Narrator: The Key City, Masterpiece on the Mississippi, Iowa's first city -- Whatever you call it, Iowa doesn't get more historic than Dubuque.

It's a town of settlers, of legacy, of faith, of icons, of beauty, and of industry.

Join us as we recall the structures and artists who laid the foundation for our state and together help tell the story of "Historic Buildings of Iowa: Dubuque."

♪♪ Narrator: Funding for "Historic Buildings of Iowa: Dubuque" is provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation, as well as generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.

♪♪ Narrator: Dubuque is the site of many firsts for the state of Iowa.

It's the first city in Iowa, first official settlement, and the site of the state's first industrial boom.

In 1833, when U.S. citizens were first allowed to settle the area, lead-mining fever had struck.

And it wasn't really until Julien Dubuque, who, of course, is our namesake, who was really the first permanent European settler here.

And he was given permission to operate the mines here from the tribes.

And he did so pretty much until 1810.

Narrator: With the lead-mine rush leading the way in the 1830s, the population of Dubuque quickly ballooned into the thousands.

One of the early lead mine settlers was Mathias Ham, a Southerner hungry to make his fortune from Dubuque lead.

Côté: Mathias Ham, he was one of the earliest settlers here in Dubuque.

He came over, and he just thought the area was absolutely gorgeous.

It was the perfect opportunity for him to open up a few different kinds of businesses, and he stayed and settled here.

Narrator: Like everyone else, Ham and his then-girlfriend Zarelda lived in a log cabin.

However, eventually they married, and Zarelda wanted to raise their family in the comfort of a house.

Côté: It started off with a smaller portion where our current gift shop is located, and then they added on the larger portion of the house.

Unfortunately, she only maybe lived about two years in the house before she passed away.

So the house was never really completed until around 1857.

So it took almost 10 years for the house to be fully completed.

Narrator: Altogether, the Mathias Ham House is three stories with a basement, featuring 16 rooms, 14-foot decorated ceilings, two kitchens, a side porch, and a cupola on top.

The structure is known as an Italian villa in the Italianate style.

Côté: At this particular moment when this house was being built, that was actually the new style.

It was all about nature and fitting within nature.

It actually came out of a larger movement called the Picturesque Movement, and it was all about organic forms and sitting back into the landscape.

So with the stone walls and, like, very soft architecture with it.

Narrator: The style was also very practical for the times.

Instead of curtains, each window has shutters to block out light or allow in fresh air, a decoration that serves a purpose.

The same goes for the cupola, which offers an escape for rising hot air at the very center of the house.

Côté: We don't have a lot of photos from Mathias Ham himself and his family, so we do go off of, you know, other stories and other images of what houses of that era would have looked like.

And they were very big on hosting parties here.

And so there would be lots of birthdays, weddings, et cetera, things like that here.

And the dining room would have been where they would have hosted everything.

Narrator: The first floor features a winter kitchen, a dining room, and formal sitting room.

Across the hall is the library and common parlor, where visitors can enjoy a drink, a cigar, or conversation.

One of the unique period pieces in the house is a special collection of parlor furniture.

And it's called a conversation chair.

And it is a round chair that has three seats all connected.

It was a way that you could have a private conversation, or if you were currently courting someone, you would have a chaperon with you and they would monitor the conversation to make sure it was all, you know, G-rated.

Narrator: While the first floor was for entertaining, the second floor was the living area where visitors might be taken aback by the sheer size of each room.

Côté: So the bedrooms upstairs are pretty typical for the era.

But that also means most people think they're quite large today.

And the reason for that is they didn't have closets.

And it's pretty much because they didn't have as many clothes as we did today.

They didn't need that space.

So they had wardrobes, they had dressers, and those particular pieces of the furniture were quite large, and so they needed to take up space.

Also, today, most people have -- you know, it's one to a room, right?

You don't really share a room.

Not necessarily back then.

Back then, it would have been all the girls sharing a room.

The boys sharing a room.

Often it was, you know, four kids in one room, sometimes two to a bed.

Narrator: Much of the Ham House is indicative of the era and, of course, the Iowa climate.

Nearly every room has a ceiling 10 feet or higher, enough space for the heat to be above the house residents.

The easily opened and closed windows help manage light and heat.

As far as era fashion goes, that is easily apparent in all the color.

So unlike today, where everything is monochromatic, there's a theme that goes through each room of the house, that was not the case.

Each room could have a completely different vibe, a completely different theme.

One room would be the blue room.

Another room could be the jungle room.

There could be a room that looked like marble, could be marbled wallpaper, a marbled rug, everything like that.

Narrator: Just as Mathias completed the construction of the house in 1857, a national economic crisis hit and the Ham family lost virtually its entire fortune.

