Otter Tail County Courthouse

The Otter Tail County Courthouse is one of the finest Beaux-Arts public buildings in rural Minnesota, completed in 1905 in pink Sioux quartzite and buff limestone. The building sits at the south end of the downtown core and anchors the town's Victorian streetscape. The interior retains original woodwork, ornate plasterwork ceilings, and a central staircase that remains largely unchanged from 1905.

The courthouse is a working government building, open during business hours. Visitors are welcome to enter the public areas. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Around it, the downtown grid has an unusually high concentration of National Register buildings within a few blocks — the Hotel Kaddatz, the River Inn, and the Red River Milling Company are all nearby.

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A story
The courthouse was built in 1905 and designed by Charles A. Reed, an architect from Evansville, Indiana who also designed courthouses in Illinois and Ohio. The pink Sioux quartzite and buff limestone exterior made it one of the most distinctive public buildings in west-central Minnesota when it opened. Despite several attempts to replace it with a more functional modern structure in the latter 20th century, the building was saved and restored in the 1990s.