Hughes County Courthouse and Library

The library side ends its own story a year late. In June 1994 workers burning old paint off the cornice with torches set the building alight, and fire and water left it beyond saving; the city demolished it in 1995. It had begun with a letter: in 1903 the Reverend C. Frank Vreeland asked Andrew Carnegie for $15,000, and the county gave the lot east of the courthouse. The courthouse beside it, built in 1934 and 1935 in a Moderne style with Art Deco details, joined the National Register in 1993.

What the plaque says

Hughes County Courthouse The Hughes County Courthouse was built and occupied in February 1935, to replace the original 1883 brick structure. The new Courthouse was designed by architects Hugill and Blatherwick of Sioux Falls and constructed by Henry Carlson Company of Sioux Falls at a cost of $129,410. The walls are cut South Dakota granite with Hot Springs sandstone trim. The Fire Marshall declared the 1883 courthouse unsafe, due to its 16 heating stoves and faulty wiring. The brick building was leveled by WPA Labor. The original bricks salvaged from the courthouse were reused to line the interior walls of the 1935 courthouse. The outside concrete nameplate from the old courthouse was placed on a first floor wall of the new building. The Pierre Historic Preservation Commission erected this historical marker with funds from the Hughes County Commission and the City of Pierre in 2001. Site of First Library in Pierre Built in 1904 with a $12,500 gift from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, the Library opened its doors on March 10, 1905. The Pierre Women's Club provided the first collection of 800 books. The Neo-Classical Library built of native-cut boulders, and the small dome provided light for the reading room on the main floor. The Pierre Carnegie Library operated until 1972, when the Rawlins Library opened. The building became county offices until gutted by fire in 1995. The Pierre Historic Preservation Commission erected this historical marker with funds from the Hughes County Commission and the City of Pierre in 2001.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• South Dakota State Capitol — 0.2 mi
  A copper-domed capitol built to end three elections' worth of fighting over where the capital belonged, beside a lake fed by an artesian well with a gas flame burning in it.
• Verendrye Monument — 1.8 mi
  The hilltop above Fort Pierre where three children found a lead plate in 1913 that two French brothers had buried in 1743 to claim the West for their king.
• Oahe Dam — 6.1 mi
  One of the largest rolled-earth dams in the world, dedicated by President Kennedy in 1962, holding back a reservoir that reaches more than 230 miles to Bismarck.

More markers nearby

• First and Only Hanging in Hughes County — steps away
• John Sutherland and the Capital Fights — steps away
• Pierre Was a Cowtown - Reading Brands — 0.4 mi
• Civil War Monument — 0.5 mi