Walking tour strolls into Austin
Published 10:07 am Friday, May 22, 2009
Members of St. Joseph Catholic Church, Milford, Iowa, took the inaugural walking tour through downtown Austin Thursday.
Dustin Heckman, executive director of the Mower County Historical Society, conducted the tour with help from Angela McDermott, marketing and sales coordinator for the Austin Convention/Visitors Bureau. McDermott also coordinates group tours for the Austin CVB, and Heckman is a CVB board member. Betty Olson, CVB officer support staff, guided the guests through a Hormel Institute tour also Thursday.
The downtown walking tour was a first, according to Heckman. The tour focused on 12-15 buildings and businesses along North Main Street. The downtown showpieces were vintage 1928 to 1997, according to Heckman.
The walking tour was modeled after a self-guided tour of historic sites, during Austin’s sesquicentennial year of 2006.
Heckman said Thursday’s walking tour was the idea of the Austin Community Education Program, who said people were requesting a downtown tour after the Jan. 15 fire.
“They pitched the idea of a walking tour to me and I said ‘Yes. I’ll do that’, and here we are,” Heckman said.
The Austin CVB embraced the idea, according to Heckman, when they were “looking for something new to offer.”
Thursday’s tour was essentially a “test run” for the idea.
Heckman did a similar walking tour in Fairmont, where he was the curator of the Martin County Historical Society.
Heckman said his research into Austin’s central business district was simply the first step in an investigation process that may yield other historical benefits.
He envisions having “actors” step out of storefronts to share their accounts of bygone days in Austin’s past.
Thursday’s tour began at the corner of Fourth Avenue Northwest and North Main Street, where Wells Fargo Bank Austin is located today.
Heckman told the Milford, Iowa visitors crowded around him how the Fox Hotel built in 1890 dominated the street corner more than a century ago.
Norwest Bank Minnesota acquired the property in 1965 and most recently Wells Fargo Bank — Minnesota.
Moving south along North Main Street, the strollers stopped at the former F. W. Woolworth building at the corner of North Main Street and Third Avenue Northwest.
Today, the “5 and 10 cents store” that existed from 1937 to 1985 is the Town Center, an office, coffee shop and conference center that is home to the Development Corporation of Austin and Austin Area Chamber of Commerce, too.
The third stop on the tour was the former site of Smiths Florsheim Shoes (now Piggy Market), south of the popular Piggy Blues restaurant is located.
Heckman next told the visitors about Stevensons, a women’s wear store at 311 North Main Street.
The Philomathian Book and Gift Store, a North Main Street fixture since 1977 gave way to the corner of North Main Street and Second Avenue Northwest where the Austin National Bank and First National Bank was located.
The bank’s president for 42 years, C.W. Shaw holds a special place in the history of Austin’s financial institutions.
Heckman was forced to speed-up the tour after the visitors arrived late from their visit to Hormel Institute.
There was plenty of downtown business history to share in a short time: K.O. Wold Drug Company, S.S. Kresge Company, Baudler law offices, Austin Theater, Mower County Courthouse, Wallace’s Department Store, Geo. Hirsh Clothing Company (most recently Keenan’s Clothing), Brick Furniture and all the others of time immemorial.
The visitors asked questions, made comments (Yes, they noticed the fire debris) and followed Heckman’s gaze at the storefronts.
The leader of the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church group was the Msgr. Ken Seifried, pastor of the church.
Twice a year, the northwest Iowa church takes a bus tour of the region and has been to Austin once before to see the newly remodeled and expanded Hormel Institute.
Seifried said he was most impressed during Thursday’s visit by the tour of Hormel Institute.
“When we were up here a couple of years ago, you wouldn’t even have known it existed and now is known all over the nation,” he said.