Presentation Children's Home

About this property

The Presentation Children's Home is a historic building at 701 South Western Avenue in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Built to replace an earlier orphanage in Turton that burned down, it functioned not only as an orphanage—one of the few in South Dakota—but also as a school from its opening in 1940 to its closure in 1966. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. Beginning in 1924, orphans in eastern South Dakota had been homed at the Little Flower orphanage and school in Turton, 160 miles (260 km) north of Sioux Falls. However, when this orphanage burned down in March 1932, the approximately 70 orphans living there were left homeless and were shuffled between various buildings in the subsequent years. Although an orphanage in Sioux Falls—the South Dakota Children's Home—already existed, there was not enough space available to comfortably accommodate the new children. Immediately after the fire, the orphans were temporarily housed at Lincoln Hall on the Northern State University campus in nearby Aberdeen before being moved to Woonsocket in July. The Presentation Order of Sisters, a Roman Catholic mission, had a school there, but the situation was again temporary, and the former Columbus College building in Sioux Falls hosted the children beginning on July 16, 1934. When this college became a seminary in 1938, plans were made to again move the children in August 1939. Boys were sent to the vacant residence of the Bishop Bernard Mahoney, who had previously passed away; and girls were sent to a parochial school in nearby Bridgewater. With the approaching opening of a new, permanent orphanage, the children returned to the seminary building on June 1, 1940. The Presentation Order of Sisters had, by 1938, appealed to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for aid to build a permanent orphanage; and in 1938, the City of Sioux Falls in conjunction with the WPA granted the Sisters land rights to the corner of Western Avenue and 15th Street for 99 years. Local architectural firm Hugill & Blatherwick designed the building, and WPA workers provided the labor. The WPA and City of Sioux Falls donated half of the estimated cost—$20,000—to the cause, and the Presentation Order of Sisters held multiple charity drives over the next year to match this amount and complete construction. Struggle to raise these funds during the Great Depression caused completion to be delayed much longer than originally intended; construction lasted from November 10, 1938, to July 26, 1940. Additionally, the city later reduced the contract time from 99 to only 15 years and set a monthly maximum of $20 to be allocated to the care of each child, when cost was not covered by the Presentation Order themselves. This lease was renewed for an additional 99 years on June 11, 1955. The name "Presentation Children's Home" was officially adopted on November 6, 1939. The orphanage officially opened on September 15, 1940.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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