I took a swing through Clinton, Iowa,
today. Here’s what I saw . . .
A
courthouse built like the county expected it to last forever. A department
store with fancy trim that deserves more than a passing glance. A mansion built
by a man who sold woodwork and figured his house ought to show people what they
could get.
There’s
a school that became apartments, a towboat that became a theater, and a stone
castle tucked into a city park. Then there are the giant wooden trolls. They’re
new around here, but they’ve already found their way into a town that’s been
making things out of wood for as long as it can remember.
Clinton’s
got more going on than you’d guess. Some of it stands right beside the street,
waiting for you to look up. Some take a turn off the main road and a little
wandering.
This
was a lumber town, and the money showed. It went into houses, stores, public
buildings, and woodwork people don’t casually tear out and replace. You can
still follow that money around town by looking at what it left behind.
But
this isn’t a collection of buildings that spent their whole lives under glass.
They’ve been worked in, added onto, patched up, and put to different uses. A
store needs customers, a school needs students, and an old building needs
somebody willing to pay for the roof.
That’s
where some of Clinton’s better stories turn up. The old Roosevelt School still
stands because someone put homes inside it. The Van Allen Building got
apartments above its storefronts, and the Curtis Mansion found a second life
with the Clinton Women’s Club.
The
showboat might have the strangest resume of the bunch. It pushed barges before
anybody put a theater inside it, traveled through West Virginia, and eventually
wound up beside the Mississippi in Clinton.
And
the castle at Eagle Point? It wasn’t built it to defend the river from an
invading army. It came out of a Depression-era work program, when putting
people to work could also mean giving a town something worth keeping.
You
see this a lot in old Iowa towns. The buildings are still there, but they’ve
got a different use now. The buildings often outlast the businesses that built
them. The old store name might still be above the door, even though the
upstairs is now somebody’s apartment.
I
enjoy looking at places like these because the history hasn’t been reduced to
one date on a plaque. It’s in the changes, too: the classroom that became a
living room, the boat that traded barge work for stage work, the old boards
that became a troll.
Clinton
County didn’t get its courthouse without a little trouble. Voters approved the
project in 1892. Then workers found quicksand beneath the site. Architects
changed, contractors changed, and voters had to approve more money before the
building finally opened in August 1897.
The
bill came to $168,000. For that, the county got heavy stone walls, rounded
towers, broad arches, and a building that still looks ready to handle county
business. Its red sandstone and granite haven’t lost their punch.
The
copper covering on the central tower weathered green over the years. Much of
the exterior still looks as it did when the courthouse was new, although the
inside has seen changes.
The
county seat moved from DeWitt to Clinton in 1869 after a bitter fight. Clinton
threw up its first courthouse in just 23 days. It was a smaller affair that the
county eventually outgrew.
DeWitt
wasn’t about to surrender everything, though. Residents worried Clinton would
take the courthouse bell, so they slipped out at night, removed it, and buried
it in Elmwood Cemetery. More than a year later, they dug it up for a local
church.
County
records went to Clinton. The bell stayed in DeWitt, which tells you something
about how that move went over.
The
Van Allen Building is worth stopping for, even if you’ve walked past it a
hundred times. Those long strips of terra cotta and bursts of decoration
weren’t ordered from an ordinary storefront catalog. Louis Sullivan designed
the place.
John
D. Van Allen needed a new department store. A banker in Cedar Rapids
recommended Sullivan, who’d designed the Peoples’ Savings Bank there.
Construction started in 1913, and the four-story store was finished in 1915.
At
first glance, it’s a fairly plain brick building with gigantic windows. Then
your eye catches the three pairs of slender ornamental columns running up the
front. Near their lower ends, blue-and-white decorations carry Van Allen’s
initials and a nod to his Dutch background.
The
fancy outside followed a practical inside. Sullivan and Van Allen arranged the
selling floors first, keeping them open with relatively few columns. Then
Sullivan worked out an exterior that suited what they’d put behind it.
The
department store closed in 1991, leaving Clinton with an important building and
a problem to solve. The city bought it to keep it from slipping away. A rehab
finished in 2003 put apartments upstairs and kept retail space below.
It’s
a National Historic Landmark, but it’s also a useful building. People can live
upstairs while Sullivan’s work keeps doing its part down on the street.
