On your right, look for the wide, pale-stone courthouse with a big staircase and a row of tall columns framing three huge arched windows.
This is the Pennington County Courthouse at 315 St. Joseph Street, and it’s been the county’s power center since 1922... the place where decisions get made, papers get stamped, and somebody inevitably mutters, “I should’ve read that form.” Democracy: now with more paperwork.
Architect W. E. Hulse and Company, out of Hutchinson, Kansas, gave Rapid City a confident Beaux-Arts building-basically the architectural equivalent of standing up straight and speaking clearly. It’s three stories of Indiana limestone with terra cotta accents, and that front entrance puts on a show: four pairs of Ionic columns, three arched windows with crisp muntins, and keystones up top like little stone exclamation points. Near the door, you’ll spot iron grilles and a decorative crest, and above the second story runs a frieze dotted with medallions, capped by a tooth-like cornice. In 1976, it earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places-official recognition that this place means business.
When you’re set, First Congregational Church (Rapid City, South Dakota) is about a 10-minute walk heading west.
