ALEXANDRIA, Minn. — History and charm drew Jean Wilson to the 500 block of Broadway Street five years ago. Eager for a challenge, the budding retail entrepreneur bought and refurbished a 131-year-old building, opened a children’s boutique on the bottom floor, and housed two tenants on the upper floors.
“We put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it,” Wilson said, “and really brought it back, I think, to its former glory.”
All her hard work evaporated in a matter of hours early Tuesday morning, when flames tore through four buildings at the corner of Fifth and Broadway. Although all 20 people living in the upstairs apartments escaped without injury, the fire destroyed a half-dozen businesses, ranging from a tattoo parlor to an alehouse to Wilson’s pride and joy, “Little Darlings.”
“It’s just hard to see, something you’ve loved so well for so long,” Wilson said, “and it just breaks your heart for the city of Alexandria.”
Rory Roers, who owns a bakery across the street, watched firefighters extinguish the flames from the sidewalk outside his business.
“Quite a tragedy,” he said as he looked at the destruction. “The atmosphere of downtown is gonna hurt for a long time.”
Indeed, the fire has now dramatically reshaped one of Alexandria’s most historic corridors. The four buildings on the 500 block of Broadway traced their roots back to the late 19th-century and the arrival of the first European immigrants, according to the Douglas County Historical Society. For more than a century, a revolving door of drug stores, hardware joints, saloons and shoe shops – even a Dairy Queen and a Phillips 66 at one point – traded spaces.
“Now, what’s left?” Roers said. “A pile of rubble.”
Some portions of the exterior survived the fire, but it appears all will be headed for demolition soon.
“The nature of life is to change, but nothing lessens the pain of loss. As a Historical Society, the only balm we can offer this pain is the immortality gained through historic appreciation and preservation,” Brittany Johnson of the historical society wrote in a Facebook post. “Buildings were lost in the fire today; Memories were not. Bricks came tumbling down; History did not.”
Wilson’s building, where Little Darlings stood for five years, dated back to 1884.
“I will miss being a part of that,” she said. “But the downtown will be OK. It’s just that it’s missing four beautiful stores.”