Mathias worked the rest of his life to keep the family in the home and willed it to his daughter Sarah Ham upon his passing.

In 1911, Sarah Ham sold the house to the city of Dubuque, where it took another 50 years before it was converted into a museum.

Today, the Mathias Ham Historic Site is a regular summer tourist attraction for visitors to the area.

For history-hungry travelers, Dubuque collected three historic buildings on the Ham property.

The Arriandeaux Log Cabin, believed to be the oldest log cabin still standing in the state and the Humke one-room schoolhouse, a treasure from 1883.

While the school, cabin, and Ham House are not necessarily linked through history, they do paint a picture of early Dubuque.

Each building tells a portion of Iowa history from the very beginning to modern day.

And it allows us to also tell the progression and do the, you know, comparisons that really helps people to understand not only the differences between, you know, the decades or the centuries, but also between modern-day life.

Narrator: While Iowa was first being settled, Mathias Ham was a very successful person, but not necessarily a very impactful person on the history of Iowa.

However, his family's home provides a necessary perspective on Dubuque and much more.

Côté: It's just a stopping point in our history that continually reminds us of where we've been and where we're going.

Because this house, while Mathias Ham did build it and he lived in here, the house doesn't just tell the story of Mathias Ham.

It tells the story of how Iowa started.

It tells the story of the history of the region and westward settlement.

It's the center for our story of Dubuque.

That's what is it.

It is the center of our story as a town, as a city, as a county.

♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: Locally significant buildings can be found on literally every street in Dubuque -- performing arts venues, hotels, homes, and many, many more buildings have stood for decades telling the tale of Dubuque.

In fact, 50 fixtures of Dubuque are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Of those places, the first three recognized were the Dubuque County Courthouse, Dubuque City Hall, and the old jail, three buildings that have stood for over a century and together tell an interesting story of Dubuque then and now.

I think we saw a different attitude about public buildings and public structures in that 19th century era and the integration of public art actually into the fabric of the buildings themselves.

Building institutions like schools, courthouses, jails, city halls, libraries, these sorts of things in that era were very much meant to look like they were of the ages.

These were going to be permanent structures with big, thick walls, with historic ornament that look like something that we're building as a legacy for future generations.

Narrator: For Dubuque's trio of municipal staples, their origins stretch over a 50-year period, the youngest of the three being the Dubuque County Courthouse, built in 1891.

The Dubuque County Jail was constructed in 1858 and City Hall built just prior in 1857.

City Hall came about in 1856 and 1857, when it was built by John Francis Rague.

He was an architect working here in Dubuque and had built a number of other buildings, and he really envisioned a multi-use space for the city.

Narrator: When it opened, Dubuque City Hall hosted the police station in the basement, a first-floor public marketplace where vendor wagons could back up directly to the 11-foot windows.

The second floor was home to city offices and courts, and on the third floor, the public could find a ballroom and town hall, emulating Boston's celebrated Faneuil Hall, showcasing the Italianate style of long, narrow windows and column, a look which was popular at the time.

Five blocks south on Central Avenue, the Dubuque County Jail was set to open shortly after City Hall.

With 100 years of jailing service in front of it, the jail was employing an entirely different and unique look.

Most noteworthy characteristic is its architectural style.

It is an Egyptian Revival building, which is extremely unusual.

Most times we think about revival styles as Greek and Roman, which is an interesting tie into some Victorian notions about redemption.

The afterlife was such a big part of Egyptian mythology and Egyptian religion, and some of that carried through into jail and prison architecture in the Victorian era.

Thinking about the redemption of the prisoners and things that were inside.

Narrator: From the Civil War into the Vietnam War, thousands of prisoners were shuffled in and out of these cramped cells, with the cellar cells reserved for the worst offenders.

The main cell block was far from luxurious.

Most of these cells had anywhere from two to four prisoners in them.

They used two double banks or single double bunks in there.

No restroom facilities in the room, so it was basically chamber pots and that sort of thing.

They had shower area and bathroom facilities located at one end.

Originally, that was where all the Confederate prisoners were kept was down in what we call the catacombs.

And it's definitely a catacombs.

And then after the Civil War was over, they used it for recalcitrant prisoners, you know, ones that would need isolation.

It's a little scary down there.

Neises: One of the other problematic situations was it was not a particularly secure building, despite the fact that it had big, thick stone walls.

There's lots of stories of prisoners escaping, largely because the way the doors worked is to open one jail cell door, you had to open all of them like they were on one big -- You'd kind of pull this big lever, and all the doors would open at once, which... Narrator: The building finally closed in 1971 when the building was declared unfit for housing purposes.

And while the city was in an era of tear down and renewal, the ornate limestone and mortar structure was deemed too unique to demolish.