Clinton
spent years cutting wood into things people needed. Now some of that wood has
come back as giant trolls. You could spend the better part of an hour looking
at their faces before noticing how many pieces went into them.
Danish
artist Thomas Dambo brought The Tree Thieves to Clinton in
spring 2026. Local volunteers helped turn reclaimed lumber and other materials
into three brothers named Helmut, Marvin, and Warren.
Helmut
stands near the Sawmill Museum. Marvin’s stretched out beneath a tree at
Bickelhaupt Arboretum, while Warren has taken up residence inside the old train
depot, across from the post office downtown.
Dambo
gave them a made-up story with a genuine piece of Clinton underneath it. The
brothers wake to discover their forest missing and follow the timber toward
town. The tree thieves in the story are the people who hauled the trees away.
Some
materials didn’t have far to travel. Old flooring from the Eagle Point Park
lodge became part of Marvin’s covering, and branches collected by city crews
became his hair. The Sawmill Museum supplied structural lumber.
Look
at their necklaces, too. Each carries a symbol you can enter on Dambo’s online
troll map to find a hidden installation. Apparently, three big fellows in plain
sight weren’t quite enough.
George
M. Curtis sold doors, sash, and woodwork. When he built his house in 1883, he
gave people a pretty good idea of what the business could turn out. The mansion
was a family home with a sales pitch worked into the rooms.
Different
woods, elaborate trim, and varied finishes let visitors see the possibilities.
The mansion’s historical foundation describes eleven fireplaces with different
tile treatments. If one arrangement didn’t catch your eye, there was another
room to look at.
Outside,
the house has the steep gables, projecting bays, decorative timberwork, and
fish-scale shingles associated with Queen Anne architecture. There’s plenty to
take in before you reach the door. The stained glass adds more once you’re
inside.
The
upper floor originally held a ballroom and servants’ quarters. Later owners
found other uses for some of that space, including rental apartments. Even a
house this grand had to adjust to whoever was paying its bills.
The
Clinton Woman’s Club acquired the mansion in 1925. That gave it a place in
community life long after its days as the Curtis family home. Tours and
preservation work have kept people coming through.
The
woodwork is still the thing to watch. Curtis built a business around what could
be made from lumber, and he left a house full of examples.
Before
it had a stage, the City of Clinton Showboat had barges to move. It began in
the 1930s as the Omar, a sternwheel towboat working for the Ohio
River Company. Entertainment wasn’t the assignment.
That
came later, when West Virginia acquired the retired boat for its centennial
celebration. Workers remodeled it with a theater and museum space and renamed
it Rhododendron, after the state flower. During 1963, it carried
performances from one river community to another.
Getting
around wasn’t always easy. Low bridges near Pittsburgh required changes so the
smokestacks could fold and the pilothouse could be adjusted. It eventually
reached Morgantown carrying the University of Pittsburgh football team for a
game against West Virginia University.
Clinton
bought the boat in September 1966. A waterfront flood-control project later
forced it to move temporarily, and it returned in 1980 with the City of
Clinton name. Eventually, it was set on the levee.
That
explains the slightly odd sight of a big riverboat sitting beside the river.
The paddlewheel, pilothouse, and decks still give away its earlier occupation.
Inside, professional summer theater has taken over the work.
It’s
had a towboat’s life, a traveling showboat’s life, and a long stay in Clinton.
For something that doesn’t go anywhere now, it’s covered plenty of ground.
Clinton’s
castle doesn’t go back to knights, kings, or anybody pouring boiling oil over
the wall. It goes back to the Great Depression. The Works Progress
Administration built the stone lookout tower as part of the improvements at
Eagle Point Park.
Iowa
State University’s WPA photograph collection has pictures of the completed
tower dated May 6, 1937. That puts a firm date behind something that looks
considerably older. The rough stone and notched walls do their job.
A
spiral stone staircase leads to an observation deck. The round tower, narrow
openings, and battlements give it the look of a small fortress. Its actual
duties have been easier on everybody.
The
WPA also put people to work building bridges, trails, and walks around the
park. Those projects supplied jobs and left Clinton with improvements that
lasted. The castle was one piece of that larger undertaking.
The
park itself started earlier. In 1888, Elijah Buell sold land to the owners of
the Clinton and Lyons Railway, and the grounds became known as Joyce’s Park.
Visitors came by rail before automobiles got their turn.
