This community situated on the east bank of the Big Sioux River contains two buildings by William L. Steele, the Prairie architect from Sioux City. These are the Hawarden City Hall (1918), and the First National Bank and Masonic Hall building (1907). The bank building is located at the southeast corner of Central Avenue and Eighth Street. It is a two-story brick block, extremely simple in fenestration. The most pronounced feature is the round-arched entrance, with banding of light-colored stone carried alongside the door. This entrance is slightly Richardsonian Romanesque, somewhat abstracted, as Frank Lloyd Wright interpreted it around 1900.
The city hall, at the southwest corner of Central and Ninth streets, is a structure on a raised basement that is approached by a solid brick-walled staircase. The entrance is housed in a lower projecting wing. The entrance door is arched, as are the five large windows on the side of the building. A double garage at the rear of the building houses a fire truck. The general treatment of the building conveys a no-nonsense practicality. Shutters have recently been added to several of the windows to help Colonialize it.
Another building relating to the Colonial Revival is the 1940–1941 Hawarden post office, designed by Louis A. Simon. As with many other small post office buildings of the late 1930s, this one looks back to the Federal style, but the architect simplified it to convey a feeling of modernity. The post office is located at 900 Central Avenue.
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