This weekend is all about Hair Spray, as the award winning musical returns to the Civic Center for three nights. The people of Des Moines will be swept away to 1960s Baltimore in this smash hit musical, piled bouffant-high with laughter and romance – and enough deliriously tuneful songs to fill a nonstop platter party.

If you missed it the last time it was here, make sure you check it out this time! It has a great story line, set in 1962—the ’50s are out and change is in the air. Baltimore’s Tracy Turnblad, a big girl with big hair and an even bigger heart, has only one passion—to dance. She wins a spot on the local TV dance program, “The Corny Collins Show” and, overnight, is transformed from outsider to irrepressible teen celebrity. But can a plus-size trendsetter in dance and fashion vanquish the program’s reigning princess, win the heart of heartthrob Link Larkin, and integrate a television show without denting her ‘do? Only in HAIRSPRAY! Welcome to the ’60s!

This got me wondering what life was like in Des Moines in the 1960’s. So doing a simple Google search, here’s what I found:

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Google has just added image archives from LIFE Magazine, the storied American photo journal, to its image search. Google Images has launched a special page for the collection, allowing you to browse photos by specific topic like Marilyn Monroe or Winter Olympics, or places like Des Moines. You can also now append “source:life” to any Google Images search to see photos from the magazine.

Most of the photos actually didn’t appear in LIFE, but rather, were gathered from “dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints.”

According to Google, there are roughly 10 million photos in total, about 2 million of which have been put online so far. Time Inc, which owns the rights to the LIFE Magazine content, also plans to launch Life.com next year.

Here’s the link to go straight to the Des Moines archive: http://images.google.com/images?q=des+moines&q=source%3Alife.

The photo that appears here is from the TIME Magazine cover for August 28th, 1995 on the 20th Century Blues. Detail of painting “Automat” (1927) by Edward Hopper; from the Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collection.

Here are a few other pictures from that collection that I liked.

Several readers have pointed out resources to historical Des Moines post cards. I think it’s amazing how pictures can really capture a point in time that generations from now will look back on with amazement.

One site with great vintage post cards is USGenWeb Iowa Archives. Here are a couple of cards from their site that I particularly enjoyed.

Also be sure to visit the other site at WebShots.com there are several albums of great old post cards there.

A lot of you may not be familiar with the name Edna Griffin, but we should be, she was a civil rights pioneer in Des Moines, much like Rosa Parks in Alabama, and she has a downtown Des Moines building named after her. Edna became famous in 1948 with her court battle against the Katz Drug Store, which was located in the then known Flynn Building, later renamed the Edna Griffin Building in downtown Des Moines.

On July 7, 1948, Edna Griffin, her daughter Phyllis, and two friends, sat down at a lunch counter at the Katz Drug Store, ordered ice cream and were refused service because of the color of their skin. She then decided that she wouldn’t stand for this type of discrimination and made it her mission to put an end to discrimination in Des Moines. She launched a campaign to force the Katz Drug Store to serve African Americans by picketing every Saturday in front of the establishment, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone.

The Polk County Attorney’s Office eventually prosecuted the store manager under Iowa’s only civil rights law, a criminal statute prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations. The store manager was found guilty by a jury and fined $50. Soon after, restaurants in Des Moines finally began serving African Americans. What was unique about this, was that it was almost twelve years before similar sit-ins at the lunch counters began around the country.

In 1998, on the 50th anniversary of her successful desegregation efforts, the Flynn Building, which once housed Katz Drug Store, was renamed the Edna Griffin Building. The same year, Des Moines Mayor Preston Daniels declared May 15 as Edna Griffin Day. Later, in 2004, a pedestrian bridge in downtown Des Moines was named after her.

Continuing the old downtown Des Moines photo series, here are some photos that I came across of what downtown Des Moines looked like in 1940. These photos are attributed to John Vachon, via the Library of Congress.

State Capitol

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I came across some interesting photos of what downtown Des Moines looked like in 1958, about this time 50 years ago. These photos are attributed to a Charles W. Cushman, and are part of the Indiana University Archives.

Looking East on Locust St. toward the Capitol

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The list for Des Moines’ most endangered buildings is in and three of the seven are located in downtown Des Moines. The Des Moines Rehabbers Club sought public nominations this past summer and selected seven buildings that represent a variety of styles and ages. Rehabbers Club organizer Steve Wilke-Shapiro, who coordinated the nominations, said the seven buildings “have individually compelling tales.”

Below are three that are located in downtown, two are in the Sherman Hill neighborhood and one is in the East Village.

• The 1893 Sherman Hill mansion at 692 17th St. burned in 1988 and has been under reconstruction since.

