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Historic place

Main Street Square & the City of Presidents

512 Main Street, Rapid City, SD

A downtown parking lot and an adult video store became, within a decade, both a plaza with a winter ice rink and a life-size bronze walking tour of every U.S. president.

📅 2000–present🏛️ Public PlazaStill hereBuilt 2000
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Main Street Square & the City of Presidents, 512 Main Street, Rapid City, SD
Main Street Square, Rapid City · Sadads, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The story

The City of Presidents began in 1999 when resident Don Perdue proposed life-size bronze presidents on downtown corners — reportedly inspired by watching Soviet Stalin statues torn down. The first four (Washington, Adams, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush) were unveiled in 2000; each is privately donor-funded and only commissioned after a president leaves office. Adjoining Main Street Square opened in 2011 on a former downtown parking lot and now hosts roughly 150 events a year, with summer fountains and a winter ice rink.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

The City of Presidents idea reportedly came after founder Don Perdue watched Stalin statues torn down abroad.
Statues are only commissioned after a president leaves office — sitting presidents are never memorialized.
The plaza's land included a former adult video store that a developer had to quietly buy out.

Nearby history

Elks Theatre

512 6th Street · 97 m away
A 1911 Elks Lodge meeting hall-turned-movie palace sat flood-damaged and vacant for two years, then reopened to reveal a

Duhamel Trading Post

522 6th Street · 103 m away
A Canadian-born saddle maker's hardware store grew into the largest saddle supplier in the United States and a legendary

Firehouse Brewing Co.

610 Main Street · 136 m away
South Dakota's first brewpub poured its first pint inside a 1915 fire hall that served Rapid City's fire department unti

Hotel Alex Johnson

523 6th Street · 164 m away
A railroad executive's Tudor-Revival skyscraper hotel broke ground one day before work started on Mount Rushmore, and it

Art Alley

Alley between 6th & 7th St (Main to St Joseph) · 187 m away
What began as unsanctioned canvases hung on downtown brick walls in the early 2000s grew into a permit-managed, constant

West Boulevard Historic District

803 West Boulevard · 807 m away
Rapid City's gold-boom elite platted a 190-foot-wide boulevard with a landscaped median in 1885, and more than 600 of th

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Sourceshttps://www.visitrapidcity.com/things-to-do/historic-sites/city-of-presidents/