Pettigrew Home and Museum 

The Pettigrew Home and Museum located on 8th and Duluth Ave in the Cathedral District in Sioux Falls was donated to the city by South Dakota’s first full term senator R.F. Pettigrew, but it wasn't really his house, okay he owned it but it wasn't built for him.  

Thomas B. McMartin, a distinguished lawyer in Sioux Falls moved to the city in 1880 and married Jennie Bowen in 1888 and they started building their dream home. Architect Wallace Dow would have a field day with this one, Jennie’s good taste and Thomas’s good budget meant the architect got to have some fun this would be the family home of the McMartin’s where they would raise their son but also the talk of the town for social events. Jennie unexpectedly dies in 1908 of pneumonia. This dream home is now a house of shattered dreams. In 1911 RF Pettigrew who has had his eye on this mansion for years gets his chance to buy it, for 12,000. As Pettigrew enters his golden years, he becomes focused on his legacy, and he hires architect Joseph Schwarz to build an addition to this home to create a museum to house his collections of books and artifacts. If you have ever visited Good Earth State Park’s visitor center, you will know that the Pettigrew brothers were amateur archeologists as well as world travelers and amassed a collection of items (that Indiana Jones would say “belong in a museum”) this museum is open to the public in 1925. R.F. Pettigrew would die in 1926 and donate the house to Sioux Falls to create a museum. Here we are almost 100 years later, and the Pettigrew Home and Museum still gives tours and hosts events!