Unlike City Hall, which has been virtually gutted and refashioned to provide a modern workspace, the county has embraced the rough edges of the old jail, housing various counties services throughout its structure, all the while maintaining interior nods to its architectural style and history.

Neises: Well, the building has found many different creative uses over the years, and I'm very proud that our community has found a way to maintain a lot of the architectural integrity of the building without and still using it for modern uses.

One of the most noteworthy features of this building is this Egyptian Revival style that it's designed in.

A lot of that is found in the cast-iron work that you see around the doors and windows.

And the Egyptians used bundled reeds to build boats and to build other things.

So flanking the doors of this building, there are bundled reeds designed in cast iron.

And at the top of the building, Egyptian Revival architecture often has what they call a cavetto cornice, which means that it kind of has a soft kind of arched profile extending out to the top of the building.

And each one of the window surrounds has this cavetto cornice on it that, again, reflects kind of the shape of a papyrus plant.

Narrator: While the exterior of City Hall remains and the structure and style of the old jail remain, of the three structures, only the Dubuque County Courthouse is still being used for its intended purpose while retaining most of its initial architectural integrity.

So the Dubuque County Courthouse building was built between 1891 and 1893.

The architect was Fridolin Heer and sons.

Fridolin Heer was a pretty well-known local architect.

In a lot of the literature about the courthouse, they call it a Beaux-Arts style.

It also has elements of what we would call Romanesque architecture with lots of arches, with lots of thick, rusticated stone.

And I would even say that some elements of the courthouse look more like Queen Anne from the Victorian era.

The polychromatic styles that we see where you've got dark brick contrasted with light stone.

This building was built before the real blossoming of that Beaux-Arts style, and I think that's why we see kind of a mixture of styles on the courthouse.

Narrator: One distinct difference between the Courthouse and the Jail or City Hall is it is not original.

The first county courthouse was connected to the Jail and eventually demolished in the late 1800s due to the need for more space.

The current City Hall has stood as the hub of all county services for more than a century.

In fact, it still houses hard-copy documents and records that predate the structure itself.

Soeder: You've got the county treasurer, the recorder's office there, the auditor's office is there, the court system itself, the number of people, like I said, it brings in, it can range from, you know, a couple of hundred in a few days to, you know, near the end of the month or the end to tax season months, we have 1,200 people come through here in a day.

Square footage is about 55,000 square feet in the building that we use for office space and things like that right now.

No physical additions to the exterior of the building.

Interior of the building, they got rid of the galleries.

Used to be those multi-story galleries that overlooked the court rooms because court was entertainment at the time.

So they did those so they can, you know, add office space to the building.

Well, and much credit goes to the Dubuque County Board of Supervisors and for Chris for really investing in preserving a lot of the interior details.

A lot of the original millwork on the doors and the window trim and those sorts of things are still in place.

Doorknobs, a lot of those interior details are still intact.

The courtrooms and things themselves also have a lot of, like, the original benches where the judge sits and the in the the witness boxes and the jury boxes and things are very much original.

Narrator: While icons of the community today, all three of Dubuque's municipal staples were at several points in their history in trouble of being demolished.

In 1964, the City Hall belfry had deteriorated and was deconstructed.

The Jail was closed shortly, a few years later.

And oddly enough, plans for urban renewal and clearing out decaying buildings actually saved the Courthouse from an untimely demise.

And interestingly, the courthouse was in an urban renewal district and was slated for demolition during a 1965 plan.

And some of the buildings, like across the street where the law enforcement center is right now, those buildings, there were historic buildings there that were torn down.

And some people have identified the removal of a lot of the buildings around the Courthouse as one of the reasons that it got saved, because people could now see it more prominently, like, "Wow, the Courthouse is still standing there."

It's really this beacon and it's really this icon of downtown.

Narrator: Together, the Jail, City Hall, and the Courthouse are prime examples of how retaining aging treasures can turn relics into icons.

Olson: The best way to preserve buildings is to continue to use them.

And we're very happy that we continue to use City Hall for its original purposes as a landmark in Dubuque and also for our citizens.

SOEDER: To me, utilizing the space as office space or meeting areas, that sort of thing to me is important.

You can set it up as a museum, but people are only going to show up once in a while to look at the place, and the people that work here get a chance to work in an area that you never work in anyplace else because there's no way I want to let a building like this go away.

Neises: One of our greatest historic assets in Dubuque is our architecture.

It's a cultural asset, and I think is that it's for everyone.

Sometimes for fine art or paintings or orchestras and things, you need to go through a door.

You need to be admitted.

Whereas in a place like Dubuque, where we have such a wealth of historic architecture, it becomes one of those things that tourists and residents alike can just walk down the street and appreciate.

♪♪ Narrator: After the 1830s wave of industrialists and pioneers settled Dubuque, the area saw an influx of immigrants bringing with them their skills, culture, and beliefs.

