The Old Capitol, Iowa City

Posted on March 30, 2015 by admin

I’m glad to report that the Old Capitol in Iowa City, now part of the University of Iowa but formerly the territorial capitol and then the first Iowa state capitol, has recovered from the fire of 2001. It’s in fine shape these days.
When we visited town that year, before the fire, the building was closed for renovations. A workman accidentally set its dome on fire that November, and so the building was closed much longer than planned, until 2006. As a fan of capitols, both former and present (an example of each: Florida and Louisiana), I was happy to get a look inside this time around, in the old House and Senate chambers, the Iowa Supreme Court’s former chamber, the old state library, the spiral central stairs, and more. All well-appointed with period artifacts.

As usual with this kind of museum, I wondered, where’s the clutter? Pictured above is a tidy, nearly empty desk. An actual desk of an actual 19th-century government official would have had more papers and other debris. Maybe all kinds of clutter — documents, newspapers, books, a half-eaten lunch, the works. The quill pens wouldn’t be arrayed upright, ready to write. They’d be scattered around the desk, or maybe left in other parts of the room, leading the user to scrounge around and mutter, “Where in the blazes is that pen?”

Which leads to another question: weren’t quills old hat by the 1840s and ’50s, when this was a government building? I know nub pens were being manufactured in quantity by then, but maybe they were still scarce in the Iowa Territory.

In the lower level of the Old Capitol is the what’s left of the old bell, a victim of the 2001 fire.
The sign next to the ruined bell tells us, “Housed inside the tower was Old Capitol’s third bell, which fell when its wooden yoke burned. The bell broke around the neck and landed on its side in the tower debris.

“The mass of mangled metal shown here is all that remains of the 1864 bell — the only casualty from more than 750 artifacts. Twists and turns in the metal reveal nails, pieces of copper and gold leaf from the building’s original construction.”

The university managed to acquire a replacement bell much like this one, only in better shape. The sign continues: “During the tower reconstruction, Old Capitol staff located a similar antique bell from the Verdin Bell Company in Cincinnati… this bell was cast by the same foundry as the burned bell, is approximately the same age, and, at 1500 pounds and 42 inches in diameter, is slightly heavier and wider than the 1864 bell.”

Quad Cities-Iowa City ’15

Posted on March 29, 2015 by admin

Or, back to visit Herbert Hoover. Not that President Hoover’s a particular favorite, but we were out that way. It started late Thursday afternoon, when all of us got in the car and headed westward, eventually putting up for the night in Moline, Illinois, one of the Quad Cities, our first of two nights there.

On Friday morning, we made our way to Iowa City — not following the most direct route, exactly, but getting there in the early afternoon for a look-see around the University of Iowa. It’s among the places Lilly is considering for her continued education. Late March being unpredictable, the air wasn’t very warm, but the sun was out and it wasn’t cold enough to discourage a walkabout on campus, or the nearby college-town business district, or a visit to the former state capitol. A re-visit for most of us, though it’s been quite a few years.

On our way back to Moline that afternoon, we stopped in West Branch, Iowa, birthplace and burial site of the 31st President of the United States. This time I insisted that everyone get out of the car and take a look. Lilly took my picture, so now I have a Manus Hand-style photo with a dead president. It’s the only one of that kind that I have.

On Saturday morning, I was up earlier than the rest of my family, taking the opportunity to visit the Rock Island National Cemetery, along with the nearby Confederate Cemetery, burial ground for CSA POWs on Rock Island. On the way back, I toyed with the idea of wandering through the John Deere Pavilion, but left it for another time.

In the late morning, we visited the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, the successor entity to the Davenport Museum of Art that’s been open about 10 years. Interesting collection, not overwhelmingly large, and including something I’d never seen before: a section devoted to Haitian art.

That was it for this 48-hour quickie. Except for a few minutes’ drive through Le Claire, Iowa, where we stopped for gas. Notable as the birthplace of Buffalo Bill Cody, and home to a museum devoted to the showman. We left that for another time as well.

The UT Tower

Posted on November 17, 2014 by admin

Damned if it isn’t January out there now, but at least it’s expected to return to a more normal November – a little above freezing – by the end of the week.

