New Heating Plant at University of Iowa

(From the Des Moines Register. November 6, 1927)

The Des Moines Register published a photograph of the new heating plant under construction at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. The project was expected to be completed by the spring of 1928.

The plant was designed by Proudfoot, Rawson & Souers, with Professor B. P. Fleming serving as consulting engineer. The total projected cost was $500,000.

A Brief History of the Union Brewery in Iowa City

Workers outside a brewery in the 1860s

The Union Brewery in Iowa City felt like a place that survived on nerve alone. Built in 1856 by Simeon Hotz, a shoemaker turned brewer, it grew into a brick stronghold at Linn and Market, a place the Iowa State Register said operated with “a confidence that must be admired, considering the temperance sentiment now fashionable in the Capitol.”

The brewery didn’t just sell beer — it sold identity. Hotz and Anton Geiger were German immigrants who brought their lager brewing with them, and Iowa City drank it up like a man who’d been wandering the prairie too long.

 

By 1868 they expanded into the big building — three stories, beer cellars underneath, steam heat, the whole industrial symphony. Locals wandered in and out of the taproom, leaving footprints in the sawdust and carrying home gossip hotter than the kettles.

Washington Street Iowa City, Iowa. Circa 1910

 

Washington Street in Iowa City, Iowa. (from a vintage postcard, circa 1910)