The Ely Community Center is a historic municipal building in

Ely, Minnesota Ely ( ) is a city in St. Louis County, Minnesota, St. Louis County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 3,268 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located on the Vermilion Range (Minnesota), Vermilion iron range, Ely once ha ...

, United States. It was built in 1938 with funding assistance from the

Public Works Administration The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by United States Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was ...

, one of many

New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...

projects designed to provide both short-term employment and lasting benefits to a community. The Ely Community Center initially housed the public library, an auditorium, meeting rooms, and offices, as well as a cafeteria and public showers. The building's design mixed

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

with restrained Neoclassical formalism, a style that came to be known as

PWA Moderne The Art Deco style, which originated in France just before World War I, had an important impact on architecture and design in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. The most notable examples are the skyscrapers of New York City, including the ...

. The Ely Community Center continued serving many of its original functions for the rest of the 20th century, with community organizations headquartered there into the 1990s and events still being held in the auditorium and cafeteria. The building was vacated in 2014, when the library moved to a newly built facility. In 2018 the Ely City Council voted to sell the building to the K America Foundation, which plans to use it for Korean culture and heritage camps. The Ely Community Center was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 2016 for its local significance in the themes of architecture, entertainment/recreation, and politics/government. It was nominated as a distinctive example of a local partnership with the Public Works Administration to create a multi-purpose municipal facility, and for its characteristic PWA Moderne architecture.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota 1938 establishments in Minnesota Buildings and structures in Ely, Minnesota Government buildings completed in 1938 Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota Moderne architecture in Minnesota National Register of Historic Places in St. Louis County, Minnesota Public Works Administration in Minnesota PWA Moderne architecture

See also

References