Iowa

Eagle Point Park consists of over 175 acres overlooking the Mississippi River and Lock and Dam No. 11 in the northeast corner of Dubuque, near the borders of Wisconsin and Illinois. In 1907 city planner Charles Mulford Robinson selected the clifftop site to establish a park, one that would offer a stunning view of Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, as well as the Mississippi River 250 feet below.   

Brucemore began as a 10-acre estate located in what was then the countryside outside of Cedar Rapids, two miles from downtown. It was built by Caroline Sinclair, widow of T.M. Sinclair, who was the founder of largest meatpacking plant in Iowa. In 1884, the Cedar Rapids architectural firm Josselyn and Taylor designed the Queen Anne brick house set at one end of a large lawn planted with a variety of trees with a landscape of woods, prairie, and farmland surrounding the property.

The Mars Hill Baptist Church is one of the few remaining nineteenth-century log churches in Iowa. In addition to this distinction, the gable-roofed structure is the largest remaining log cabin in the state (measuring 26 by 28 feet, with walls 10 feet high). The walls utilize split logs, some stretching the entire 28 feet in length. The church building is situated within a grove of trees; adjacent to it is the graveyard and then patches of open fields.

The small Des Moines River village of Eldon harbors probably the most widely known house in Iowa. This is the Jacques house, the small cottage Grant Wood used as a background for his well-known, often reproduced painting of 1930, American Gothic (now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago). The painter came across this dwelling when driving through Eldon, and he photographed it at the time. He used this photograph together with his sister Nan and his dentist, Dr. B. H. McKeeby, as models for the painting.

This octagonal barn, 80 feet in diameter, is of the basement type. The barn is covered by a gracefully shaped bell-form roof, and at its crown is a small venting cupola with its own miniature bell-shaped roof. At the time the barn was built, the editors of a local newspaper commented that “it will be the largest building of its kind in the county,” containing “stable room for thirty-two horses and sixteen cows, room for two hundred tons of hay, and furnished with all the modern improvements.”
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This wood frame building was constructed in 1853, joining two of the popular images of the mid-nineteenth century, the Greek Revival and the Gothic. The main section of the building is Greek Revival in its proportions and fenestration. Its pediments are enclosed, and there is a suggestion of paneled pilasters at each corner. The front consists of a narrow gabled wing, which centers on a thin, high, Gothic window. A shed roof section is attached to each side of this Gothic entrance, giving the building an informal appearance.

This open Chautauqua pavilion was placed in a clearing in a broad wooded park. The building is dominated by a steeply pitched, segmented shingled roof that seems to hover above the supporting thin wood columns to the wood lintel beams above. About two-thirds of the way up the slope, the broad roof exhibits a slight inward bend that adds to its charming hatlike quality.

Saint Patrick's is a free interpretation of the rural English Gothic church developed via the English Arts and Crafts movement. The ridge line of the front gable reads as a fine line with no indication of the roof behind. The numerous buttresses act as vertical lines on the front and sides of the church and upon the walls of the corner crenellated tower. The projecting pediments and arches of the triple-doored entrance form a single light-colored stone band set in front of the building.

This low 16-sided barn has a frame and walls built entirely of wood. Within, there is a single large post in the center, and then a circle of posts. The roof is sheathed in metal, and a small-sized metal aerator sits on the crown of the roof.

An older three-story brick building has been imaginatively wrapped with a stucco-and-tile Mission Revival “stage set” of one and two stories. On ground level a deep-arched “corridor” marches around two sides of the building. Above, four narrow pavilions topped with curved gables spring from the tile roof. The nursery company was established in 1892; obviously by the 1920s it was felt that the exotic California Mission style somehow fit the horticultural activities of the firm.