Enjoy a collection of pictures that I have taken since moving to downtown in March 2008. I just love this place!

Image Courtesy of Scripophily.com - The Gift of History

In the late 1800s, something needed to be done to improve efficiency. A writer with a pen was limited to about 30 words per minute. In Des Moines of the 1880’s a lot of time and money was put into experimentation to perfect a typewriter. Finally, in 1892 that typewriter was ready for the market.

George Jewett founded the Jewett Typewriter Company. It’s offices and factory were at 608 Locust in downtown Des Moines. A few months later the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago. The Manufacturer’s Building at the Fair was a showcase for American products. If a company won a Columbian medal in product competitions, it was a blessing for product recognition and a huge present for a company’s advertising department. In the months following the Fair, advertisements always boasted about awards and proudly pointed out, for example that this product was, “1st place.” The Jewett typewriter received the highest award at the Fair. Suddenly, the typewriter was in high demand. Seven years later at The Paris Exhibition it would receive the Gold Medallion Award. The Jewett typewriter sold for $100, comparable to today’s computer. The company rose to over 200 employees with a weekly payroll of $2,500. Today the Jewett Typewriter, once called “Best in the World,” fetches over $900 on E-bay.

Germany became one of the favorite customers of the Jewett typewriter. In one week in January 1899, The Jewett Company received orders for 87 typewriters for the German Government and 30 typewriters for the U.S. government. The Germania typewriter was manufactured in Germany with parts imported from Des Moines. On one of his last trips to Europe, Jewett sold his last typewriter to Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. In 1903 the Kaiser Wilhelm Ocean Liner was the first to have typewriting accommodations at sea. A decade letter the typewriters in Washington D.C. and Berlin would become an instrument of war against each other.

The Jewett typewriter can be seen at the Typewriter Museum in Helsinki, the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., and the State Historical Building in Des Moines.

Continuing with our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week, this week’s picture comes from Flickr user, Gabriel Saenz a.k.a gSaenz and is of a Thunder Storm over downtown.

Check out previous pictures in of our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week.

A recent column in the Des Moines Register, Elbert: What works and what needs work in downtown Des Moines? included some thoughts on the skywalk. According to the article, the number one area to improve downtown is the skywalk system.

Some hate them and believe they kill street level business, some love them, but just want them updated. I’m with the second crowd. Here’s my personal opinion:

I have to throw my two cents in here as a downtown resident and worker. The skywalk system is something I use everyday and having lived a lot of cities, this is one thing that makes Des Moines unique. When friends come from out of town they always comment on how great it its.

Yes, I’ve said many times in my blog that it needs a major overhaul, which doesn’t all have to come from a huge budget. I’ve presented ideas as simple as donating blank white walls as canvases to local schools art departments, to local artists, photographers, etc.

I don’t buy into the argument that the skywalk has cut off street level retail on the weekends. Very few businesses are even open on the skywalk level on weekends and the system is pretty dead up there on the weekends, so I don’t believe that the streets are empty because everyone is up in the skywalk.

On nice warm days, a lot of us that use the skywalks go outside to travel also.

Here’s an example of where getting used to the skywalk system can burn you. This past week it has been really cold, so when a friend came over to hang out we decided we use the skywalk to go down to Sarpino’s around 8pm to pick up a pizza. We were going to take the skywalk the whole way there only to realize that the doors in the Griffin building lock after a certain time and you can’t get down to street level, so we ended up going out the front doors of the Hubbell building next door.

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I hope you enjoy this collection of Holiday inspired photos and music. I also wanted to say “Thank You” to all of my first time and regular readers of the blog. I hope to bring even more exciting content in 2009. Best Wishes to All!

The Des Moines Register recently published their “Top Dining of 2008″ list. Several of the top were restaurants located here in downtown. Let’s take a look at what they said about a few of them and as I said before this list only contains the downtown restaurants, so the list is not all inclusive.