Within the first year, settlers were allowed to cross the river Dubuque had its first Christian congregation with St. Luke's Methodist Church.

Stewart: St. Luke's is the oldest non-Native American congregation in Iowa.

In September 1833, the Illinois Conference of the Methodist Church, at that time called the Methodist Episcopal Church, appointed Barton Randle to serve the Dubuque settlement.

So in November of 1833, he came to Dubuque, and he preached his first sermon in Julien Tavern.

Basically where the Julien Hotel now stands.

Narrator: Before the end of 1834, St. Luke's moved into its first worship center, a small log cabin that is remembered by a plaque in Washington Park.

While St. Luke's was Dubuque's first, it didn't take long for churches of every denomination to pop up around it.

Stewart: And I think one reason why Dubuque has so many churches is because you had large Irish population and a large German population, and people wanted to go to church in their own language.

And so one reason why you had so many churches, they wanted to have two of everything because they wanted to have, like, the English-language Catholic Church and the German-language Catholic Church and the English-language Methodist Church and the German-language Methodist Church.

Narrator: Like St Luke's, many of those original congregations still offer services to this day.

However, as generations passed and languages other than English became less common, there were clear overlaps in worship centers.

On the Catholic side, the German Catholic Church of St. Mary's was erected in 1867, 10 years before the Irish Catholic Church of St. Patrick's.

For decades, the sister parishes operated in harmony a mere five blocks apart on East 15th Street.

But in 1918, at the height of World War I, Iowa Governor William Harding signed the Babel Proclamation, banning foreign languages in public use, including church.

Over the next hundred years, St. Mary's attendance dipped to the point that in 2010, the church was actually de-consecrated and considered for possible demolition.

Hagerty: They really had no plan other than try to sell the buildings separately.

So they wanted to look at kind of how could we kind of have a comprehensive plan for repurposing these buildings so that they didn't have to be torn down?

Narrator: Today, the four buildings that were St. Mary's are now Steeple Square, a nonprofit community hub offering housing, childcare, shelter, and event space.

The structure and the spirit of St. Mary's lives on through the Steeple Square mission of restoring lives, neighborhood empowerment, and community vibrancy.

Those are the major components of what we're about.

And again, all focused on first, saving this beautiful historic campus, and then quickly focusing on how we could revitalize the neighborhood and help people advance themselves at the same time.

Narrator: The initial construction of St. Mary's took three years from 1864 to 1867.

It was designed in the Gothic Revival style of architecture, with its key feature being its towering steeple.

Hagerty: The elements of Gothic architecture are the pointed, arched windows, the stained glass, the large volume of space, the height, the tall, slender tower and spire, and a lot of decoration.

And you can imagine in the 1860s that a 212-foot-tall steeple was, you know, a huge landmark kind of in this area that was a pioneering area at the time.

It was really the frontier.

And we really don't know how they constructed the tower, because, again, it would have required, you know, pretty sophisticated construction equipment even in today's times to build something that's that tall.

Narrator: When renovations began in 2014, the goal was to retain as much of the structure's character while refitting the campus for its nonprofit mission.

Construction began by converting the old elementary school into affordable housing.

Next came restoring the steeple, which had fallen into disrepair over its 150-year life.

The third phase of the renovation saw the priest rectory converted into a child care center with 70% of the clientele being low-income families.

Finally, the fourth phase in 2019 focused on the former worship center, now community center.

Wolf: This is used as our revenue-generating piece to support our mission work.

So we hold everything here from wedding ceremonies to receptions to celebrations of life, private parties, some business meetings in the lower level of the building we're in, and we partner with Northeast Iowa Community College to provide vocational training for underserved populations.

We've held culinary classes here.

We also have a large multipurpose room that can be used for vocational training and rentals, again, for businesses, for private parties, and that type of thing.

In 1912, there was a major renovation of the church.

But really what we see here right now, it's the 1912 design, but the colors from the 1950s.

My favorite feature of this building are the stained glass windows.

Just because they tell the story of the life of St. Mary, but they also tell the story of the German craftsmanship.

And the interesting thing about that is that we developed here at Steeple Square, we developed a workshop to teach local people how to restore stained glass.

So every single one of the windows that are in this building have been restored using that process, using local people who have learned that new skill.

And several people that have worked on that project are now working on crews, restoration crews.

They've learned that skill of restoration.

Narrator: Dubuque also has the good luck to be home to the largest collection of Tiffany stained glass windows, which happens to be in place at St. Luke's.

So when this church first opened, it had five very large Tiffany windows.

However, today we have 125.

Most of those went in in the early 1910s right before World War I. Louis Comfort Tiffany came from the Tiffany family.