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If you didn’t already know it, Google Book Search now includes some titles about Des Moines and Iowa in its online library. Google Book Search, formerly known for a short while as Google Print, is an online tool that searches the full text of books that Google scans, OCRs, and stores in its digital database. Google has an ongoing project where it is scanning approximately 3,000 books a day to add to its library database.

Some books can only be previewed online, others can be read in full. Here’s an excerpt of one book that I found, Beginnings, by a gentleman named Tacitus Hussey.

SOCIAL LIFE OF EARLY DES MOINES – THE NOTABLE HOUSE WARMING
Nearly a quarter of a century after the Redman had taken an unwilling departure from the territory of Iowa, the mansion known as “Terrace Hill,” now occupied by F. M. Hubbell, was built by B. F. Allen at a cost of nearly $250,000.00. ‘While the holiday joys of 1868 were in progress, or earlier, there were rumors that on the fifteenth, an anniversary of the marriage of B. F. Allen and Miss Arethusa West, January 29, 1854, the “Crystal Wedding” would be celebrated at this new and beautiful home, then completed. This information was confided to a few friends; but the news was so good and was such a fruitful topic of conversation that it was not long before the entire village of 7,000 souls was well informed of -the coming event, the date of which was fixed for January 29, 1869; and the female portion of the population were soon busy in overhauling their wardrobes.

You can read this full book at: http://books.google.com/books?id=Z4IUAAAAYAAJ 

I’ve embedded a couple of books here in this post that I also found online that you may like.

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Yesterday as part of the Doors of the Past – Sherman Hill Walking Tour, I was able to tour the historic Murillo building. The building is currently located at the corner of 16th Street & High Street in the Sherman Hill’s neighborhood. The building had been originally located at 531 14th Street, just three blocks from it’s current location.

The Murillo building was built in 1905 and is a three story, brick and masonry apartment building with six rental units, two per floor. The building was moved to the new site to help make room for Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shields new headquarters. The building’s move took place on March 1st and 2nd of this year and was even filmed for the History Channel and should debut later this year as part of their National Geographic Monster Moves series. I’ve included a couple of short YouTube videos from local videographers below. The move cost over $1 million and took 17 days to prepare for and took about eight hours to go the three and half blocks to its destination. 

The Murillo buildings is currently on the list for nominations to the National Register of Historic Places. According to it’s nomination details, the building is considered an outstanding example of the “flat building”, a new architectural form that was emerging in Des Moines at the turn of the century. The Murillo Flats was orginally dubbed the “McNamara Flats,” but its owners James McNamara changed the building’s name to Murillo Flats to recognize a favorite Spanish painters, Bartolome Esteban Murillo (c. 1617-1682) who was being featured in a Des Moines art exhibition at the time. The word “flats,” which was used in Britain at the time (and today) to describe an apartment building, enjoyed certain popularity in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, so the building was called the Murillo Flats.

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This morning, me and couple of my friends took the 2008 Doors of the Past Walking Tour in Sherman Hill, Des Moines’ oldest neighborhood. From its beginnings in the 1870s until today, this neighborhood has maintained a prominent place in the city’s heritage and its architecture has earned distinction as Des Moines’ first local historical district in 1982.

Sherman Hill is a neighborhood that has seen a renaissance in the last ten years, but there is still more to do. The pictures I took along the way show some really nice homes and others that are in of desperate attention. According to the neighborhood’s website: There are numerous factors that draw people to Sherman Hill and have helped fuel the renaissance of the neighborhood. Sherman Hill is an “urban” neighborhood that offers a rare concentration of rich architecture and history that can be found few places in the Des Moines metropolitan area. The proximity of Sherman Hill to downtown, the Ingersoll and Cottage Grove Business Districts, and Iowa Methodist Medical Center all contribute to Sherman Hill’s desirability.

Sherman Hill became one of the City’s first recognized neighborhood associations in 1993. In recent years the Sherman Hill Association has succeeded in its efforts to enhance more aspects of quality of life in the neighborhood. That dedication has resulted in many improvements to the area. Among their more notable accomplishments are the addition of historic street lighting, the success of the annual Walking Tour, the preservation of homes slated for demolition in other parts of the city, and reduction in crime, increased property values and numerous rehabilitation projects spearheaded by the residents and the association.

Sherman Hill offers a unique mix of Victorian, Queen Anne, Italianate, Turn-of-the-Century Four Squares, Double Houses, Stick Style and Flemish architecture.

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Looking out from my 9th floor unit I have a clear view of the back on one of Des Moines’ oldest landmarks. The umbrella sign was erected in 1963 on top of the Insurance Exchange Building at 5th and Grand Avenue. The sign was the logo for the Travelers Insurance Company until the logo was abandoned in 1995. A few years later, the insurance company was acquired by Citigroup, which kept the umbrella logo and sold the insurance company.

