Preservation Iowa’s Most Endangered 2018: White House Bathing Palace, Le Mars, Plymouth County The White House Bathing Palace first appears on the 1907 Sanborn map as containing a public bath house. Primary customers were railroad passengers stopping in Le Mars, but with the spread of indoor plumbing, its use as a public bath house diminished…. Read more »
Preservation Iowa’s Most Endangered 2018: Jackson County Jail, Andrew (Jackson County) The Andrew Jail was constructed in 1871 of locally quarried Niagara limestone and is the only structural reminder that Andrew once served as the Jackson County seat (1841-1851 and 1861-1873). Even after the county seat moved to Maquoketa in 1873, the jail at Andrew… Read more »
Preservation Iowa’s Most Endangered 2018: Dr. J.W. Smith Building, Charles City (Floyd County) The Dr. J.W. Smith Building at 201-203 N. Main was built in 1866 by Dr. Joel Washington Smith, one of the first physicians to move to what was then St. Charles and open a practice. For many years the building housed a… Read more »
Preservation Iowa has designated 9 properties for 2017 Most Endangered Designations. Here are the 2017 Most Endangered Properties: Preservation Iowa’s Most Endangered Property program was started in 1995 and was implemented to educate Iowans about the special buildings and historic sites that are slowly and gradually slipping away from us. In the past 20 years,… Read more »
Preservation Iowa’s 2017 Most Endangered Buildings: Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church, Waterloo (Black Hawk County) Grace Methodist Episcopal Church built the church in 1911 and it was dedicated in 1912. The church was designed in a Neoclassical Revival style by the architectural firm of Turnbull & Jones of Elgin, Illinois, which disbanded shortly after the… Read more »
Preservation Iowa’s 2017 Most Endangered Buildings: Hampton Church of Christ, Hampton (Franklin County) The construction of this church began in 1916 to replace an 1893 building which the congregation had since outgrown. On November 11, 1916, a fire broke out in the nearly completed church. With flames pouring over the roof, the fire alarm sounded… Read more »
Preservation Iowa’s 2017 Most Endangered Buildings: Mandalay Mansion, Cedar Falls (Black Hawk County) 1603 Mandalay Dr., Cedar Falls was built in what was the town of Cedar Heights. Cedar Heights was between Cedar Falls and Waterloo and was developed in the early 20th century by William Galloway. Many industrialists in the area and built their… Read more »
Preservation Iowa’s 2017 Most Endangered Buildings: Apollo School (Burlington High School), Burlington, Des Moines County The three-story Classic Revival school has 203,235 square feet of space and sits atop the west hill bluff overlooking downtown Burlington. Thousands of Burlingtonians were educated in the structure during its long life as a school first the city’s primary… Read more »
Preservation Iowa’s 2017 Most Endangered Buildings: Stone Schoolhouse, Lansing (Allamakee County) The Stone Schoolhouse was built in 1863 and cost $5,000 to build. It operated as a school until 1973 and is reportedly the oldest schoolhouse that was in continual use west of the Mississippi. Its architectural style and building materials are emblematic of the… Read more »
Preservation Iowa’s 2017 Most Endangered Buildings: Wade & Donohoe Buildings, Mental Health Institute (Cherokee County) The Wade and Donohoe “cottages” are ancillary buildings to the “Cherokee State Hospital,” now known as the Cherokee Mental Health Institute (CMHI). Completed in 1902, the CMHI was the last of four regional mental health facilities in Iowa and was… Read more »