Of course, the Tiffany jewelry family.

But he decided to go in a different direction.

His patent was for opalescent glass, which is the clear, kind of wavy glass.

And so most everyone knows their opalescent glass, or this mostly clear, sometimes colored wavy glass that just has a medallion at the top.

So each window was commissioned by a particular family.

And then today, all the windows have two plaques.

So when you look at, again, the Good Shepherd window, so that window was bought by the family of Judge D. N. Cooley.

So it says in stained glass "In Memoriam, D. N.

Cooley."

And that second plaque is the people who donated to restore the window.

Narrator: Dubuque's skyline will always be lined with impressive and historic spires.

Rather than relegating St. Mary's to photos and essays of Dubuque's past, Steeple Square has solidified it.

By stopping the wrecking ball and renovating one of the staples of the city's skyline, Steeple Square has ensured the next 100 years of its life.

Hagerty: Here we have a building that the community can still use.

It's a resource that will attract people because of its beauty.

It will attract people because of its history and heritage, and it will last way longer than any sort of new construction because they were built to last.

♪♪ Narrator: The northeast quadrant of Iowa is commonly referred to as being part of the Driftless Area, a four-state geological phenomenon that has dodged glaciers for hundreds of thousands of years.

This luck has allowed Iowa's river communities to have a very distinct look, with many hosting town centers below an east-facing rock bluff, a picturesque setting for literally every town in Allamakee, Clayton, Jackson, and Dubuque Counties.

But one feature of the Dubuque bluffs that was constructed in the late 1800s can't be found in any other part of the state, country, and possibly world.

Schadle: We claim to be the shortest and the steepest railway in the country.

Actually, we'll push it out to the world.

You know, there might be some that's shorter.

There might be some that's steeper.

But we claim to be the shortest and the steepest.

Narrator: Shortest, steepest, or a combination of the two, the Fenelon Place Elevator is certainly unique.

It is also historic.

For more than 100 years, the elevator has been carrying residents and visitors alike to the top of the Dubuque bluffs.

While today it is mostly a tourist attraction, its origin is purely logistical.

Schadle: Back in 1882, the whole town shut down at noon for an hour and a half for lunch.

Now, there was a banker that lived up the street, and he worked down below.

And in order to go up and down the hill for lunch, he would go by horse and buggy around the bluffs.

There was no streets up here yet, and it took him a half-hour each way to come up and down.

So a half-hour to come up, half-hour to go down, half-hour lunch would be no problem, right?

Hour and a half.

He'd like to take a half-hour nap as well.

Narrator: By July 1882, former Dubuque Mayor Julius K. Graves' dream of a swift commute was finally in place.

The Elevator's original system consisted of a single wooden car being pulled up and down wooden rails on a rope and winch by a coal-fired steam engine boiler.

While the system allowed for a quick trek to and from work, it required close attention to remain safe.

In the morning, he'd have his gardener lower him down, only took about three minutes to go down, and then at noon he'd have his gardener raise him up again and then lower, so he had plenty of time, you know, plenty of time for his nap.

And at the end of each day, when they were done using the cable car, the gardener would go down the basement and he would open up the firebox and he'd have to bank or pile up the coals in order to have enough fire left in the morning to start it up again.

And when he did this, if a live ember would fall on the floor and he didn't notice it, he'd go home, and it'd start a fire in the basement.

And the fire would burn through the hemp rope.

And down the hill the car would go crashing.

So 1882, first cable car.

First fire, 1884.

The banker rebuilt it, and he started charging the neighbors a nickel.

Narrator: For the next 10 years, Mr. Graves privately owned and operated the elevator until once again, a fire destroyed the system in 1893.

But with the banking industry in economic peril, Graves decided against rebuilding the elevator.

Schadle: And at that time there was a recession.

So the banker couldn't afford to rebuild it.

But the neighbors had come to depend upon it that there were 10 people in the neighborhood that decided, "Well, let's buy the banker out and rebuild."

And they created the Fenelon Place Elevator Company.

The street up here is Fenelon Place.

They named it after the street.

Narrator: As luck would have it, the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago showcased a new invention -- a cable car system that used steel cables to pull cars and an electric controller to safely navigate them.

Using this innovation as a guide, the 10 Fenelon Place investors redesigned the elevator as a funicular, wherein two counterbalanced cars ride parallel tracks.

Schadle: The track is very old, but the ties were original when the track got installed.

We have metal ties too.

They were installed in the 1960s.

There's wooden rollers that the cable rides on.

We make them out of a solid block of red elm, and we machine them down to a cylinder, attach the hardware to them, and put them on the hill.

And the cable, we have two cables, a safety cable and a drive cable.

So if something happens with the drive cable, the safety cable will hold the cars in place.

The cars were remade in 1977.

