Roosevelt Hall, completed in 1934, is located on the south side of Hawkins Avenue in Barrett, Minnesota, a western Minnesota community of about 380 people.  The building is situated adjacent to a Soo Line trackbed in a mixed commercial and residential area one block east of Barrett's main street.

When you enter Roosevelt Hall, the newly renovated lobby with ticket booth, improved restrooms, and refinished wood floor maintain the historic look of the vintage building.

Roosevelt Hall was constructed by local carpenters and other workers hired under the auspices of the federal Civil Works Administration.  The architect of the building is not known.  The symmetrical, wood frame building, which was constructed as a community auditorium and high school gymnasium, measures 42' wide by 110' long and is faced with western red cedar clapboard siding.  The hall has a gabled roof covered with wood shingles.  The main façade of the building features curvilinear gable parapet wall with architrave molding and the name and date of the building appearing in raised block letters near the top.  The main façade has a rounded arched entrance with a multi-paned double leafed door, flanked by small sidelights, and a semi-circular transom, all arranged beneath a rounded arched overhang with simple brackets.  Flanking the entrance are two pairs of rectangular double hung windows separated by clapboard-covered pilasters with simple wooden capitals and bases.  Above the entrance is a band of six square fixed windows which light the balcony area of the auditorium.  The building has nine bay sidewalls with rectangular 1/1 sash with architrave moldings.

Roosevelt Hall is in good condition and has been altered only slightly.  The original front steps were replaced by a wooden stoop, but plans are underway to rebuild steps based on the original design.  A new metal and wooden entrance has been added to the east façade, and a small unobtrusive clapboard-covered enclosed entrance area has been added to the west façade.  Most of the fenestration is original.  In 1978 a gable roofed metal covered insulation manufacturing plant was added to the rear of the building, sharing one wall with Roosevelt Hall but containing a separate entrance.

Roosevelt Hall seats approximately 200 audience members.  Comfortable chairs (and tables for dinner theatre) are set up on the main floor and three seating risers.  The balcony also feature bench seating.  The technical booth is located at the center of the balcony.  The new grand staircases to the balcony were added during the Renovation Project.

The interior of the hall was originally designed to contain a wooden gymnasium floor, a 19' by 30' stage with built-in footlights, and a 41' by 44' balcony.  The original stage was removed in the 1950s.  During the last four years the building has been in use as a community theatre and has been cleaned and repaired and a new stage, restrooms, light booth, and costume closet have been added to the interior.  The hall was recently sandblasted and repainted. 

In the winter of 2004 the Lobby was gutted and all new restrooms, kitchen, ticket booth and handicapped restroom were completed.  The entrance to the Lobby lead directly into the Hall now with refinished wood floors utilizing the original wood recycled during the renovation project.

Here is the new ticket booth and handicapped restroom complete with the refinished wood floors following the same original V pattern.

The front door features a new chandelier donated in memory of Sharon Brutlag, a strong supporter of theatre arts and former PWP Board member.

This proscenium stage was constructed when Prairie Wind Players began renting the hall in the early 80s.  It features a main curtain, a very large apron space and fixed lighting and roll drop.

Roosevelt Hall is historically and architecturally significant as one of Minnesota's few standing examples of a building constructed under the auspices of the short-lived Civil Works Administration (CWA), a Depression-era federal works program which was a predecessor of the more well known Works Progress Administration (WPA).  The building is a good example of the type of architecturally sophisticated, low cost public buildings whose construction in small rural Minnesota communities like Barrett was made possible by programs like the CWA.  The building had additional local importance as a building which has served as a visual focal point and social, educational, and cultural center for the community since the 1930s.

The Make up and dressing rooms are located in the basement of Roosevelt Hall.  There are separate dressing areas for men and women, and each has their own restroom.  The large communal make up area also serves as a green room during performances.

The Civil Works Administration was established in the spring of 1933, only a few months after Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected president on a platform which promised direct federal relief to the millions of Americans left jobless and poverty stricken by the Depression.  The CWA was one of the first of a myriad of federal programs which comprised Roosevelt's New Deal, and was authorized by Congress in May of 1933 when it appropriated funds for the creation of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.  The CWA was formed at the same time as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Public Works Administration (PWA), and other programs which constituted Roosevelt's first round of Depression-relief programs.  The CWA differed from previous (ie pre-Roosevelt) public works programs in that it was administered directly by the federal government, rather than by monies channeled through state and local agencies.  At its height in January 1934, the CWA was employing 4,230,000 persons nationwide who were previously receiving direct relief or who were among the country's general unemployed who were not receiving relief.  The CWA built or improved 500,000 of roads, and built thousands of schools, playgrounds, airports, and other buildings nationwide.  Although the program helped millions of Americans through the winter of 1933-34, it was dismantled in February-April of 1934 after critics claimed that it was too expensive and simply a dead-end relief program.  After the CWA's abolishment, no large scale public employment program of this type existed until a year later when Roosevelt's Emergency Relief Appropriation Act was passed by Congress in March of 1935 and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of the most well known of the New Deal programs, was created.

Roosevelt Hall has ample shop and storage space in the basement.  This shop features a newly constructed loading stairway that enters right onto the main hall floor through a trap door.  There is also a second green room/rehearsal space in this area, as well as an outside exit.

In the late fall of 1933, about six months after the Civil Works Administration had been formed, the Barrett Village Council and Barrett mayor Fred Yackel received federal approval of their plan to construct a combined public auditorium and high school gymnasium under the auspices of the CWA.  Under an arrangement typical of CWA policy, the City ofBarrett provided a building lot and construction materials (which totaled about $5000) and the CWA provided funds to hire local unemployed workers to construct the building.  Construction began during the winter of 1933-34, and in January of 1934 the Barrett Village Council voted to name the building Roosevelt Hall after the creator of the CWA.  The hall was completed in April and dedicated in May of 1934 at a ceremony at which Mayor Yackel declared that it would be used for "creamery and livestock association meetings, school basketball games, class plays, and other community entertainments that would be of benefit to all."

For most of its history, Roosevelt Hall has been Barrett's primary community center, housing hundreds of civic meetings, political functions, and community social events, and serving as the Barrett Public School's gymnasium and auditorium from 1934-53.  After the school built its own gymnasium, the hall's use began to diminish.  In 1957 David Neuman gained permission from the city council to remove the stage from the interior and the building was used as a bowling alley for 14 years.  Later it was used as a youth center (1973-74) and, after the City of Barrett sold the building in 1977, as an insulation manufacturing plant (1977-79).  In 1981, after standing vacant for two years, the building became the adopted home of the Grant County Prairie Wind Players, a non-profit community theatre formed that year by the mayor of Barrett and other local residents.  During the next two years the Prairie Wind Players rented the building for five theatre productions and thoroughly cleaned and repaired the hall and rebuilt the stage with donated funds.  Finally in 1983 the group was able to purchase the building through a loan from Citizens State Bank.  Roosevelt Hall is now the home of one of west central Minnesota's few community theatre companies, and is under restoration by Prairie Wind Players for use as a theatre and arts & cultural facility.

The fact that Roosevelt Hall is not only dear to the hearts of local people but is recognized as a structure of national importance was established in 1985, when the building was selected and placed on the National Register of Historic Places.