The Law Exchange Block

We’re heading to one of my favorite intersections in downtown Sioux Falls, that little crossroads in the Warehouse District where every corner has a historic building watching over it. Just south of the Old Courthouse museum  335 North Main Avenue, better known in its early years as the Phillips Block.

To understand this building, you have to meet the man behind it: Andrew Croswell Phillips. Andrew wasn’t the first Phillips to leave a mark on Sioux Falls. That honor goes to his brother, Josiah Phillips, the physician who platted our first streets and died young, securing his place in memory as the namesake of Phillips Avenue. Josiah was clearly the inspiration, or maybe even the guiding force, that drew Andrew west.

Andrew’s story begins far from the prairie, in Farmington, Maine, where he was born in 1830. Farmington was a small town of just over 2,000 people, and the Phillips family helped keep that number healthy. Andrew attended Colby College, living in Room 15 of North College his senior year, before launching into a career that can only be described as… vigorous. He was a principal, a lawyer in New York City, a district attorney in Wisconsin, a postmaster back in Maine, an editor at the Farmington Chronicle, and later appointed by President Grant as United States Consul at Fort Erie, a position he held over a decade.

By the time Andrew arrived in Sioux Falls in the early 1880s, likely spurred by Josiah’s sudden death in 1882, he was a man who had lived several professional lives already. And he wasn’t done. He became city attorney, helped organize the Sioux Falls National Bank, served as president of multiple insurance and investment companies, wrote articles for the Argus Leader, and invested heavily in real estate. One obituary estimated his holdings at $150,000, a fortune in the 1890s.

But the building at 335 N Main is the piece of Andrew’s legacy we can still touch.

Designed by Wallace Dow, the structure is a beauty: quartzite foundation, brick walls, sandstone windowsills, granite pillars a mix of materials that feels both sturdy and elegant. The Argus Leader announced brick deliveries for the project in August 1891. But here’s the twist: Andrew had already died three months earlier, in May of 1891, in Dubuque, Iowa, after suffering from Bright’s disease. His children rushed by train to be at his bedside but didn’t make it in time. They brought his body home to Sioux Falls, where he was buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

So the Phillips Block this handsome, enduring building was Andrew’s final project, completed under the supervision of his son Arthur. He never saw it finished.

Over the decades, the building changed hands many times. The Queen City Fire Insurance Company operated out of it for a while in 1916 they reported assets of $231,024.20, not bad for a regional insurer. Later it became the SOO Hotel, spelled S‑O‑O, a phonetic nod to Sioux. The hotel operated for more than 25 years, from the 1950s into the late 1970s. After that came a parade of tenants: photographers, lawyers, offices, a liquor store, and today, the beloved Vishnu Bunny Tattoo, which relocated here after being pushed out of its longtime Phillips Avenue home.

If the walls of 335 N Main could talk, I think the conversation would go in a thousand directions from consuls and attorneys to insurance men, hotel guests, artists, and tattoo needles buzzing.

And that’s why this intersection in the Warehouse District is so magnificent. Every corner holds a building with a story. But the Phillips Block? It holds the story of a man who lived many lives, crossed many states, and left behind one final gift to Sioux Falls a building that has stood for more than 130 years. Next time you’re on North Main, look up at that brick and quartzite beauty and remember Andrew Phillips, the man who built it, even if he never got to see it rise.