Many cities got sleek Moderne bus stations from the Greyhound empire. Fargo, it seems, did not. According to NDSU, it was an auto garage for a while, then a bus station for some other lines, and finally a Greyhound station in 1942.

The State opened in 1921. NDSU says that the man who built it "purchased the site from the Advance Rumley Company." Interesting: Advance was a thresher manufacturer whose HQ in Minneapolis is one of the most beautifully adorned structures downonw, and Rumley, of course - of course! - was the name you associate with the Oil-Pull tractor brand.

Things you know when you grow up in farm country.

The State was renamed the Towne, and they got all the Disney flicks, so I went there a lot as a kid. Whatever ornate interiors the State had were stripped, and my dim recollection of the place suggests that it wasn't modernized, just stripped. It felt violated, somehow, although I couldn't have put it into words. The theater ceiling was painted over. A few lightbulbs glowed in the dark. Never knew why. They made no sense. There was one over there, another over there, too dim to be house lights.