DeLendrecie's Department Store

With previous retail experience gained in Paris, France, and Yazoo, Mississippi, Canadian-born o. J. delendrecie arrived at Fargo in 1879. His first venture, the Chicago Dry Goods House, was immediately located at 618 Front Street, the city's main commercial thoroughfare. A larger, more permanent building at that same address was eventually outgrown and deLendrecie decided in 1894 to build on the adjacent property, a strategic corner site near the Headquarters Hotel.

Despite the national economic depression in the mid-1890s, Fargo enjoyed a healthy building industry. The Great Fire of 1893 had destroyed the entire business district north of the Northern Pacific railroad tracks, and the rebuilding was immediate and optimistic. Local and out-of-town "carpetbagger" architects set up their offices in hotel rooms, tents, anything that would keep the rain off their drawing boards. McMillen & Tenbusch, of Duluth, were among the architects and contractors who had come to fulfill the prophecy of the Phoenix and, not incidentally, to make money. Their Richardsonian-Classical design for O. J. deLendrecie's department store remains one of Fargo's finest post-fire structures.

The national architectural scene had changed considerably by 1904 when deLendrecie decided to expand his original store vertically. Perhaps for economic reasons, perhaps due to the area's inherent architectural conservatism, Fargo architect Andrew J. O'Shea chose to replicate much of the 1894 facade in his design for the three-story addition. There were some internal changes at that time--probably involving the conversion of the second floor as retail space--but the original exterior remained essentially unchanged.

Other cosmetic modifications have been made over the years, most notably the main entry and the interior cabinetwork done after World War II by the office of William F. Kurke. Kurke also prepared designs for a five-story addition which would have occupied the entire south half of the block. But this scheme was never carried beyond preliminaries, a fact which may reflect the Central Business District's decline during the 1960s. Eventually, in 1972, deLendrecie's (now no longer owned by the family) closed its downtown store and relocated to West Acres, the regional shopping center five miles to the southwest.

The old building remained nearly vacant for almost three years until February 1975, when it was purchased for conversion into a nostalgic evocation of turn-of-the-century life. Similar efforts had already been successful in other cities--New Orleans, Kansas City, and Salt Lake City among others--but the conversion of deLendrecie's most closely parallels that of the Butler Brothers Warehouse in Minneapolis.

By the Fall of 1975, the former department store had become "Block Six of the Original Townsite" (a name derived from the legal description of its property), a collection of small stores and specialty shops. A portion of the main floor was removed, extending the former mezzanine space into the basement. Much of the store fixtures were removed and the original open floors were partitioned into separate retail establishments--an arrangement not unlike the first department stores of the 19th century. The top two floors continue to serve as office space and as storage for the shops below.

From its origins in 1879 as the Chicago Dry Goods House, the development of O. J. deLendrecie's establishment parallels the metamorphosis of Fargo's urban core. The building is also closely associated with Onesine and Eugene deLendrecie, pioneer merchants and founders of North Dakota's premier department store. Fortunately, in its latest guise, the building continues to serve retail purposes and preserves an important example of Fargo's 19th-century architecture.