Worthington banker and real estate developer George Draper Dayton commissioned this Georgian Colonial Revival home for his family of six, and it was built over four months during the summer of 1890 at an estimated cost of less than $20,000. Designed by Wallace Dow, a leading architect associated with several prominent Sioux Falls, S.D., buildings, the house reflected the New England upbringing of both Dow and Dayton and featured a covered front porch with large Doric columns, decorative pilasters and dentil molding trim, leaded glass sidelights at the front entryway, a side porch, a widow’s walk, 10-foot ceilings, oak and cherry pocket doors, five fireplaces, and a central open staircase. Dayton owned the house until 1902, after which it was occupied by the Smallwoods, the Cashels, and the Gjertsens; after decades of use as a nursing home and boarding house from the 1940s to about 1990 had obscured many original features, Historic Worthington, Inc., encouraged by Dayton’s grandson Bruce Dayton and supported by the Dayton family and the Target Corporation, fully restored it beginning in 2002, and since 2004 it has served as a community gathering place for public and private events. Dayton, who came to Worthington from Geneva, N.Y., at age 24 in 1874 to protect the financial interests of Eastern land investors and take ownership of the Bank of Worthington, became a pioneer, banker, agriculturalist, merchant, church leader, philanthropist, involved citizen, and devoted family man. During his years in Worthington from 1874 to 1902, he helped organize the Worthington Improvement Association, served as president of the local Westminster Presbyterian Church, sat on the Worthington Board of Education, and took part in incorporating a north-south railroad connecting Worthington to the Manitoba rail system. He and his wife, Emma Chadwick Dayton, raised four children in the house from 1890 to 1902 before his business interests took the family to Minneapolis, where he bought out Goodfellow’s store, renamed it the Dayton Dry Goods Company, and founded the department store chain from which Target Corporation evolved.