The original railroad bridge that first crossed the Mississippi River in 1856 between Rock Island and Davenport is long gone, but there are obviously new spans to replace it.
The Government Bridge, which we drove across to Illinois to visit the two cities that make up half of the Quad Cities, is quite the hulking mass of steel. It features of road deck on the bottom and a railroad deck on top and dates from 1896.
Rock Island is an interesting city, surrounded by the Mississippi River on the north and northwest, and Rock River on the south and southwest.
In a way, it lies on an isthmus. We first look at the Broadway neighborhood with some beautiful architecture.
Again, like over in Davenport, we see some beautiful and quite old Italianate architecture, which strongly bears a resemblance to Chicago Italianate (no surprise there) due to the important railroad connections. We saw the same phenomenon in Quincy.
But then, except for the house above, which is barely so, we see architectural styles jump right over the Second Empire straight to the Queen Anne.
We see more gable topped spires just like we saw in Burlington and Hannibal. We do not see that in St. Louis at all, that I know of.
But wow, there are beautiful houses built with the lumber that came down the Mississippi River from the Northwoods.
Oh hey, what’s that I see? It’s Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum! Remember when St. Louis had one of those until it was gutted by fire?
Of course, no Rock Island County Courthouse in your little tour of the Quad Cities. Talk about a gut-wrenching loss. I give historic preservationists in the area a lot of credit; they fought very hard to save that building, and they should have won.