History

Aberdeen was established in 1880 as a Northern Pacific Railroad junction city, and by the 1930s had grown into the economic and administrative hub of a broad agricultural region. The federal government’s decision to construct a combined post office, courthouse, and office building here in 1936 reflected Aberdeen’s standing as the principal federal service point for northeastern South Dakota. Architect William Dewey Foster, working within the idiom of Depression-era federal architecture, produced a design that expressed governmental authority through Art Deco massing and surface treatment rather than the classical columns that had dominated federal building design in the previous generation.

The building was constructed by Paul Steenberg Construction Co. and opened in 1936, serving Aberdeen as its central post office and federal courthouse for decades. The structure has historically functioned as a multi-use government complex, providing courthouse, post office, and federal office facilities under a single roof — a standard Depression-era formula for serving medium-sized cities where individual federal buildings for each function would have been prohibitively expensive. The National Register listing of 2006 recognized the building as a significant example of Art Deco federal architecture in South Dakota.