Masthead Logo The Palimpsest Volume 63 | Number 2 Article 4 3-1-1982 Davenport's Golden Building Years Edmund H. Carroll, Jr Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Carroll, Jr, Edmund H. "Davenport's Golden Building Years." The Palimpsest 63 (1982), 52-65. Available at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol63/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the State Historical Society of Iowa at Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The alP impsest by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. I The Palimpsest 53 «K ... COURTESY QUAD-CITY TIMES n August 28, 1929, all Davenport foundation of this era of downtown construc­ paused to gaze into the sky. On this tion. From the 1880s, Davenport s role as the Oday, Dr. Hugo Eckener piloted his commercial center of the flourishing Tri-Cities Graf Zeppelin over the proud river town. had led to increasing congestion along her main While Dr. Eckener soared overhead and commercial arteries: Front, Second, and Third Davenport s numerous German-Americans streets. Competition for prime commercial cheered from below, the city showed off the corners bid prices on land ever higher. More­ face of her new downtown skyline. Throughout over, physical and natural constraints on the the 1920s, Davenport had witnessed an un­ downtown worked against an outward progres­ precedented stream of building. Each new sion of growth. As historian Edward Espen- construction site prepared the way for the shade has noted, Davenport s distinction as a emergence of office buildings, banking houses, railroad “Loop City,” along with the down­ and movie palaces. town s east-west progression of growth parallel The rise of new buildings reflected Daven­ to the river, straightjacketed an outward ex­ port s growth and prosperity, and the succes­ pansion of major building. Escalating costs and sion oi ribbon cuttings by her commercial lead­ physical constraints, taken together, forced ers reinforced their unbridled optimism about builders to look upward, not outward, when the city s continued expansion. Postwar considering expansion. Davenport, as the commercial center for the Tri-Cities (which included Rock Island and Moline, Illinois), had a pressing need for ex­ he introduction of the elevator and panded commercial space. To meet this de­ structural steel in building design be­ mand, the pace of construction quickened. T fore the turn of the centurv was a tech- The forces working to push Davenport build- nological catalyst for the “vertical revolution. ing upward crystalized between 1919 and 1931. Architects now had a means by which to over­ Rising real estate prices, physical constraints come previous limitations on building heights. on the downtown area’s outward sprawl, and © Iowa State Historical Department/Division of the State His­ advances in building technology formed the torical Society 1982 0031—0360/82/0304—052 $1.00 by Edmund H. Carroll, Jr. 54 The Palimpsest For Davenport, the completion of the Scharff the prosperity that came with the w7ar, and Building marked the arrival of the “elevator Davenport shared in the benefits of the area’s age. Patients of B.J. Palmer, Davenport’s burgeoning production. Davenport manufac­ “fountainhead of chiropractic care, were turers received over $30 million in war con­ whisked by one of the city’s first elevators to tracts. Davenport’s population swelled as the Palmer’s top-floor clinic in the Ryan Block. manufacture of munitions at the Rock Island After 1900, D.H. Burnham, renowned Chi­ Arsenal drew7 more and more people to the cago architect and planner, sent Davenport’s area. Employment at the Arsenal climbed from office elevators even higher. The W.C. Putnam a fewr thousand in the prewar years to over Estate enlisted Burnham to design what was 14,500 in 1918. Farmers also shared in the called Davenport’s first “real skyscraper,’’ the wartime prosperity as the beneficiaries of re­ eight-story Putnam Building, which opened to cord commodity prices. John Deere & Com­ tenants in 1910. The landmark building was pany and other farm-implement manufacturers built at the heart of the commercial core and that were concentrated in Moline and Rock incorporated the latest construction designs Island worked overtime to satisfy7y farmers’ de- tested earlier in Chicago buildings. The build­ mand for new7 machinery. Bank deposits filled ing hung on an iron-steel system of internal Davenport bank vaults, merchants rang up support, a breakthrough that freed the walls record sales, and Davenport factories ex­ from supporting the weight of the building and panded their payrolls. By war’s end, the city’s thereby introduced reinforced concrete con­ financial, retail, and wholesale establishments, struction to the Tri-Cities. After the Putnam flush with prosperity, were bursting to expand Building opened, Davenport businessmen— their