The eastern Iowa city of Dubuque is getting a hefty grant to revive a centerpiece of its park system while also restoring the work of a prominent architect from nearly a century ago.
Dubuque city planner Chris Happ Olson says Alfred Caldwell designed Dubuque’s Eagle Point Park when he came to the Mississippi River town during the New Deal era.
“That was in the 1930s,” Happ Olson says. “It was a prairie style design that was kind of late in the prairie style, but it is an exquisite design, and it was really at the beginning and an important part of his career.”
Caldwell went on to a storied career in Chicago. Dubuque has struggled to maintain Caldwell’s designs in recent years, but city parks director Matt Kalcevich says a Wisconsin-based foundation is granting 750-thousand dollars to restore three stone buildings tucked into the riverside bluffs.
Kalcevich says, “That would be a seismic contribution to the improvements that are needed in the structures.”
The site is on the National Register of Historic Places. The money comes with a two-to-one match. In the next three years, the city must raise an additional one and a half million dollars to secure it.
Over the years, the Jeffris Family Foundation has also helped preserve a church and a historic mansion in Dubuque.
(Gavin McGough, Iowa Public Radio)