Check out the full article in the Des Moines Register for the Five Best Fine-Dining Dishes and the Five-Best Casual Dining Dishes.

I know Des Moines is a far cry from the Big Apple, but maybe we can learn from one of their studies. Reports show that New York City’s Department of Transportation is now studing lighting up New York City with LED in the cities 300,000 street lamps.

In the study, the new light poles will be between four to six feet, and have up to 100 LEDs each. They will have four light sources per pole, and can create different light patterns. The light footprints can be tailored for parks, street corners or mid-block.

The city will begin testing with a mere six poles, and the testing period will end by fall of 2009. But even if the city approves the highly-efficient lamps, it’s likely they won’t roll out 300-thousand new lamp poles all at once.

I’m not sure what lifespan we have on our lighting downtown, but I’m hoping this could be a seriously consider option for downtown Des Moines in the future.

Here’s some interesting statics on LEDs.

If all of the world’s light bulbs were replaced with LEDs for a period of 10 years, researchers estimate the following benefits would be realized:

• Energy savings of 1.9 × 1020 joules
• Electrical energy consumption would be reduced by terawatt hours
• Financial savings of $1.83 trillion
• Carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 10.68 gigatons
• Crude oil consumption would be reduced by 962 million barrels
• The number of required global power plants would be reduced by 280

“Deployed on a large scale, LEDs have the potential to tremendously reduce pollution, save energy, save financial resources…”, reseracheers, E. Fred Schubert and Jong Kyu Kim.

Continuing with our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week, this week’s picture comes from Flickr user, Andy a.k.a Akoestner, from West Des Moines and is of Principal Park.

Check out previous pictures in of our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week.

In 2008 we saw a lot of change downtown. Despite the rough economic times, we saw 22 businesses either open or move into downtown. At the same time we saw 19 businesses either close their doors or re-locate outside of downtown.

Here is an alphabetical listing of businesses that opened or moved downtown in 2008:

AJ’s
AK O’Conners 
Alba
At Ease Salon & Day Spa
Brilliant Sky Toys
Burgers, Subs and More
Capitol City Music
Django
Dornink
Full Spectrum Productions
Komodo Klub
Lasting Impressions Tattoo & Piercing Studio
Lee Ann Conlan Gallery
Mustard’s
Pelican Bar & Nightclub
Proof Restaurant
Sbrocco
Schaffer’s opened & closed in East Village in 2008
Skosh Gallery
Smokey D’s BBQ
The Underground
Two Percent to Glory

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I recently ran across a YouTube Video that a guy named Adam put together back in October to provide a mini tour of downtown Des Moines.

Create Your Own

I thought I would share this cute little holiday video that helps us realize what the world would be without the internet. For one, I guess you wouldn’t be reading this blog. I hope you enjoy!

With thanks to: http://www.itsawonderfulinternet.com/

There are some great photographers that capture really unique views of Des Moines. So with that in mind, I’m beginning a new series this week, each week we will feature a selected picture of the week.  This week’s picture is from Don McLaughlin, Clive, Iowa.

Don says that next to photographing his grandchildren, downtown Des Moines is his favorite place to take photos. He said he took over 300 photos this weekend all in around the downtown. The picture below is just one of them. You can see more of his work on Flickr.

Now why again did I move to the Midwest from sunny South Florida?

Five Questions With… is a series on DMweblife highlighting Des Moines area bloggers and their blogs! I was featured in last week’s edition.

Check out the article to see how I responded to the five following questions: 

• What’s the main reason you began blogging, and how has your blog changed or evolved in the time you’ve been keeping it?
• What aspect of blogging do you enjoy the most?
• What’s an activity besides blogging that you can’t live without?
• What’s the best advice – personal or professional – you’ve ever received?
• What’s something you’ve accomplished in the past five years that you are particularly proud of?
• And a final question: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about Des Moines as a community, and to what degree is that misconception inhibiting our growth?