Fargo House Hotel was fixture of downtown Fargo from decades ago
By Andrea Halgrimson on November 22, 2014 at 11:20 a.m. - - InForum, Fargo, North Dakota
As time passes, it gets harder to remember and visualize the way Main Avenue from Broadway east to
the river looked before urban renewal leveled the whole area.
The mind’s eye grows dimmer with the years, but I can still see the building on the southeast corner of
Main Avenue and Fourth Street South.
I was never in the building, but the three-story brick-faced structure was a fixture on that corner. It was
known as the Fargo House Hotel. To the south facing Fourth Street, was the Washington House Hotel.
In those days, many hotels had “house” appended to their names.
The Fargo House was built on Fargo’s original town site in 1873, shortly after the first Northern Pacific
Railroad bridge over the Red River was
constructed. The first train is believed
to have crossed into Fargo in 1872.
The frame hotel was built by pioneer
John McDonough, who also owned a
hotel in Moorhead. The brick veneer
was added many years later.
The hotel had 60 rooms, and for many
years before it was razed it was
occupied mostly by people on relief and transients. The permanent residents were moved to living
quarters in other parts of the city when the urban renewal agency bought the building.
In November 1955, the Fargo City Commission voted to change Front Street’s name to Main Avenue.
The Forum reported that local businessmen on Front Street wanted the change probably because the
area had become run-down.
The Fargo House Hotel was a victim of the Main Avenue urban renewal project as was everything on
Main Avenue from Broadway to the Red River. It was Fargo’s second pass at leveling neighborhoods
that were deteriorating. The first was from Fourth Street North to the river between First and Third
avenues.
In 1949, the hotel was purchased by Cal R. and Betty Larson of Grand Forks from Rose Barron. The
Larsons sold the hotel to the Fargo Urban Renewal Agency in the mid-1960s. The last manager of the
hotel was Mrs. Mabel I. Richards.
A Forum story about the hotel’s demise tells of the original owners of the land on which the hotel was
built.
“Buried in the abstract covering the property where the old hotel stands is an account of the patent,
dated Jan. 24, 1892, to the Northern Pacific Railway of the north half of the section of land.
“The patent was granted ‘under an act of Congress approved July 2, 1864 to aid in the construction of
a railroad and telegraph line from Lake Superior to Puget Sound.’” The patent was signed by
President Benjamin Harrison.
“The abstract shows, too, that the ‘Town of Fargo’ was platted Jan. 2, 1874.
“First sale involving a portion of the half section of land was recorded Jan. 11, 1875, when a warranty
deed was given by the Northern Pacific to A.C. Kvello. It included lots 9, 10 and 14 in Block 3 of the
Original Townsite.”
The abstract also gives a list of later owners of the property. They include: Otto J. Skelbred, Mr. and
Mrs. James Ready, James Kennedy, Mr. and Mrs. John (Mary) McDonough, William Eggert, R. S.
Lewis, Mandel Levitz and his heirs, Mort Barron,
S. Steven Barron, Harry T. and Delia Bearman and finally the Larsons.
An auction sale of the furnishings in the Fargo House conducted by Ingham Idso was held shortly
before the hotel was razed in 1965.
It wasn’t the fashion to restore, and the history it represented was destroyed. The Fargo House Hotel
was replaced by a gas station. A strip mall and an apartment complex finished off the blocks to the
east and now the apartments that were built are going to be razed and I wonder if any historical
artifacts will be found in the earth below them.