I think there was a fire. The location isn't hard to fix - the paper-clip in the middle is the movie theater, and it lines up with the church. Everything else is a bit more difficult to identify, unless the left side was lost in a blaze, or leveled for urban spiffification.

I'd forgotten abut Foster Drug. No reason I should keep the memory close to heart, of course; just a chain.There must have been one in Fargo, and I probably caught it at the end when the stock was thin, the customers few, and the smell of liniment and moth balls pervaded the place.

Great sign. Cities would kill for signage like this today.