commercial space. confronted with accelerating commerce, higher land prices, and congestion—pressed architects and contractors to incorporate better ed by pent-up demand and nationwide building techniques and designs into their prosperity, the United States emerged plans. F from the war with a voracious appetite When the United States entered World War for new homes, buildings, roads, and plants. I in 1917, restrictions on construction other Although residential construction loomed than work essential to the nation’s war effort larger in dollar terms, commercial building left halted the parade of new buildings throughout an impressive mark on Davenport and many the country. Yet, the Tri-Cities boomed with other cities throughout the country. The years from 1919 to 1931 in Davenport were high­ Note on Sources lighted by several major downtown building Much of the information in this article came from the archives of the Davenport Chamber of Commerce and projects. Local prosperity gave the initial push; from the files of the Davenport Democrat and Leader and New York provided the guiding light. All the the Daily Times. The author also consulted Edward B. Espenshade’s Urban Development at the Upper Rapids of nation watched as New York buildings went the Mississippi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, higher, culminating with the Empire State 1944) and John H. Fetzer’s 1945 University of Iowa doc­ toral dissertation, “A Study in City Building: Davenport, Building in 1931. “What New York had,” wrote Iowa. Studies of national conditions during the war and postwar years include: William E. Leuchtenburg, The historian William Leuchtenburg in The Perils Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932 (Chicago: University' of oj Prosperity, “every interior city had to have Chicago Press, 1958); and George Soule, Prosperity Dec- ade: From War to Depression, 1917-1929 (New York too, and those on the prairies erected their own Rinehart, 1947). An annotated version of this article is on file at the towers. The skyscraper was as certain an ex­ library of the State Historical Society. pression of the ebullient American spirit as the Gothic cathedral was of medieval Europe. The Palimpsest 55 ft 'K / A i T < •ip .tad ;,uqj'u •- i W» C' :vi if*»*** iv> iLi. '- ^vr^JT' .. *• *- w u •w «- u>• U' <•« State! ii * TOl 1 rfr[irn ii ~~&&& KiSis?•At! KMliV. ±4m “ sUSV■ ■> r,’i> Chicago architect D.H. Burnham designed the Putnam Building (left) and the M L. Parker Building (tight) to incorporate a structural steel framework, the heart of modern skyscraper design. (courtesy Davenport Chamber of Commerce) The two buildings anchored a block on Second Street in Daven­ port's commercial core. (SHSI) Flush with the earnings from wartime pros­ president of the Walsh Construction Com­ perity' and optimistic about the city’s prospects pany, a nationally noted railroad and general ior the future, Davenport set out on a decade of contractor. He inaugurated postwar building in commercial construction. A generation of city a grand fashion with the announcement in 1919 builders, men whose direction and indus­ of his intent to build the $1.5 million Kahl triousness brought building plans to fruition Building and Capitol Theater. Kahl’s plans between World War I and the Depression, envisioned a building both larger and grander loomed as large as the buildings they erected. than its predecessor, the Putnam Building. His Daniel Burnham, writing a year after the com­ ten-story office building, complete with lavish pletion of the Putnam Building, encouraged basement restaurant and ground-floor retail future city builders to ‘Make no little plans; space, was hailed by the Daily Times as “the they have no magic to stir men’s blood. Make biggest feature in the business history of the big plans; aim high in hope and work. Let city. Betty Adler, writing for the same news­ your watchword be order and your beacon paper, reported that Kahl’s elaborately dec­ beauty. Throughout Davenport’s building orated, 2400-seat movie palace “marked an years, prominent Davenport businessmen epoch for Davenport. All the Tri-City' Sym­ made their contributions to the city’s* skyline.* phony orchestra, the art league and the wom­ Henry Hummer Kahl led the way in bring­ en s clubs have been trying to do to spread the ing changes to the face of the downtown. Kahl gospel of culture has been given a new impetus was a man of bold vision and inexhaustible by this Capitol Theater.” energy who had risen from laborer to vice­ The time between the ground breaking and > 56 The Palimpsest completion of the building proved to he a try­ storage space so prevalent in 1919 and the ing one for Kahl. Postwar inflation pushed the greater part of 1920. Increasing employment cost of materials and labor far beyond his ori­ in Davenport’s service fields, a pronounced ginal estimates.