During the late 90’s, I had a job that required me to go to Walla Walla, WA for a few days every week. For those of you who know nothing about Walla Walla beyond it’s inherently funny name, it’s a small town in Southeastern Washington of about 30,000 people within its city limits that’s based mainly around agriculture, the state prison, and a couple small colleges. Yet, it also has a building, the 13-story Marcus Whitman Hotel, that seems overly tall for a city of Walla Walla’s size. I don’t think any of the other buildings in downtown Walla Walla are more than four stories.
This led me to the idea for this thread: has anybody come across any tall buildings in small towns? The only other one I can think of is the Baker Tower in Baker City, Oregon–a ten-story building in a town with under 10,000 people.
BTW, this doesn’t count tall hotel buildings in resort or tourist towns with small populations. I’m talking about office and/or hotel buildings in otherwise typical small towns that loom so large on the horizon that they look like the only building around for miles.
There is a small town in the Midwest - population 250 - sitting in the middle of freakin’ nowhere with a double-steepled Catholic church that has pew space for 1800 people. How they managed to build the thing during the height of the Depression is beyond me but the place is fantastic - marble and granite and gilt.
I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, a college town of approximately 30k people when the students were gone and 60k when they were in town. Pretty much the tallest building was 4 stories, maybe the hospital had 6. And then there was the Heritage building. Easily about 14 stories high. Never really found out why, but it wasn’t used most of the time I lived there. Towards the end of my time there, they made a few offices in the lower floors and made the top floor a private club type restaurant.
Platteville, WI population 10,000 or so has a 8 story building (Pioneer Tower) on the campus of UW-Platteville. There aren’t many non University buildings beyond 3 stories that I can recall.
Choteau, MT has approx 1500 people in it (or at least it did 10 years ago, when I lived there). Most of the buildings on “main street” are 2 story buildings. These are the usual buildings.
However, since Choteau is also the seat for Teton County, the “City Hall” is a giant building of granite. It was used in the movie “War Party”, wherein a facade was burned down to duplicate a fire.
I wish I could remeber what town it was in but on the way from Austin to Witchita Falls, TX there’s a small town with a huge gothic looking structure. It easily takes up an entire downtown block (of a typical Texas smal town downtown) and kinda loomes menacingly over the town. It was kinda creepy…
Likewise, Danville, Ill. has the 12-story now-empty Breese Tower in the middle of downtown. It’s been empty for probably 10 years, and they can’t get moving on development.
Carbondale, Ill. pop. ~20k, has three seventeen story residence hall towers on the campus of Southern Illinois University.
The Harbor Towers Apartments in Escanaba, MI is 18 floors. Population 12,600. Link.
This little piece of trivia stuck with me the one time I was in Escanaba and a Upper Penninsula native pointed out that it is the tallest buliding in the UP. It was not a very surprising fact. More like “Huh . . . yeah, no kidding.”
I don’t really have much to add, I think the tallest building in my town is 7 stories, but this thread got me thinking, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never been higher than the 4th floor of any building in my life. I feel so small town, now.
At 56 floors, the Rinku Gate Tower Building is Japan’s second tallest building. It’s located in Izumi-sano, which has a population of about 100,000. That’s not terribly small, but not big either by Japanese standards.
It’s not such a small town, nor such a tall building in the traditional sense, but State College, pop. 38,000, has the Beaver Stadium, capacity 107,000.