The cars are made of sheet metal.

They're about 45 years old or something like that.

Narrator: Since that neighborhood partnership reimagined the Elevator, Fenelon Place has stayed relatively the same, with only the ownership changing hands.

My wife's great grandfather was one of the original 10, and as the other nine stockholders would die or move, he would buy their stock.

So in 1912, he had all the stock.

So it became a family-run business.

Narrator: From the turn of the 20th century to today, the Elevator has remained a staple of Dubuque.

It serves as both a serious means to commute to and from town for residents on the bluff and a spot for visitors to take in a special piece of local history while enjoying the gorgeous view.

Schadle: Well, it's a very unique attraction, and it's it's a labor-saving tool, so to speak.

There are still people in the neighborhood, a few, that live up here and work down there.

So they utilize it.

But really over the last two decades, it became a tourist attraction.

We're an icon in the community.

We've had people that come to Dubuque just to ride the elevator.

We've had people worldwide, one year we opened up April 1st.

The first three riders was a group of three.

A guy from Los Angeles, his best friend from New York, and his girlfriend from Venezuela.

How much international can you get?

And of course, the view is spectacular.

♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: In 1929, the great Wall Street crash sparked the infamous nationwide Great Depression, an event that changed the life of literally every American citizen.

Dubuque was no exception, and for years, the economy of Dubuque struggled along with the rest of the nation.

Four years later, in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office as President of the United States and created the Works Progress Administration.

Shortly thereafter, a group of Dubuque businessmen visited the WPA and proposed using WPA funds to hire underemployed local workers to expand a large, albeit nascent, park on the northeast edge of town.

Returning home with $200,000, those men could not have known how great an impact they were about to have on the history and landscape of Dubuque.

Neises: So Eagle Point Park is one of the most architecturally significant sites in Dubuque.

$200,000 were received by the Dubuque Park District that sparked this project.

So once they received those dollars, they hired a young landscape architect named Alfred Caldwell from Chicago to come and spearhead the project.

In '32, he learns of this project in Dubuque.

He gets an interview, comes over, sees the park the day before.

My understanding is he spent most of the night drawing sketches of what he would do, interviewed the next day, and was hired.

Narrator: Alfred Caldwell was a young scholar in the burgeoning prairie school of landscape architecture, a brand-new style championed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Jens Jensen.

The main inspiration for prairie school is using the landscape and horizon to motivate design.

So a lot of prairie architecture is very horizontal, so the horizontal aspects of the building are very accentuated and the vertical elements are kind of tucked away and hidden.

So it gives this very long aspect to most of the buildings.

They use lots of natural materials, rough-hewn stone and locally harvested wood, and those sorts of things are usually very prominently featured.

The other key element is that the buildings are usually integrated right into the landscape.

So as is the case here at Eagle Point Park, the buildings kind of seem to grow or emerge out of the side of the hillside.

Even though the buildings are clearly manmade and the masonry and the stonework is often, you know, is clearly laid by humans, there's a randomness and a general kind of serendipity to the way that the stonework is done that makes it look more natural and less kind of engineered or machined.

So on my tours, I love to take people places like this because you really get to see the story of how these buildings are built in the first place.

So beneath, a lot of the stone that appears very naturalistic, like regular masonry, you can see that there's a poured-in-place reinforced concrete frame.

But this is really a space that a lot of people, I think, don't visit.

They don't see this kind of space.

But really you can tell a lot of thought was put into it, how the tunnel was made, how these gigantic stones were put in place to appear random, but still kind of have that idea that it's an engineered, manmade space.

Narrator: Caldwell's plans called for three buildings and a lily pond to bring the project to life.

200 men were hired.

The stone was mined a mile north and the lumber was harvested on site.

So Caldwell designed this site.

He called it a city in a garden.

So there are three buildings that exist right now that he personally designed.

And then throughout the park, there are several others that are inspired by the same architectural style.

But Caldwell designed three buildings and a lily pond area that are all kind of connected together thematically as the park, as the central part of Eagle Point Park.

Ulstad: So they built the ledges over there in the park and then a lily pond.

Well, they didn't just build a stone wall.

The first thing they did was create a work of art on stabilizing the bluff.

Neises: So the lily pool itself is kind of the focal point of the landscape.

But the way Caldwell designed it, as you enter the space, there's a series of different kind of natural terraces that you walk through going down into the space.

And originally he had envisioned that there'd be native grasses and plants at the edge of each one of those terraces.

As you walk through, that would almost create little rooms as you kind of walk down into this landscape.

So each one of them would kind of be separated visually from the other ones down below.

It's really an intentional echoing of the Mississippi River bluffs upon which the park itself is positioned.

