On the north side of Main Street, at the west end of town, is the Smokehouse Tower, built around the 1860s. The gable end of this one-and-a-half-story brick building has been placed close to the street. In style the structure is mildly, nearly puritanically Greek...
The center of Middle Amana is the woolen mill picturesquely situated alongside a wide raceway. The 9-mile-long canal bringing water from the Iowa River was built in the 1860s. The complex of mill buildings encompasses structures built in both the nineteenth and...
Amidst the many brown sandstone and wood-sheathed houses and their gardens is a one-and-a-half-story stone building now occupied by the Amana Arts Guild. This Greek Revival building (1858), which has a right-angle ell with porch, is situated within the southwest...
Some of the colonies' farm buildings are of brick, such as this granary (c. 1875) located at the northwest corner of South Amana. Within its broad horizontal expanse of walls there is a central entrance with a segmental arch; on each side—quite small in relation to...
The college town of Ames was platted after the Civil War, in 1865. Its slightly rolling prairie site was situated between the Skunk River to the east and Ioway Creek (formerly Squaw Creek) to the west. In 1874 Ames was connected by rail to Des Moines; by 1900 it had become a...
South of the small community of Attica is one of Iowa's remaining nineteenth-century covered bridges. This is the 60-foot single-span Hammond Bridge over North Cedar Creek. This 1870 bridge of the Howe truss type has a single long, gabled roof; the board-and...
The town of Beaver is bypassed just to the south by the US 30. At the southwest corner of town, crossing over US 30, is a gravel county road; proceed south .5 miles on this road to the Doran Farm complex, located on both sides of the road. The 1896 farmhouse and the...
The city of Boone was laid out in 1864 on open prairie some 3 miles west of the Des Moines River. Between the river and Boone was the earlier community of Boonesboro. Boonesboro remained as the seat of Boone County until 1887 when it was absorbed into Boone. The most-visited...
The city was platted in 1841 on the northeast side of a wide bend of the Cedar River. The location was an advantageous one, for it was possible for steamboats to operate on the river up to this point, and the rapids meant that this was a logical place to produce water...
Three miles north of the Wapsipinicon River in Linn County is the town of Coggon. At the northeast corner of East Main and Second streets is the Zion Presbyterian Church (c. 1900). The design of this white clapboard church with a corner tower looks to the turn-of-the-century...
Colfax, in western Jasper County, developed initially as a shipping point on the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad and as a developing center for the mining of coal. With the discovery of mineral spring water in the area in the mid-1870s, Colfax entrepreneurs began...
The William H. Brenton house (1878), at the northeast corner of Kelloge and Walnut streets, was one of the many designs by the pioneer Des Moines architect William Foster. The house is of brick, with a limestone foundation. In the Brenton house Foster adopted the...
Proceeding south from Delta one mile on Iowa 21, at the crossing of the North Branch of the Skunk River, one comes to the Delta covered bridge (1867). This single-span 76-foot-long bridge was initially built without cover. A housing with a gable roof was added the following...
Dexter's Community Meetinghouse (1917), located at 207 Dallas Street, appears as if it were a single-floor round barn set down within a town. Its walls are brick, and its roof is suspended from trusses covered over with roofing material. The building's image is pragmatic,...
Within Dysart, at the southwest corner of Main and Wilson streets, is the Dysart State Bank (c. 1919). The design is Beaux-Arts Classical, the street facade centering on a Roman temple with columns in antis that works like a thin frontispiece in front of the two-story brick...
The Dick L. Doak house, at 508 Young Street (between Iowa 149 and Fifth Street) was designed and built by its owner during the years 1956–1976. The house conveys the generally wild mood one associates with the work of Bruce Goff. The walls of the house are sheathed in...
The Joseph Miller True-Round Barn, designed and built during 1918–1920 by John Schrader, is found just west of the small village of Hills. The walls of the barn are sheathed in board-and-batten and its double-pitched gambrel roof has wood shingles. A metal aerator is at the...
The site of Indianola was selected in 1849 as the future seat of Warren County; it is located in the center of the new county, between the Middle and South rivers. The town was platted and first settled in 1850. A single unusual feature of its grid layout was the central...
The center of the downtown commercial center bounded by Burlington, Washington, Clinton, and Linn streets has been closed off to automobiles, and pedestrian malls have been created from the various streets. Within this superblock and adjacent to...
The University of Iowa was founded in 1847. Ten years later, when the state capital was moved to Des Moines, the 1840 capitol building and its plat of land were given to the university. By the mid-1870s the university campus had acquired several...
At the western edge of Keota, turn off of Iowa 77 onto route W15; travel 1 mile north on W15, then west .5 miles on the gravel road. There one will discover a large Colonial Revival dwelling of 1917–1918, the S. Omar Singmaster house, center of the extensive Singmaster Farm....
The tiny town of Keystone possesses a really fine building in the Bank of Keystone (c. 1910), located on Main Street between Railroad and First streets. The designer of this little building would seem to have been aware of the Beaux-Arts revival of English and American...
In 1845 appointed commissioners selected the centrally located site of Knoxville for the future seat of Marion County. The usual grid was platted and the sale of lots was held later that year and again in 1846. The railroad was late in reaching the community, but by the...
Just north of Big Bear Creek and 5 miles south of the Iowa River is the small railroad town of Ladora. In addition to housing a number of grain elevators, it also contains a picture-postcard example of architecture of the Beaux-Arts Classical tradition in the late teens and...
Two and a half miles east of LeGrand on US 30 (the Lincoln Highway), at the southwest corner of its junction with route T74, is a romantic, deserted farmhouse. This two-story clapboard dwelling is a near-perfect example of the continuous employment of the Federal/Greek...
