The Federal Building: 120 Years on the Corner

In 1904, this corner was empty.

A Sanborn fire insurance map of downtown Harrison shows a large vacant lot at the northwest corner of Main and Rush with a simple notation:

“U.S. Gov’t & Post Office Building to be erected.”

By 1905, it was there.

The three-story Federal Building at 201 N. Main Street was constructed at a cost of $78,863. The contract was awarded to the Shackleton Construction Company of Butte, Montana, with J.W. Middleton involved in the cement and plaster work.

The building was an impressive addition to a growing Harrison.

Built of dark red brick with stone detailing, the building was designed in the Classical Revival style. Pedimented windows, arched openings, substantial masonry and a dentiled cornice gave it the sense of permanence expected of a federal building at the beginning of the 20th century.

And if the building itself wasn’t tall enough, it originally had a 90-foot flagpole, rising roughly 30 feet above the building.

Inside, each floor had a job.

The first floor housed the United States Post Office. The second floor was home to the United States Court, and the third floor housed the Government Land Office, with a central hall and rooms for its officers and clerks.

The building was even equipped for both gas and electric lighting, a little detail that places it perfectly at the beginning of a new century, when old and new technology were still sharing the same rooms.

For decades, Harrison residents came here for their mail and federal business. The Post Office remained in the building until 1965.

Eventually, the building entered another phase of public service as home to Boone County offices. For many Harrison residents, that is how they remember it. Not as the Federal Building or the old Post Office, but simply as the county building. County offices remained here until moving to newer facilities in recent years.

In 1999, the Federal Building was listed as a contributing property in the Harrison Courthouse Square Historic District when the district was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Boone County sold the building in 2023 to Tom and Kelly Davenport, placing the property into private ownership. During their ownership, a new roof and gutters have helped protect the historic structure.

And today, 121 years after that 1904 Sanborn map showed an empty lot and promised a building “to be erected,” the Federal Building is still standing at Main and Rush.

Its purpose has changed more than once.

A post office. A federal courthouse. A government land office. County offices.

But through all of those changes, the building itself has remained one of downtown Harrison’s landmarks.

Historic preservation isn’t always about keeping a building exactly as it was. Sometimes it’s about making sure a building that has already served a community for more than a century gets the opportunity to keep doing it.

We look forward to seeing what the next chapter brings for this remarkable downtown building.