Algona, the seat of Kossuth County, was platted south of the east fork of the Des Moines River in 1856. This first plat provided for a public square (at State and Hall Streets), a courthouse, and a public park at Nebraska and Blackford streets. The delightful Kossuth County Courthouse (1872), Italianate in style, was torn down in 1955 and replaced by a bland modernist building. Other losses from the nineteenth century are the French Second Empire Algona House Hotel, the Italianate Russell house, and the mill that stood on the south side of the river, north of Thorington Street.