Nonprofit Carver-on-the-Minnesota, Inc., the Carver Heritage Preservation Commission, and the Carver Park and Recreation Commission are working together to create, fund, and build trail monuments around Carver that commemorate and promote its history. The brick and steel framework for the first of these monuments is already in place at the south end of Broadway near the tugboat, awaiting a double-sided graphics panel. One side of the panel will face northward on Broadway Street and feature historic photographs and text depicting Broadway’s architecture and history. The other side of the panel will face toward the Minnesota River with graphics, photos, and text to describe Carver’s founding and steamboat era. Hopefully the monument will be fully completed in April.
One key photo we are missing is that of Carver’s first building, a claim shanty/hotel built on the riverbank by Carver’s Norwegian founder, Axel Jorgenson, in the winter of 1851-1852. Called the Hotel Luksenborg by Jorgenson, it survives to the present at 309 Oak Street, having been moved to its present location around 1860 and incorporated into a stable in the 1880s. The claim shanty hotel also served as the first schoolhouse for Minnesota School District #1 until 1862. While there is no known photograph of the primitive building, we do have a good written description and its dimensions, which have helped us render a crude drawing of the building. We are looking for an artist to do a pro bono signed rendering of the simple building in pen and ink, watercolor, acrylic, or oil painting. This rendering would appear in a future book on the history of Carver and, if approved by the three monument groups, would appear on one panel of the Broadway monument. If interested and able contact John von Walter at 952-361-3149 or by email at [email protected].
(Below is our primitive rendering of Jorgenson’s Hotel Luksenborg, and also one of our draft renderings for the Broadway trail monument, with photos not depicted as to quantity or scale.)
