticing for schools.”

The pandemic postponed but did not cancel those hopes. The museum was closed to visitors from April to June 2020, reopening after the school year ended. Schools did not offer field trips during the 2020-21 year, making this fall the earliest classes could see the exhibit. For Orlando’s students, whose kindergarten field trip was canceled and who could not travel as a group as first graders, it was their first outing. Making it even more special was a donor’s willingness to rent a bus for the students to travel in.

The exhibit also will have appeal to those who remember downtown Sioux Falls as it was in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, before urban renewal drastically changed the landscape, Ganz said. It also will give newer residents a look at how still-standing buildings once appeared and how businesses have grown and expanded.

Take Look’s Marketplace, for example. Those familiar with the large and light-filled East 69th Street location may be charmed to see its first incarnation as a dimly lit meat market with hanging slabs of beef and pork. The exhibit has a series of displays where a building exterior is shown. Open the hinged door, and an interior view is displayed.

“The meat market of 130 years ago is not the meat market of today,” Ganz said. “We wanted to let people know what it was like to walk into these buildings.”

An aerial view shows a densely packed downtown Sioux Falls, long the heart of the city. It was established in 1856 as Sioux Falls City, and when it was abandoned in 1862, about 40 people lived in the area of what today is the downtown, near the Big Sioux River. The U.S. military constructed Fort Dakota in 1865, also in the downtown area. When the soldiers left in 1869, new arrivals also settled in that area.

“It was north of what we consider the heart of downtown, Ninth Street and Phillips Avenue,” Ganz said. “In the early days, it was more like Seventh Street to 10th Street. But Ninth and Phillips is where the Cataract Hotel stood, and that’s where street numbering was started because of the importance of the Cataract Hotel.”

Human hands are not entirely responsible for shaping downtown. “Scenes of Sioux Falls” contains photographs of floods, fires and blizzards, the images that so awed Orlando’s second graders.

It was humans, however, who chose to tear down some of the downtown’s more distinctive buildings in an urban renewal push nearly 50 years ago. Sioux Falls resident Steve Hildebrand, who operated a restaurant downtown for several years, noted that on his Facebook page after a recent visit to the exhibit. It was shared with museum staff.

“It is remarkable and somewhat disturbing to see just how many historic and amazing buildings we’ve lost to fires or demolition,” Hildebrand wrote. “The (Old Courthouse Museum) did a great job with this expansive exhibit.”

For Orlando’s second graders, photographs of flooding made the deepest impression. Images they have seen in the news of destruction elsewhere became real when they saw Sioux Falls men in water up to their hips, lumber from Schoeneman Bros. bobbing in the water.

People familiar with the downtown of decades ago may have memories jogged by some of the business names they see in photographs, selected from the 50,000 to 60,000 in the museum collection, Ganz said.

“Maybe they’ll see something in the exhibit, and it will spark a memory, and we hope it’s a good memory of growing up,” he said.

Orlando’s second graders made memories of a time long before they were born, when trolley tracks cut through huge drifts of snow and a large clanging bell, included in the display, would have summoned them to class.

“They’re pretty young and don’t have much of an idea about the city they live in,” Orlando said. “They’re still learning Sioux Falls is our city and South Dakota is our state. Seeing pictures and actually seeing artifacts makes that abstract learning concrete.”

“Scenes of Sioux Falls” stays up at the Old Courthouse Museum until 2023. The toys exhibit will close Oct. 10, to be replaced by “Designing Sioux Falls.”