Today,
the castle gets used for photographs and children’s make-believe. That’s a
decent second chapter for a Depression work project. People needed jobs, the
park needed improvements, and Clinton wound up with a castle.
The
old Roosevelt School has been taking on new jobs since it opened in 1888. It
started as Clinton High School and Public Library, giving students and readers
a substantial building during the lumber years. The arches and tower made it
hard to overlook.
High
school classes stayed until 1922. Elementary pupils followed and remained until
1974, after which school administrators used the building. The district finally
moved out in 2012.
That
could’ve been the beginning of an empty-building story. Instead, a restoration
put 16 apartments inside, and the place reopened in October 2016. The work
uncovered hardwood floors and high ceilings that earlier alterations had
hidden.
Crews
restored woodwork and kept slate chalkboards. Some of the old school remained
right where it belonged, even as classrooms became places to live. One
apartment includes a sitting room high in the tower.
The
tower also holds names former students carved into the brick. They weren’t
scrubbed away during the restoration. According to reporting when the
apartments opened, Duke Slater’s name is among them.
Slater
helped Clinton High win a state football championship in 1914, became an
All-American at Iowa, and played professional football. His name and the others
stayed behind. Somebody lives in the old school now, with a little student
mischief preserved in the walls.
Clinton’s
Carnegie Library looks like the town meant business about books. Built in
1903–1904, the limestone building has the formal entrance and substantial
appearance people expected from a public institution. Chicago architects Patton
& Miller designed it.
Getting
it started took a letter. Mayor George D. McDaid wrote Andrew Carnegie in May
1901 asking for money, and Carnegie offered $30,000. That eventually grew to
$45,000, provided Clinton supplied a suitable site and money to keep the
library running.
Emma
Lamb Young donated the land. Voters approved a free public library in 1902, and
construction followed the next year. Carnegie supplied the building money, but
Clinton still had responsibilities of its own.
The
doors opened for a public showing on November 8, 1904. People could start
checking out books the following day, and they wasted little time. During the
18 days it was open that November, patrons checked out 5,440 books.
By
the end of the year, the library had 8,851 books and 2,862 registered
borrowers. That’s a pretty good start for a building that had barely opened.
The
place still serves as a library, though the offerings have changed considerably
since 1904. The old building now handles books, computers, programs, and local
history research. People are still coming through the doors looking for
something they didn’t know before.
The
old post office at 301 Fifth Avenue South wasn’t built to disappear into the
block. Its limestone walls, columns, and three-arched entrance gave the federal
government a substantial downtown address. Even without somebody selling stamps
inside, the building still looks official.
Construction
dates to 1901–1902, and the post office opened there on December 1, 1902. James
Knox Taylor and Louis A. Simon are credited with its design. The style is Beaux
arts, which helps explain why a place built to handle mail got such a
dressed-up entrance.
Clinton’s
postal service had done plenty of moving before settling there. Earlier offices
occupied several downtown locations, including a wooden building and quarters
in the Toll Block. In 1873, it moved into a building known as the Marble Front.
The
new government building gave postal operations a purpose-built home. Wolfe’s
county history put its cost at $100,000 and praised its marble interior and
granite trim. Clinton was plainly pleased with what it had gotten.
An
addition went onto the rear in 1934, and the front steps changed in 1966. The
post office finally closed in 1999.
That
left the familiar old-building question: what comes next? Redevelopment studies
have examined possible new uses, along with the expense of repairs and cleanup.
The architecture is easier to admire than the renovation bill.
You’ll
miss the stone walking bridge at Eagle Point Park if you stay in the car. It
crosses a small ravine between the lodge and the South Shelter picnic area.
It’s a little bridge, built solid, with no more fuss than it needs.
It
dates to around 1937, when the Depression had people looking for work and towns
looking for ways to pay them. The Works Progress Administration put crews to
work improving the park. The castle, stone bridges, and walking paths came out
of that effort.
The
bridge had a straightforward job: get people across the ravine. The stonework
fits the woods, and the crossing became another useful piece of the park. It
doesn’t get the attention the castle does, but somebody still had to build it.
Eagle
Point was already an old gathering place by then. The Clinton and Lyons Railway
established the park in 1888, bringing visitors out long before the WPA crews
arrived. The Depression work added to what was already there.
The
city has restored the bridge, and people still walk across it. Nearly ninety
years later, that’s a decent return on the work. The crews left Clinton
something it could keep using.
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