Narrator: The lily pond features waterfalls, groves of trees, a pool filled with koi fish, and special gathering spaces Caldwell dubbed council rings meant for visitors to gather in nature for conversation and revelry, but still allow for separation from other park goers.

With the lily pond in place, Caldwell turned the crew to his three-building plan.

Ulstad: Caldwell envisioned these set of buildings as a city.

You can look down here and see a round, which is more like a community gathering place, a marketplace, a place to share ideas is right there with these buildings that surround it.

There's bathrooms.

There's sports events with the tennis courts over there.

There's restaurants.

There's meeting rooms.

♪♪ He meant for the buildings to be used in all four seasons.

Fireplaces that would have warmed these buildings in the fall and the winter and the spring.

We'll see outdoor verandas and terraces.

There are shower houses and things that would have served tennis players at the nearby tennis courts and those sorts of things.

Narrator: In only 18 months, Caldwell's crew built everything -- the lily pond, the Indian room, the Veranda Room, and the East and West Building connected by the Promenade Bridge.

While today Caldwell gets the credit, many of the interesting elements came from the laborers.

Neises: Well, because this was a Works Progress Administration project, Alfred Caldwell was very interested in training.

So rather than just grunt work or hard labor, he really wanted them to learn the craft of masonry, how to carve the stone, how to place the stone, and how to lay it in an artful manner.

Ulstad: In the one terraced room in the back side, I can show you stones that are all of a sudden odd shapes that sit in the wall and in the Indian room, little pieces.

Well, somebody found those and they all sat around and said, "What do we do with this?"

They didn't just put it in the wall.

They found a beautiful, creative way to use those pieces.

Narrator: When Caldwell's crew finished its work on the Veranda Building, the project was finished, and the city of Dubuque wasted no time firing Alfred Caldwell.

While a remarkable architect, Caldwell was also quite a difficult person to work with.

Following his work in Dubuque, Caldwell returned to Chicago, where he would go on to become an acclaimed landscape architect and create the heralded Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool in Lincoln Park.

Neises: So even compared to other work that Alfred Caldwell did in Chicago, he designed more buildings here.

What I also love about these structures at Eagle Point Park, even though they're nationally famous, like 9-year-olds can just rent these for their birthday parties, right?

The park just rents these out.

So the fact that we have these extremely well-designed, famous structures that are still open and used by the public in Dubuque anytime they want is pretty remarkable.

♪♪ Hagerty: Of course, Dubuque is the oldest city in the state of Iowa, and it developed beginning in the early 1830s.

Settlers came to the Dubuque area mostly for the lead mining.

And so because of its advantageous location on the river and with the surrounding bluffs, there was a lot of, you know, wood that could be be harvested for lumber, for fuel, for all sorts of purposes for a growing settlement.

And so Dubuque became a center for the lumber industry.

The history of the Millwork District is really dominated by two large millworking companies.

They both kind of established themselves around the same time.

But the first one that established themselves we call the Caradco Company.

It was Carr, Ryder, Adams & Company.

They developed the construction, the fabrication of wood doors, wood windows sashes, trim moldings, things like that for building construction materials.

Another millworking company, which we now know as Farley & Loetscher, was established by Christian Loetscher, who was an immigrant from Switzerland who came to Dubuque in the 1870s.

But both of these, both Caradco and Farley & Loetscher, grew to be -- they both kind of considered themselves the largest millworking company in the United States.

Both of them made that claim.

And between those two companies, Dubuque was probably one of the largest millworking centers in the world.

Narrator: The story of Dubuque's Millwork District tells the story of the entire town.

For more than a century, lead mining and lumber boomed, and settlers built a town around them.

The district became the engine of the community, and today it is being reactivated to match modern living.

Gronen: The Millwork District is about a million square feet, so about a 17-block area.

The Rouse & Dean Foundry, which is just across the street from us, that is known to be the oldest building in the district.

But we are in the Caradco Building, AKA the Schmid Innovation Center.

And this particular building is actually six buildings that were all infilled, joined at one time.

And the construction on the first building started in the late 1860s.

And the last building was completed in 1909.

So it was quite a span of time to create the structure that we see today.

Hagerty: When you're looking at this particular district, the architectural style is -- it's not necessarily a high architectural style.

It's what we call vernacular.

There are not a lot of architect-designed buildings in the Millwork District.

They are buildings that were designed many times by either someone within the company.

Christian Loetscher, for example, was reputed to have designed most of the buildings that Farley & Loetscher were in.

You could tell that they really prided themselves in the design of their buildings when they built these industrial buildings.

You know, they all are very cohesive in design.

There are lots of architectural elements to the design of the buildings, particularly with Caradco.

We see the the main Caradco building has the two arches on the north facade and then the south facade.

And then there's like a tunnel that you can walk through, and then it takes you into the courtyard.

