Though now appearing somewhat forlorn, the Chicago and Northwest Railroad Station at Alton presents a sophisticated image—c. 1915—that one often associates with suburban stations on Chicago's North Shore Line. The Alton station joins the image of the English cottage with the...
The town is situated on a low hill just east of the Nishnabotna River. It was platted in 1868, and the following year it was connected to the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad. Atlantic's original plat laid out its principal street, Chestnut Street, with a 100-...
The town's plan centers on a large, open park that is approached on one side by two blocks of commercial buildings. On the opposite side, two public buildings—one of them the Audubon County Courthouse of 1938–1939—look out onto the park. The courthouse was designed by the...
Within gently rolling terrain just east of the Nishnabotna River is the community of Avoca. In the downtown, on Elm Street south of Crocker Street, is a two-story commercial building now occupied by the Home Federal Savings and Loan (1900). On the second floor, two pediments...
Noteworthy in Battle Creek is the bank building (1912) at the northwest corner of Main and First Street Southeast. This Beaux-Arts design looks to the Greek Hellenistic tradition rather than to Rome. The wide entablature contains tri-glyphs, and the pilasters of the...
The Brayton Town Hall (1940), at the northeast corner of Main Street and county road T, is one of the many WPA public buildings constructed in Iowa during the depression of the 1930s. Almost all of the designs for town halls in Iowa employ the PWA Moderne image. The Brayton...
Approaching Carroll from the east on US 30 (near Glidden), one sees an impressive, quite large corncrib made up of two semi-circular masonry units; they are separated by a central wood section and held in place by a single roof with a gable-roofed monitor at the center of...
Carter Lake, although part of Iowa, is situated within a bend in the Missouri River that is now within the northern suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska. At 301 Locust Street is the Old Dutch Mill (now Carter Lake Bait and Tackle) (c. 1931). Here one is...
At the southeast corner of Logan and McPherson streets is the Abram Rutt National Bank building (1915), now the Security State Bank. This was one of an array of smaller bank buildings designed throughout the upper Midwest by the Lytle Company of Sioux City. Generally the bank...
Proceeding up the hill to 801 West Main Street, one will find a magnificent Queen Anne dwelling visible through a thick grove of shrubs and trees. The building's ground floor is sheathed in stone; above, the walls are divided into a variety of repeated and connected...
The city of Council Bluffs was platted in 1854 on a wide bend of the Missouri River. To the east was a series of high bluffs cut into by deep, narrow valleys. As the city grew, it spread farther out onto the river plain to the west, and at the same time its...
The town site was platted by the Providence Western Land Company, and it was named for one of its agents, the Reverend Jesse W. Denison. The site selected was close to the geographic center of the county, and it had the advantage of being located between the Boyer and East...
Elk Horn and nearby Kimballton are the self-proclaimed capitals of the Danish settlement in Iowa. A Danish windmill ( MW046) is a landmark there.
The local house museum, the Bestemors House, is...
One mile east of the central Iowa community of Grand Junction (and .5 miles north on route P46) is one of the most well known true-round barns in Iowa. As Lowell J. Soike has pointed out, the barn—constructed by Beecher Lamb in 1911 for Henry A. and Martha Frantz—was...
The town was established in 1856, and because of its central location it became the county seat in 1875. The downtown is oriented around a large public square that contains the Adair County Courthouse. This brick and stone-trim Richardsonian Romanesque courthouse was...
The John W. Foster house is most appropriately located on Prairie Street (at 706), for it is a version of the large brick-sheathed Prairie houses popularized by the Chicago architect George W. Maher. In the Foster house the architect Henry K. Holsman, also of Chicago...
Harlan was founded in the mid-1850s on a site near the West Nishnabotna River close to the geographic center of Shelby County. The offices and court of the county were transferred to the town shortly after it was established. The usual courthouse square and a block for a...
One of the most effective ways of updating a motion picture theater was to change its marquee, especially in the 1930s and later. Since the prime time for a theater was in the evening, the lighted marquee in many cases “became” the building. The name of the theater could be...
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...
Usually, naive sculptural monuments, or follies, are created on a personal level, and although they are almost always meant to be on view, their location and stance are not public. Here in Hospers, a small town on the Floyd River in northwestern Iowa, one will come across a...
Though founded in the late 1850s on the southeast bank of the Maple River, Ida Grove has the atmosphere of a town that evolved between the 1960s and the present. The person responsible for its contemporary form is Byron God-bersen, the owner of Midwest Industries, a...
Jefferson's grid plan, with the usual provision of a courthouse square, was laid out in 1854. The site was a high tableland located between the North Raccoon River and Hardin Creek. Two mills, the Eurel Mill and the Jefferson Mill, were situated on the nearby river. The...
About 8 miles northwest of Larchwood, at the extreme northwestern point of Iowa, is the Gutchie Manitou State Monument. This 48-acre park situated on the east bank of the Big Sioux River was originally a stone quarry worked by state prison laborers. It was one of the...
The town of LeMars was established in 1869 and became the seat of Plymouth County in 1872. The grid plat of the town was laid out on the flat prairie southeast of the junction of the Floyd River and Deer Creek. By the mid-1870s the town was connected by rail to Sioux City to...
The architectural centerpiece of Logan is the Harrison County Courthouse (1910), designed by the Detroit architect J. E. Mills. The architect produced a conventional Beaux-Arts design in its detailing, although its form and proportions—linear, sharply angular, and vertical—...
The Dygdrt house, just east of Massena, is a good illustration of how the Streamline Moderne style of the thirties continued into the immediate post-World War II years. The house was designed and built by its owner, Harold Dygdrt, and supposedly based upon a 1930s house he...
Three miles northeast of the community of Missouri Valley, on Iowa 30, is the Harrison County Historical Village. A number of buildings have been moved to this site, among them an 1853 log cabin, an 1856 stage depot, a schoolhouse, and a small chapel. The village is...
Moville is situated on the West Fork of the Little Sioux River, some 20 miles due east from Sioux City. Much of Woodbury County, including the region of Moville, is an open and gently rolling prairie. Since the late 1860s, Moville has been connected to Sioux City by road;...
