Bear Valley Grange Hall
rathaus in Chester Township, United States of America
The Bear Valley Grange Hall is a historic meeting hall in Chester Township, Minnesota, United States. It was built in 1874 for the exclusive use of a local chapter of the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, an early farmers' advocacy group and fraternal organization. The chapter folded in the 1880s and the building has been used since as the Chester Town Hall. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 for having local significance in the theme of social history. It was nominated for being the only surviving Grange hall in Wabasha County—and one of only a few in Minnesota—and a rare example of a purpose-built Grange hall, as most chapters met in existing spaces like schools.
Description
The Bear Valley Grange Hall is a one-story wood frame building on a limestone rubble foundation, measuring 40 by 22 feet (12.2 by 6.7 m). The narrow ends are gabled and contain the front and rear exits. This front-gabled form of vernacular architecture was used widely in the American Midwest for churches, commercial buildings, meeting halls, and schools. The front door, on the hall's north end, is centered and flanked by two windows with large wood shutters. There are four similar windows on both of the side walls.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bear Valley Grange Hall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.