South Dakota

This Art Deco courthouse replaced an earlier building on the site, just north of Plankinton’s main commercial district. Aurora County, which was created in 1879 and organized in 1881, designated Plankinton its county seat. Voters approved a bond measure for the construction of a two-and-a-half-story, wood-framed courthouse and jail designed by Theodore Mix and built in 1884 by Thomas Henning and Son. This building served the county’s needs until the late 1930s.

The Martin Honner House, located west of Tabor, is a surviving example of South Dakota’s Czech folk architecture. Czech families began immigrating to the state in 1869, concentrating their settlements in the state’s southeastern corner in Bon Homme and Yankton counties. They brought with them central European building traditions, primarily those associated with Bohemia.

St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church is a well-preserved example of Gothic Revival architecture in Bon Homme County. The church is located near the northeast end of Tabor, with a cemetery adjacent to the east and parish house (1910) on the west.

Bon Homme County was established by the Dakota Territorial Legislature in 1862. Tyndall was made the county seat in 1885, and the town’s citizens donated $6,000 to build the first courthouse on this site north of Main Street.

Tyndall Public Library was one of the last of the twenty-five Carnegie libraries built in South Dakota. Unique among the state's Carnegie libraries, Tyndall’s facility is influenced by the Prairie School and Craftsman styles rather than the more typical Classical Revival. The rectangular brick building rests on a raised concrete basement foundation and is topped with a red-clay–tiled hipped roof. A wide, overhanging eave is supported by large decorative brackets.

This two-story, wood-framed building was constructed sometime in the 1890s. The original owners, designers, and builders are unknown. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a substantial number of Czech immigrants settled in southeastern South Dakota, primarily in Bon Homme and Yankton counties. A Czech fraternal organization, ZCBJ (Zapadni Ceska Bratrska Jednota), purchased this building in 1908 for use as a meeting hall. The organization of Czech Americans was founded in 1897, and in the 1970s became known as the Western Fraternal Life Association.

The Ivan Cobel House exemplifies the early-twentieth-century Craftsman architecture found in Brookings, which is the commercial and governmental center of a large farming area in Brookings County and is also home to the state’s agricultural college (now South Dakota State University). Little is known about Cobel, but it is possible that he was a prominent businessman or perhaps associated with the college. The house is located in a residential neighborhood with several examples of larger dwellings southwest of the college and just north of the downtown commercial center.

The Horse Barn at South Dakota State College (now South Dakota State University or SDSU) was built in 1925 to house teams of draft horses used to farm the grounds at the college’s Experiment Station. The school was the state’s land grant college, which included higher education agricultural programs. The Experiment Station assisted in the development of new agricultural and livestock practices, and this structure was designed to showcase progressive farm barn design.

South Dakota State University’s Coughlin Campanile has served as an icon for the school since its construction. When completed in 1929, the 165-foot tower was the tallest structure in the state, visible for more than twenty miles. Since its construction, it has served as an icon for the university.

McCrory Gardens is located on the South Dakota State University (SDSU) campus in Brookings. Named for Horticulture Department professor S.A. McCrory, who served as chair from 1947 to 1964, initial development began in 1965, when two acres were dedicated to a formal annual, perennial, and ground-cover garden.