Historic Homes and Businesses in Carver - Carver County Historical ...

1924-1939 it served as Carver‟s Woodman Hall, Carver Camp #2024. A Woodman Hall
was a lodge or meeting place for the Modern Woodman of America, a popular fraternal
group in the latter 19 th Century and first half of the 20 th Century. The Woodman Hall
building could be rented out for receptions, bazaars, concerts, meetings, plays, or used for
other events, such as elections and political speeches.
413 Broadway, Charles L. Dauwalter Jr. House. Built in 1898 by Charles L.
Dauwalter Jr., the son of Charles D. Dauwalter Sr., who was one of Carver‟s pioneer
settlers, arriving in 1857 from Ohio. The present house is constructed on the site of
property the senior Dauwalter purchased in 1864. The Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of
1894 reveals that the property was previously occupied by a two-story frame house with a
large one-story shed attached to the north, but it is uncertain if that earlier house was
actually the residence of either Charles D. Dauwalter Sr. or son Charles L. Dauwalter.
Charles Dauwalter Jr., born in Carver in 1867, was apprenticed at age 15 in his father‟s
blacksmith and wagon making shop and later became the proprietor of that business,
which was located next door to the north of his house, and which he converted into a
Buick distributorship in the early 1920s.
In 1898 Charles D. Dauwalter transferred ownership to the lot on which the house stands
to his son Charles L. Dauwalter. On February 17, 1898 the Weekly Valley Herald
newspaper reported that Charles Dauwalter Jr. “will erect a new brick residence next
spring, as soon as weather permits. Olaf Hanson will be the contractor with Leonard
Schroeder doing the mason work”. Schroeder lived at 400 Oak Street in Carver. The
house is built of local buff-colored Carver brick and features Victorian and Eastlake
design, 2 ½ stories with a multi-gabled roof, a full front porch, limestone windowsills,
stained glass decorative windows, and three picture windows. At one time the house
featured turned porch posts with decorative brackets, a turned porch balustrade,
decorative roof crestings, a Greek style portico, gable decoration, and a wide stairway to
the street that angled from the southwest corner of the building. The house had one of
Carver‟s first cement public sidewalks.
The Charles Dauwalter Jr. House was featured in the 1978 Minnesota State Historic
Preservation Office book, Carver County: A Guide to its Historic and Prehistoric
Places, by Lofstrom and VanBrocklin-Spaeth.
416 Broadway, Wells-Bueche Blacksmith Shop and Saloon. Built circa 1857, the twostory
wing of today‟s house that fronts on Broadway probably had its earliest days as a
blacksmith shop, and then later as a small saloon. Since at least 1894 the house has
served as a residential dwelling. As recently as 1894 it was a small squarish building,
slightly longer from front to back than side to side. Sometime between 1894 and 1900 a
1 1/2 –story wing parallel to the street was added making the house L-shaped, and a short
open porch was built in the front angle of the L about the same time The short open
porch was lengthened in 1910-11 to fill the full space of the addition. Between 1911 and
1928 an open porch was added to the middle of the rear of the house. From as early as
1894 and until 1910 two small outbuildings were in the rear, one of brick, one of wood.
By 1911 both were removed. Since at least 1894 the house has had much of the same