My recent visit to Texas started out warm, but cooled down with most of the rest of the country. It was still warm when we went to the UT Tower on November 8. Good thing, since the outdoor vista is the thing to do. In full, it’s the University of Texas Tower, a part of the school’s Main Building, built in 1937 and towering 307 feet over campus. One Charles Whitman used his marksman skills to murder people at random from atop the observation deck in 1966, so nearly 50 years later visitors need to go through a metal detector manned by a cop to get in. But at least you can get in. For a good long time, the tower was closed.

Officially, you take a “tour” of the observation deck, and there’s some commentary by guides – in our case, three perky UT students – but mostly you have access to the view in all directions. Because of a sad history of suicides, you have to look through bars.

South: Downtown Austin, including the Capitol of Texas. At the time the tower was built, it couldn’t be taller than the capitol, which is 308 feet. Now structures can be taller, but not positioned in way to block the view of the capitol from 30 specific locations (one of which must certainly be the UT Tower).

East: UT Stadium. Officially, Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium, with a seating capacity of 100,119, making it the 13th largest stadium in the world, according to Wiki. Note that it wasn’t at capacity that day. UT was playing West Virginia, and they weren’t expected to win. But they did.

From our vantage, we heard the crowd roar from time to time.

“That sounds like a first down,” Tom said about one roar. “What does it say about me, that I know that?”

“That you’ve been to too many UT games?” I suggested.

Northwest. The large house is Littlefield House.

West: The Drag and the Balcones Escarpment.

Guadalupe St., better known as the Drag, is in the mid-ground. Spent a fair amount of time there in ’81. The sign of the University Co-op, a major UT retailer, is just visible (CO-OP). Off in the background rises the Balcones Escarpment, a geological feature I’ve heard about for a long time, but never had seen so clearly displayed.

Lost Dome 2001

Posted on September 14, 2014 by admin

We came to be in eastern Iowa in early September 2001 — Labor Day weekend, in fact — because in February of that year, we’d taken a short trip to the same region, staying at a motel whose indoor pool turned out to be inoperable. I must have written a complaint letter about it, because the motel offered us another stay for no charge.

September’s definitely a more pleasant month to visit eastern Iowa than February, so we made our way back. We spent most of one day in the pleasant college town of Iowa City. The 2000s, it turned out, wasn’t a good decade for the town — a tornado hit one year, and the Iowa River flooded some of the town two years later. Before any of that, a historic structure burned.

That would be this historic structure: the Old State Capitol. Iowa City was a territorial and early state capital, and the building, with its gold leaf dome, was a relic of that time. (Iowa seems to have a thing for gold leaf on its capitol domes.) After the state government moved to Des Moines in 1857, the building became property of the University of Iowa, which it remains to this day.

We had a look at that early September 2001. Some renovation work was under way at the time.

A little more than two months later, workmen accidentally set the dome on fire and the fire consumed it, though not the rest of the building, which suffered water damage. I’m happy to report that a new gold leaf-covered dome was put on the building about two years later.

As we were leaving Iowa on that trip, we headed south a short distance from Iowa City and visited the Kalona Historical Village, an open-air museum heavy on farm structures and farm equipment, as you’d expect, plus a lot of Mennonite artifacts. Then we headed east and drove through Riverside, a small town. I only paused long enough, not even getting out of the car, to see the “USS Riverside” in a small park. At some point, the town fathers had decided that Riverside was the future birthplace of Capt. Kirk.

In the Midst of the Corn, the Middle of the USA

Posted on July 29, 2014 by admin

In early August 1978, I took a bus from San Antonio to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and back again, along with a busload of other high school students to attend the Mu Alpha Theta national meeting in that (seemingly) remote Wisconsin outpost. The route took us through Des Moines, which I only knew as the capital of Iowa from maps. We didn’t stop, but one of the teachers on the expedition, the admirable Paul Foerster, pointed out the Iowa state capitol as we went by – and noted the gilding on the dome, which he said was a very thin layer of gold. Indeed it is.

