A recent visitor to the Dodge County Historical Society was interested in a building in Mantorville that is no longer there. They wanted to know if the society had any pictures and what the building was used for. The building in question was located across the street from the current post office in Mantorville.
Today the location is nothing but an empty lot.
Sadly the society seems to have only one picture of the building, something taken late in the lifetime of the building, we don’t know the date of the picture. As you can see through the open doorway the building is perhaps in poor repair.
Thanks to Rich Olive however we have another picture of the building and this one is a real visual treat.
Looking closely there are many details to see. First the “mystery” building is the Mantorville post office in this picture! The current post office today (in 2022) is across the street in the brick building. The brick building looks to have some other use.
Notice all the hitch rails for horses lining the street!
Up the block on the right hand side we can see the Opera House isn’t built yet! The “3rd” section of the store front burned down in 1917 and the Opera House would be built in its place. This helps us date the picture as before that event. Additionally notice across the street next to the “mystery” building is a restaurant. That building still stands today.
Notice on the side of the restaurant is an advertisement for Ives Ice Cream which was a Minnesota company founded in 1878. The company which was headquartered in Minneapolis merged with Foremost Dairies in 1954.
On the left hand side there appear to be two more building that don’t exist today approximately in the area of the current Mantorville Saloon parking lot. Notice that in front of one of them is a barber pole suggesting that is where you’d go to get your hair cut.
Going up the street some more, you’ll notice there is an early automobile parked in the street. Further up the street on the left hand side you’ll see the building that houses the saloon today. It’s a one story building now, while in this picture it’s a two story building. What happened was in 1917 there was a fire and the building was rebuilt. The building across the street from the Hubbell House used to look a lot different than it does today.
You can see the famous Hubbell House. There are porches that are now no longer there clearly visible.
At the very end of the street is the Mantorville brewery, which was built in 1874. Notice the train cars! There was a branch line that came over from Kasson and in this area to the right just out of frame was a grain elevator. The poles from a railroad bridge the serviced this branch can still be seen in the Zumbro river today.
Last notice above the street intersection a very old fashioned street light. Looking down the road you can see another one above the intersection at Main and 5th.
This is a great turn of the century picture and thank you to Rich Olive for sharing it with the Society.