Downtown Muscatine was really nice, with most of the storefronts occupied and many buildings looking like they had recently been renovated.
As would be expected, there are a plethora of Italianate storefronts, as one often sees in cities along the river.
The Laurel Building, below, was built in 1917 and was designed by William Hyland of Chicago, with the contractor coming up from St. Louis, W, M, Sutherland.
As I suspected, this was the location of a department store, McColm and Company, on at least the first four floors.
In later years it was a J.C. Penney.
Not surprisingly, there was a bank located nearby.
It has some interesting Mid-Century Modern renovations to its windows…
Then there’s this fascinating building standing at the corner of Iowa and Mississippi, with one of the most amazing cantilevered balconies out the front. It’s clearly been renovated into apartments or condos.
The riverfront looks like most in America, with a giant parking lot that sits empty except when there’s a festival going on.
This sculpture below is by Eric Blome and was cast in 2006, commemorating the workers who harvested the mussels whose shells were used for pearl buttons.
Old rings where riverboats or barges used to tie up are still visible in the pavement.
We’ll move inland as we continue to explore the downtown of Muscatine.
What a treat to see my hometown pop up here unexpectedly! The photo of the new Stanley Center is really neat to see. I’d known they were converting the old Library into a headquarters for the foundation, but they really did a great job on it. That building has been on it’s last legs since I was hanging out there in the late 90s.
So cool! Do you know what the tall building above with the big balcony used to be? I couldn’t figure it out.
That’s the old “Hotel Muscatine”. It was bought out sometime in the 2000s and the new owners built a new building at the other end of the block.