Hartington City Hall and Auditorium
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Hartington City Hall and Auditorium
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Hartington City Hall and Auditorium from the southwest, with Broadway Street to the left and Centre Street to the right
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| Location | 101 North Broadway, Hartington, Nebraska United States (sometimes given as 101 East Centre) |
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| Coordinates | 42°37′15″N 97°15′49″W / 42.62083°N 97.26361°WCoordinates: 42°37′15″N 97°15′49″W / 42.62083°N 97.26361°W |
| Built | 1921–23 |
| Architect | William L. Steele |
| Architectural style | Prairie School |
| NRHP Reference # | 83001080 |
| Added to NRHP | July 21, 1983 |
The Hartington City Hall and Auditorium, also known as the Hartington Municipal Building, is a city-owned, brick-clad, 2-story center in Hartington, Nebraska. It was designed between 1921 and 1923 in the Prairie School style by noted architect William L. Steele (1875–1949).
Prairie School architecture is rare, and this rural Nebraska specimen is particularly unusual for being designed and built in the 1920s, subsequent to the Prairie Style’s rapid loss of popularity after 1914.
The building originally housed city offices, a fire house, an armory, and an auditorium. It is currently used for events, meetings, sports, recreation, and social functions.
The land which would become Cedar County, Nebraska was held for thousands of years by various Native American tribes, most recently by the Omaha, with the Ponca somewhat to the west and the Yankton Dakota generally north of the Missouri River. On March 16, 1854, the Omaha were forced to surrender Cedar County and most of the rest of their territory, and were restricted to what by 1882 would become their reservation, now primarily within Thurston County, Nebraska.
This paved the way for the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway (later Chicago and North Western Railway) to build westward to Cedar County, which in turn led to the founding of Hartington in 1883. As the railroad reached Cedar County, it first founded Coleridge as one of the locations needed every seven to ten miles (11 to 16 km) for trains to take on water and fuel. After laying down seven more miles of track, the railroad founded Hartington as its next stop, naming it after the English statesman Spencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington. In a hotly contested election on January 20, 1885, just less than a year after incorporation, Hartington wrested the county seat from St. Helena, 16 miles (26 km) north on the banks of the Missouri River.
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