Betsy-Tacy Houses (Mankato, Minnesota)

332-333 Center Street
www.mnriv.com/bt-1900.html

www.betsy-tacysociety.org/

Perched at the top of Center Street in Mankato, Minnesota is a small bench carved from Kasota stone. A bronze plaque reads: “To honor Maud Hart Lovelace, who here began the childhood daydreams that one day would be our window to the past.”

To legions of fans, Center Street is better known as Hill Street, and Mankato, of course, is Deep Valley, the setting for the thirteen books in the Betsy-Tacy series. Using diaries, letters, and her prodigious memory, Maud Hart Lovelace created a fictionalized version of her own growing-up in turn-of-the-last-century Minnesota that is as real to readers today as it was more than 100 years ago.




www.mankatofreepress.com/local/local_story_285000636.ht...
www.betsy-tacysociety.org/betsy_house.htm

Dean Johnson and his team from the PBS program Hometime spent three days in October 2005 visiting Deep Valley and working on Betsy's House. Using supplies donated by local Mankato businesses, the Hometime crew and volunteers from MSU's Construction Management department, are replacing windows and doors with period materials, and working on the home's porch and siding. Hometime aired a production entitled "Betsy-Tacy Homes" in two episodes, on November 26 and December 3, 2005.