The 50-foot wide sign, that’s about 40-foot tall, can easily be seen driving down I-235 and is is still one of the first sights that drivers from the east notice when approaching the downtown on I-235.

The sign faced dismemberment a few times since it was installed, and was pretty run down until, left neglected over the years, but in the fall of 2005, the sign returned to it’s former glory. That’s when the Graham Group, owner of the Insurance Exchange Building on which the sign sits, agreed to take over maintenance of the sign.

The Travelers sign has become an unlikely Des Moines landmark.

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Nomination Deadline: September 22nd and can be emailed to: swilkeshapiro@gmail.com.
 

The Des Moines Rehabbers Club is seeking nominations from the public to name “Des Moines’ Seven Most Endangered Buildings.” Neighborhood groups, individuals, and businesses are encouraged to submit nominations for buildings in danger of demolition or neglect. Nomination forms are available for download at http://renovatedsm.com/node/305 and must be received by September 22, 2008 or can be emailed to: swilkeshapiro@gmail.com.

Eligible buildings must be located within the city of Des Moines, must be threatened with active demolition or severe neglect, and should not be in a condition that is beyond the possibility of rehabilitation. Buildings may be residential or commercial, of any size and being used for any purpose. The list will be announced in mid-October.

The Des Moines Rehabbers Club hopes to raise awareness of endangered structures in Des Moines and to promote opportunities for rehabilitating them.

The Des Moines Rehabbers Club is a group of people of all skill levels with a common interest in preservation, rehabilitation, and maintenance of Des Moines’ buildings. Free monthly meetings take place on the first Saturday of each month. Topics range from demonstrations and “work in progress” tours to classroom topics such as how to look up a home’s history. For more information you can  visit: http://renovatedsm.com/

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Des Moines Skyline - 1907

So, I was able to get out and get some more pictures earlier today. Keep in mind these were quickly taken and not completely lined up with the older samples, but you can get the gist of it. Even though the new pictures were taken from the same intersection, it’s hard to imagine that our city looked so different. Most of these older pictures that I found online were from 1911 era, I would love to see a respective sometime for each of the decades through the present.

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The architectural tour I took this week got me really thinking about downtown buildings. So I started doing a little research on our city skyline and the various buildings that make up that skyline and here’s what I found out.

The city of Des Moines has always had, what some consider fairly substantial skyline, for a population-base of its size. For example, the 19-story Equitable Building that was built in 1924 was at the time the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. It stayed the tallest building in Iowa until the 25-story Financial Center was completed in 1972. The Financial Center only held the honor of tallest building in Iowa for two years. In 1974 the 36-story Ruan Center was added to the Des Moines skyline. It would be 17 more years before the Ruan Center would get knocked down to second place by the 801 Grand tower that was completed in 1991. It has been another 17 years now, and no other taller structure is in the works, hopefully this will change, how else can we keep up with the Joneses, I mean with that city to the west, Omaha.

According to some there’s this whole rivalry between Des Moines and Omaha. Des Moines has over a half million people in the metro and Omaha has a over three-quarters of a million, yet the Des Moines skyline seems larger than Omaha’s. I’m sure if all depends on what you use to analyze or justify your statistics. Sure Omaha has a taller building than we do, by a whole 0.9 meters. So let’s take a look at this table that I put together that compares the number of buildings in four size ranges.

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So this evening I finally made it to one of the Architecture @ Hand Walking Tours. I did the North tour and had a great time learning about some of the buildings that I walk by everyday. The architectural details that my guide pointed out are things I have totally missed, but now will notice again and again on my walks through downtown. I never knew so many famous architects have designed buildings in our downtown and that we had so many different styles of architecture for a city our size. Now, I can’t wait till next summer when I can do the West, East and the new South tour. I would highly recommend these tours to anyone, it will help you experience downtown in a new and different way.

One of my favorite buildings, the Ruan Building, was completed in 1975, and stands 460 feet tall with 36 floors. It’s the second tallest building in Iowa. The outside is made out of Cor-Ten steel, which is an alloy designed to withstand the weather and require no maintenance (cleaning or painting). The building was supposed to weather to a rich red-brown color, but due to the cleaner atmosphere here, never quite made it to that color. I learned that the streaking on the building came from the window caulking that was used melting and running down the side of the building. A lot of people here thought the building was a big rust bucket, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I love the look of it.

From the Iowa Public Television site, I found this list of the 50 most significant Iowa Buildings
of the 20th Century as selected by the AIA-Iowa Chapter. The majority of these buildings are in downtown Des Moines. Dates listed here are completion dates.
* Designates building of the decade.
** Designates building of the century (which is also building of its decade.)

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