Olaf Pary constructed New York Mills’ oldest building in 1885 as a general merchandise store. In 1940, Yalmer Karvonen bought it to sell furniture, household appliances and farm implements. After the Karvonens moved their business to Perham, Yalmer’s son Harold did not want the building to remain empty.

This is when the story of New York Mills’ as an “Arts Town” began. John Davis, a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, moved to NYM in 1987. Having lived in New York City and Minneapolis, Davis was attracted to New York Mills for its rural location and small town quality of life. To make ends meet, Davis started out painting homes and barns in town. As Midwestern hospitality would have it, Davis often ate dinner with his customers, providing him an opportunity to learn more about New York Mills. Davis noticed that the residents were highly educated and curious in addition to being welcoming and kind, sharing lots of conversations about art, politics, and many other interesting topics. John discovered there was the same thirst for the arts as in the metro area—there just wasn’t access to it.

Taking matters into his own hands, Davis created an artist residency program called the New York Mills Arts Retreat in 1990, with a goal to bring urban artists into the schools and community, providing an opportunity for both the artists to experience the benefits of rural life, and for the town to benefit from the talent and different perspectives of visiting artists. He had bigger dreams too, to use the arts as a tool for economic development and embrace the concept of creative placemaking, which is identifying and lifting up assets a community has and empowering community members through creativity and the arts to strengthen the feeling of authentic place.

When the Pary building became available in the early 1990s, Davis jumped in to create the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center in 1992, thanks to a generous donation of the building from the Harold and Nancy Karvonen family, and strong support from the community of New York Mills, the McKnight Foundation, and many other local and regional donors and partners. Although many local residents and funders were skeptical about a small town arts center on the prairies of north-central Minnesota, the Cultural Center started an arts revival that remains strong and vibrant, and serves as a model for rural arts centers still today. New York Mills also experienced tremendous economic growth following the Regional Cultural Center’s beginning in 1992; in the first 7 years, New York Mills had 17 new businesses open and saw overall employment growth of 40 percent.

The Center also has attracted national media attention from the Today Show, C-SPAN, the New York Times and National Public Radio through its annual Great American Think-Off armchair philosophers’ debate, giving it a presence far beyond Otter Tail County and Minnesota.