Carl H. Buetow papers

Carl Herbert Buetow was born in St. Paul in 1893. He attended night school at the University of Minnesota while working in the St. Paul architectural office of Reed & Stem from 1910 to 1913. From 1913 to 1917 he was employed successively in the offices of C.H. Johnston and Alban & Lockhart. Buetow joined Lambert Bassindale in 1918 and prepared the plans for the Northern Pacific Beneficial Association (NPBA) Hospital in the Midway district of St. Paul. He spent the following year in charge of the architectural department of the Louis F. Dow Co., stationers and bank designers, planning and remodeling small banks in five states. From 1923 to 1928, he worked in the office of the City Architect of St. Paul as job captain for that city's school building program. In 1929 Buetow opened his own architectural practice in St. Paul and practiced until his retirement in 1960. He died in St. Paul in 1987.

During the Depression, Buetow designed and supervised the construction of many buildings in Minnesota under the building construction program of the Work Progress Administration (WPA). These included an auditorium and fire station in Deerwood (1935); the 4-H Building in Tyler (1936); and hospitals in Windom (1941) and Glencoe (1942). Buetow also planned many elementary and high school projects under the aegis of the Public Works Administration, a successor to the WPA. Among Buetow's principal works are the Memorial Hospitals in International Falls (1948), Olivia (1949), Redwood Falls (1950), Paynesville (1955) and Cook (1957).