Continuing our end of the month series of Iowa river towns upriver from St. Louis, we next arrive in Muscatine. We first pass by a power plant, taking advantage of rail lines along the flat floodplains to receive its bounty of coal.

Muscatine was founded in 1833 by George Davenport and was originally known as Bloomington when it was incorporated in 1839. It was renamed after a local tribe, supposedly.

We arrived into the town on the south side, which is a little bit more of the gritty industrial side of Muscatine, but we hung a left and proceeded up the bluffs and discovered that some beautiful architecture awaited those willing to do the requisite exploring.

Muscatine was the center of the pearl button industry in the world, and the vast majority of all that type of button was manufactured in the city. The buttons were made from mussels harvested from Mississippi River, and there is even a museum about the industry.

While many of the houses were almost certainly Queen Anne style dwellings that have been simplified and have had their millwork removed…

…there are also many Italianate masterpieces such as this one below, complete with a cupola and widow’s walk that have been restored, though white was almost certainly not the original color.

Bright, multiple colors were more expensive and increasingly easier to acquire by wealthy homeowners, so it was only natural to see them on large houses such as this one.

There is also this Greek Revival house which was hidden by trees.

This house is painted in a manner more common to an Italian dwelling.