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: Thomas D. Murphy Co., Red Oak (Montgomery County) The oldest section of this three-story brick factory was built in 1905 to house the world renowned Thomas D. Murphy Co., at one-time one of the nation’s largest makers of advertising art calendars. Designed by Omaha architect Harry Lawrie, the building was… 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 »
The Most Endangered Properties program started in 1995 to educate Iowans about the special buildings, sites, and structures that are slowly and gradually slipping away from us. Preservation Iowa designated nine properties as the 2017 Most Endangered Properties and some of these properties have been highlighted in other preservation publications since their designation. In the… Read more »
