This whole thing started because of the Confluence taking over the Hudson property. We started looking at how things changed through the years. This started with a clump around what the Confluence is now.”

Heidi Langenfeld

History is fascinating, especially when you have access to two rooms full of books, newspapers, documents, photos and more. That is exactly what the Pioneer Room at City Hall is. Well, technically, it is a room and a vault, but the point is the same, the Pioneer Room is the history center of Hastings’ history. The room is curated by three wonderful historians, Cindy Thury-Smith, Shirley Dalaska and Heidi Langenfeld. If you have not paid these three ladies a visit and talked Hastings’ history, you are missing out. They recently put together a deep dive into the history of the buildings downtown and the results are amazing. 

“This whole thing started because of the Confluence taking over the Hudson property. We started looking at how things changed through the years. This started with a clump around what the Confluence is now,” explained Langenfeld. 

The information that was researched for the Confluence opened up the proverbial can of worms in the Pioneer Room and Dalaska was hooked on the deep dive of downtown Hastings. 

“It was going to be the whole downtown because someone wanted us to edit a walking tour that some interns had put together and we wanted to verify that what they said was true,” explained Langenfeld. 

Once they started that research, they decided to build an exhibit around the data they were about to uncover. They soon found out that there was so much data, to do this properly will require one of two things: way more space at City Hall to display everything or splitting it up into multiple exhibits. Additionally, the research for one block took them about a year to complete, so the decision was made to split it up into multiple exhibits. 

The current exhibit covers the buildings on Second Street East from Vermillion Street to Sibley Street, the 100 block. 

“We had to edit them all severely because we kept coming up with really good stories,” added Thury-Smith. 

“Shirley is a researcher, she loves to do deep dives,” said Langenfeld. “She took this property, the 118 building and we told a longer story on that building to show the depth of the history of downtown Hastings.” 

The details were incredible as you can see in the accompanying photo of the board that they created for the 118 building and each building has a similar story. The exhibit is currently on the wall of the main hallway leading to the council chambers at City Hall, which means residents can visit the exhibit anytime that City Hall is open. People do not need to wait for the Pioneer Room to be open from nine a.m. to noon on Wednesdays. 

“I think it's really nice and logically set up to find if you're looking for a particular thing,” said Thury-Smith on the exhibit. 

Both Langenfeld and Thury-Smith expanded on some of the research they discovered. There have been a few times where funds were made available to downtown businesses to restore the façade of their buildings to historical specifications and there are funds becoming available for more of that kind of work. 

Get down to City Hall and take a look at this exhibit. If you can do it while the Pioneer Room is open Wednesday mornings, you’ll have the opportunity to learn even more from the curators.