In later years, I figured I’d go back someday and take a look at the capitol more closely. Somehow, I never got around to it until July 12, 2014, our first day of driving, when I made a point of stopping there. We arrived just after 4 on that Saturday afternoon, right after the building closed (that’s what we get for having a leisurely lunch in Coralville). Ah, well. I had to make do with looking around the grounds, and seeing the magnificent gold dome up close from the outside.

The building was completed in 1884, repaired after a major fire in 1904, and exterior refurbishment was done in the last years of the 20th century. “The commanding feature is the central towering dome,” according to the State of Iowa (whose text, I note, was copied directly to Wiki). “This is constructed of steel and stone and covered with 23 carat gold. The gold leafing was replaced in 1964-1965 at a cost of $79,938.”

Since the capitol itself was closed, we took a look around the immediate vicinity. We would have done that anyway. The grounds sported a good number of memorials, as capitol grounds usually do. Including the modest and not-very-picturesque, such as this homely slab.

It memorializes the Iowa men of the China Relief Expedition (you know, 55 Days in Peking), the War with Spain, and the Philippine Insurrection, and is dated April 23, 1898, to July 4, 1902.

This is a much larger memorial. It is, of course, the state Civil War memorial, or to use its correct title, the Iowa Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

The Iowa Department of Administrative Services tells us that “the State of Iowa erected this monument, funded partially by refunded war taxes, to commemorate Iowans who fought during the Civil War. The monument was approved in 1888, the cornerstone was laid in 1894, and the structure was completed two years later. Because formal controversy developed over the location and artistic details of the monument, nearly 50 years passed before its dedication in 1945.”

I didn’t realize it looking at the thing, but the equestrian statues – two of the four are visible in my picture – represent actual individuals: Marcellus M. Crocker, who led troops at Shiloh, Corinth, and Vicksburg; John M. Corse, who joined Grant at the siege of Vicksburg; Grenville M. Dodge, who built railroads to support Grant and accompanied Sherman on the March to the Sea, and Samuel R. Curtis, commander of the Union Army at Pea Ridge.

The other figures are allegorical, such as Victory at the top, common soldiers and sailors nearer to the base, and Mother Iowa.

Let’s just say that Mother Iowa, offering nourishment to Iowans in a way that only a mother can, looks a little odd to modern eyes.

Indianapolis ’14

Posted on May 4, 2014 by admin

On Good Friday, we loaded ourselves into my car and drove to Indianapolis by way of Lafayette, Indiana, and spent the night and much of the next day in Indy. We walked, we ate, we saw things. (There’s got to be a concise Latin translation for that: vidi would be last instead of first, though it won’t be as snappy.)

Years earlier I’d heard about the Eiteljorg Museum, which is downtown Indianapolis, and since then it had been filed in my large, rambling mental file called New Places to Go. That’s actually a large set of files, but the Eiteljorg had the advantage of being nearby. But far enough for an overnight trip.

Naturally, we hit the road later than planned, and so stopped to eat a late lunch in Lafayette, where we spent time wandering around the main street in town, which is helpfully named Main St. Later, just off I-65 in northwest Indianapolis, we rambled around Eagle Creek Park, which is one of the larger municipal parks in the nation – 3,900 acres of forest, plus some lakes.

Considering our arrival in Indy late in the afternoon, Eiteljorg had to wait until the next morning. After a few hours in the museum on Easter Saturday, we set out on foot in downtown Indianapolis, first along ordinary sidewalks, later along the canal. It was a bright spring day, a pleasantly warm, and so a lot of people were out, probably more than many Midwestern downtowns see on Saturdays. Looks like the redevelopment of the canal has been a success. After a late lunch, we headed back to metro Chicago, arriving back before dark.

A simple but interesting trip. And I got to see a statue of a vice president.

Vice President Thomas Hendricks, that is, who was also a governor of Indiana. He was 21st Vice President of the United States from early 1885 to late 1885, during Cleveland’s first term. The 19th century, of course, was hard on U.S. vice presidents. Hendricks went to bed one night in November 1885 and never woke up.

His statue is on the grounds of the Indiana State Capitol. Oddly, while I was taking these pictures, a Japanese tourist asked me to take his picture with Hendricks in the background, using his camera, so I did. Maybe he’s a U.S. vice presidential enthusiast.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: capitols