And then when they built in 1924, they built the building to the north, which we now call the Voices Building, or the Dupaco Building, that also has an arch on its south facade.

And when you look then either from the south or to the north, you can look through these two large buildings and you can kind of see how they would have done their manufacturing process.

You know, they were able to move very easily, you know, from building to building.

The other thing that was distinctive about the Millwork District from a circulation standpoint was that there were several catwalks or passages that spanned the street.

So you could go from one building to another on the inside of the building.

You didn't have to go outside.

And there's really only one remnant of that left in the district.

It's the multilevel catwalk that spans from the Voices/Dupaco Building to the Novelty Iron Works building.

And that was constructed in the early 1900s because those two buildings were connected from a -- they were both Caradco buildings.

Narrator: In the early years of Millwork District, artificial lighting wasn't available.

So all of the buildings built in the 1800s incorporated large windows that could be used to vent hot air and noxious fumes.

Additionally, nearly every building incorporated rooftop monitors in order to bring natural light to the center of the structure.

Possibly the most important feature of each building was the masonry work with brick and limestone, a critical decision that saved the district multiple times from cascading fires.

Hagerty: Within the buildings, there are also firebreaks.

There are multiple masonry walls that divide the building.

There are fire doors that, you know, if there is a fire, then those doors are shut so the fire can't go from one part of the building to the next.

So the masonry construction, it's beautiful, but it also serves a functional purpose.

Narrator: While boasting to be the hub of lumber milling in the world, Farley & Loetscher legitimately constructed the world's largest indoor lumber storage facility at the corner of Washington and 7th, a towering building constructed with 60-foot timbers and enough space to house a year's worth of materials.

As big as a stadium.

Even more impressive to learn is it was first erected more than 300 miles south.

Gronen: It was the St. Louis Exposition, and it was a timber-frame structure, a large, like, pavilion.

And when the exposition was over, Mr. Farley had attended the exposition, and he ended up purchasing the timber frame, which was taken down piece by piece, hauled up here on a railroad line, and they had to tie, like, cars together because the timbers were so long that they exceeded the length of one car.

So brought all that timber up here.

Erected it down here a block south of us.

And then they bricked the building on the exterior of the timber frame.

Narrator: For nearly 150 years, the Millwork District thrived as the industrial heartbeat of Dubuque.

However, following World War II, construction methods shifted across the country, with lumber falling out of favor, being replaced by steel and other durable materials.

By the 1970s, both Caradco and Farley & Loetscher were a thing of the past, and buildings across the Millwork District started to close for good.

There was a process back in 2005 called Envision 2010.

And basically what it was was getting the input from tri-state citizens on what they wanted to see happen by the year 2010.

So they came up with a list of, oh, my gosh, I think it was over like 3,500 projects or something.

And then there was a task force formed to whittle it down to 10 projects.

And among those 10 was the redevelopment of this warehouse district.

Hagerty: The amazing thing about it is it really is one of the most intact historic industrial areas, not only in the state of Iowa, but throughout the Midwest.

In a city the size of Dubuque, to have this much historic fabric in an industrial area is just amazing.

With Envision 2010 showing the local desire to reclaim the Millwork District, developers started to think of ways to revitalize the area.

By 2011, the Millwork District's first redevelopments were in place, with 72 apartments available in the Caradco building with 75,000 square feet of commercial space open below.

While not industrial millworking, lead smelting, or ironwork, the re-activated Millwork District certainly retains the energy of its history.

Yeah, so now with the redevelopment of this whole district, the character of the district has changed dramatically.

And so I see more and more as I'm driving around in the morning, I see people walking from the northern residential areas, walking to work or bringing their bikes to work.

So this becomes then a more walkable city.

It becomes, you know, an area where there are a lot of different business and economic activities for people because more people live downtown.

So the restaurants are busier, the bars are busier, the retail shops are busier.

So we hope to see more and more of that.

Almost kind of becomes a snowball effect.

Narrator: The Millwork District is once again writing the story of Dubuque.

And while this chapter is alive and well, it is still a long way from being complete.

Gronen: There's a lot of buildings, a lot of work that has taken place in the district, but there's a lot more work that still needs to happen.

And even though all this work has been going on for just over 10 years, we all knew it was a marathon, not a sprint.

It was going to take a long time to be able to do all the work that's necessary in this district to bring it back.

Hagerty: We kind of see Dubuque as a special place, not only because of its wonderful historic buildings, but because we do have the ethic of historic activation, making buildings active and work for people, but then also working together to make these things happen.

These buildings will still be here in 200 years, most likely.

They're really treasures.

They can unpack so much opportunity and so much economic development, so much vitality for communities like Dubuque.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: Funding for "Historic Buildings of Iowa: Dubuque" is provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation, as well as generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.