Calder (Cotton) Square was the city's hub from 1882 into the early 1900s, teeming with cotton buying, horse trades, band concerts, political rallies, and switching railroad trains. It was also the site of a fire station, a standpipe, and a 1933 memorial library named for lumberman J. H. Kurth (1857-1930). In 1961, the square was renamed for Kurth family friend Louis Calder (1879-1963) of New York.