Liberal Union Hall

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

From the record

One of 38 National Register listings published here for Brown County · listed in 1979 · category: Building.

Sources: the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. Broadway and Main Sts., Hanska, 56041
When was it listed? December 1979
Category. building
Also known as. Brown County MRA
City. Hanska city
National Register reference number. 79001198 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

The ground it stands on

394 words

The chapter on Hanska City in History of Brown County, Minnesota: Its People, Industries and Institutions (Volume 1), published 1916 names Hanska. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

December 3, 1904, will long be remembered in the village of Hanska, for on that day a sweeping fire destroyed much of the village, including the main business portion. The heaviest losses were sustained by Messrs. Nelson, Grothe, Kjorlaug & Company, J. H. Haemze, the latter owning the printing plant of the Herald office. The total loss in the village was about twenty-five thousand dollars.

Passage source: History of Brown County, Minnesota: Its People, Industries and Institutions (Volume 1), published 1916.

In the month of May, 1916, the business interests of Hanska were in the hands of the following men: Autogarage and dealers - Alex. C. Eckle, Hanska Auto Company; banks, Security and State Banks; barber - Theo. Greenholz; blacksmiths - Andrew Johnson; creameries - Hanska and Linden, and the Linden and Cottonwood; drugs, John A. Ringnell ; elevators - New Ulm Roller Mill

Passage source: History of Brown County, Minnesota: Its People, Industries and Institutions (Volume 1), published 1916.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Hanska City - 394 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Storms near this property

20 since 2002

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Hanska, the town this property stands in, in 20 storm reports between 2002 and 2026: 9 hail, 8 thunderstorm wind, 1 funnel cloud, 1 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
June 2019	Hail	Hanska	$30,000	A fire department spotter reported hail as large as two inches fell for around 15 minutes at Lake Hanska County Park. Nearby, Prairie Grounds Campground was also hit, with one camper totaled and another camper had hail punch holes through its plastic roof vents. A pontoon was also significantly damaged. Some crops in the area were destroyed.
September 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	Hanska	$5,000	An outbuilding was blown down near Hanska. A couple wind sensors near the area had a peak wind gust of 45 mph near Hanska, and 53 mph near Madelia.
May 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Hanska	$3,000	A roof was torn off a farm outbuilding near Hanska.
June 2024	Heavy Rain	Hanska	-	A total of 3 to 4 inches of rain fell from multiple rounds of thunderstorms. CoCoRaHS observers measured 3.81 inches near Hanska.
December 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	Hanska	-	A local mesonet weather station measured a wind gusts of 51 knots.
August 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	Hanska	-	Several trees and large branches were broken. A few hundred acres of corn were flattened at County Road 20 and 130th Avenue. An adjacent short damage path was determined to have been associated with a misocyclone, based on the damage pattern, Sentinel satellite imagery, and radar. It was not possible to correlate the crop damage with any radar circulation.
June 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	Hanska	-	Two large trees and several large tree branches were blown down in the southwest part of Hanska. Crops were also damaged in parts of Lake Hanska Township. Power was out in Hanska for 4 hours.
May 2014	Tornado (EF0)	Hanska	-	A tornado touched down in the extreme northeastern corner of Watonwan County before crossing the extreme southeast corner of Brown County. It continued into Blue Earth County. During its time crossing Brown County, it crossed open fields. The tornado was caught on video by a storm chaser when it was in Blue Earth County.
May 2012	Hail	Hanska	-	Several spotters and the emergency manager reported a swath of hail stones from near the Watonwan, Brown county line, northeast to the Brown, Blue Earth county line. The largest hail stones were 1.25 inches in diameter.
May 2012	Hail	Hanska	-	Quarter size hail was observed for a few minutes north of Hanska, Minnesota.
June 2005	Funnel Cloud	Hanska	-	A funnel cloud was reported via HAM radio about 2 miles northeast of Godahl near the intersection of County Road 4 and 132.
April 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Hanska	-	Siding was ripped off a church tower. The time was estimated.
June 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Hanska	-	Several trees down.
August 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Hanska	-	Several trees down, including one on car. Garage door blown in.
April 2026	Hail	Hanska	-	no account filed
April 2026	Hail	Hanska	-	no account filed
April 2026	Hail	Hanska	-	no account filed
June 2020	Hail	Hanska	-	no account filed
June 2008	Hail	Hanska	-	no account filed
June 2005	Hail	Hanska	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Brown County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

3 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Bjorneberg Garage	under 500 feet	1979
Nora Free Christian Church	0.7 miles	1988
Thormodson Barn	2.9 miles	1979

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 79001198 in Record Group 79.
Brown County	All 38 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.