Six thousand souls, and home to Dakota State University. That is almost the entirety of its Wikipedia entry.

The other Madison. Now why did I start here?

Oh

Rote and on the cheap -

- but still solid. Small towns need these.

Of course, it’s nice to have something more interesting to behold. Which is not this.

OUMB, but well-proportioned, and not unattractive in its stark modern statement.

A rare triple Buckaroo Revival!

Okay, this is the OUMB. Jeebus. The intersection of late 70s - early 80s produced some notable dogs.

The eruption of the nearby volcano buried the town up to the top of the first floor, leaving no traces of the original appearance

Better. The sheet-metal awning, an 80s / 90s relic, should go, but it’s well-maintained, a good example of the “ornamentation via brick” school of economy.

Rusticated citizen from an earlier era, with a little crown uncomfortably wedged into the cornice.

It would seem to refer to the second-floor entrance below.

The corner view.

Pity about that front door.

Yes, yes, we know, 1887

The other side. This was quite the project.

It’s been remodeled over the years into incoherence.

A sober, economical building:

Cute little vases for civic pride. The awnings make it look like an insurance office offering home fire auto.

The auditorium: another sign that the folk of this fine town were tight with a dime.

No need to have a separate building for each!

Another bank, obviously. The corner position, the sign. And, of course, the ALARM.

It really got scraped and paved, though. And our condolences to the mid block portion, which got a late 60s / early 70s brick job and a Buckaroo awning.

Once gas, now tax.

With that awful strip- shingle siding. Gah.

More glass brick than I’ve seen in a while. I don't mind it. The ground floor renovation makes you feel well-disposed to the designer, because . . .

. . . they liked to put in those modern planters. Flowers and greenery. It was very 1955.

This bad idea seems to be original.

There are worse examples of facadomy. The lights make it seem almost in the same universe as the original design, and the materials aren’t so up-to-date that it looks - well, dated.

“Escape rooms and axe throwing.”

As I said, lots of glass block. The lower floors are post-war. The upper-floor brick decoration in the middle does not suggest the work of a master.

Dull at birth, and there really isn’t much you can do with it.

But obviously, they tried.

The side, complete with Grain Belt ad. I’m really curious about the history of this one.

Really! It’s dull, yes, so what was the developer thinking? Just making some rentable space, and if anyone thought it was a bit stark, well, let them pay for fancy stone. What’s with the second floor on the end? Was that an addition? The same color is used on the ground floor, and next to another window. Possibly a fire.

“Can you match the bricks?”

“Sure, but this color’s gone out of production. I’m sure the boys up in Hebron will do a custom job, though, for a little more money -“

“Just use what you have.”

Anyway, something about this says hotel to me, even though there aren’t the tell-tale small windows to indicate a bathroom. I went back to see if I could detect a line in the brick to explain the different hues, and hello:

That’s from a 2016 view. Gone now. I also noted some signage I’d missed:

And:

Up here, we know just what that was. We can even hear the song.

One more thing I missed on my first trip: this is a corner as it looks today.

And this is what it was. DAMMIT.