Masthead Logo The Palimpsest Volume 68 | Number 1 Article 5 1-5-1987 Cedar Rapids in the Roaring Twenties Clarence A. Andrews Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Andrews, Clarence A. "Cedar Rapids in the Roaring Twenties." The Palimpsest 68 (1987), 32-49. Available at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol68/iss1/5 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]. 1 by Clarence A. Andrews THE CEDAR RAPIDS to the river, because they were surrounded by which I came in May of some of the world s most fertile farmland, be­ 1919, fresh from a year on cause of good railroad transportation, and be­ the high arid plains of cen­ cause of a surplus rural population which tral Montana, hut weary produced a pool of workers looking for means from riding seventy-two to support themselves in the cities. Their facto­ hours in wooden coach seats on three different ries were agriculturally oriented, producing railroads, was mv second Iowa home. I had implements and tools for farmers and convert­ been born in Waterloo, fifty miles north, in a ing farm surpluses into food for the nation and house on the bank of the old Red Cedar River the world. in 1912. The two cities were much alike, indus­ The 1920s were to be boom years for the two trial towns in the Corn Belt, with east and west cities as well as for the nation. But the Parlor sides centered on the river. Both had devel­ City (as Cedar Rapids called itself, imitating oped because of the potential waterpower in such civic sobriquets as Chicago’s “Windy City,” Cincinnati’s “Queen City,’’ and Phila­ delphia s “Quaker City”) was to embark on a Above: A Cedar Rapids panorama shows May’s Island, period of growth which eventually would make stretching under three bridges, before the new construc­ tion of the 1920s. Boxed line drawings inset throughout it Iowa’s second largest urban area. article are from the 1928 Acorn yearbook, courtesy of The nickname “Parlor City," suggesting a Coe College. middle- to upper-class residential image rather 32 THE PALIMPSEST ' : v ■s X \ £ .<as ■■V . •- •s&sx-v* than a working-class image, was well chosen. the nation’s largest Masonic library. Cedar Rapids was a city of many fine homes, Like the rest of the United States after the including Brucemore (the three-story mansion end of “the war to end all wars,“ Cedar Rapids of the Douglas family, set on eighteen acres of was in an expansionist mood. Of 363 business landscaped ground) and the Robert Armstrong leaders interviewed by the Cedar Rapids home, designed by artist Grant Wood. (Arm­ Gazette for a daily column in 1926 and 1927, strong was to be a driving force in Cedar Rapids two-thirds were Republicans but were not for the next seven decades.) When an English standpat Republicans. Although most admired visitor was being shown Cedar Rapids, he President "Silent Cal’ Coolidge, they were not asked at last Xto be shown the city’sJ slums. He marching in place. One of those hard-headed was told by his guide that the working-class Republicans, David Turner, son of a Cedar homes he was looking at came as close to a slum Rapids pioneer, became the patron for Grant area as the citv had. Wood, subsidizing him with a home, studio, Each quarter of the city had its own park, and funds so that Wood might have the time including one adjacent to the downtown busi­ and a place to work. When Frances Prescott, a ness district, another with a zoo, and another principal at both Adams and McKinley junior which stretched for almost a mile along the high schools, hired the uncertified Wood to river. It had an outstanding four-year college, teach art classes, the school board backed her. an auditorium, a nationally famous opera Jay Sigmund, an insurance company vice- house, the “world s largest cereal mill, and president, was as much respected for his SPRING 1987 33 r-h '-r 3 H p CD?■ h—«L> X — CDo • w i—2•—- •^ 3"" sj qs. =p o 3 " « tn r-t- f\«\ C/> O P »—«P O 3 C- 3^>> 3 > P ^ 3 CD X ■ ET 3 • o • 3 r-*r m3 p > 0 v< X *Tj * 3 P rD O ^ '< C/35 • g c r-t- v< 1 PI w w/—v poems (the Gazette printed them on its edi­ was a class in dramatic art. torial page) as for his business acumen. This The city had fourteen grade schools in 1920, same Jay Sigmund inspired a young Paul Engle ten of which were nineteenth-century two- and * to become a poet also, and eventually head of th ree-story red brick buildings, three of which the world-famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop at were new and modern in design, and one of the nearby University of Iowa. which was a wooden building (in “Stump- Luther Brewer, a newspaper and book pub­ town,” south of the city on the west bank of the lisher, was attracting national attention for the river). Several of these schools offered eight books he published and for his astuteness in grades of instruction plus kindergarten; the building a unique collection of rare books and others offered only six grades and kinder­ manuscripts focused on the great poets of Eng­ garten. The fourteen schools were named for land’s Romantic Period. Brewer had installed a deceased United States presidents, beginning huge bed in an upstairs bedroom to accommo­ with Washington; the school in Stumptown date occasional visits from his oversized friend, was Pierce School. Each school had a “prin­ former president William Howard Taft. cipal teacher, often simply called the “prin­ In March of 1929, the Carnegie Corporation cipal. These persons, all women in the 1920s, chose Cedar Rapids as the midwestern city in were also the school disciplinarians. In addi­ which it would subsidize a “Little Gallerv”* of tion there were four Catholic schools, two on art and pay the salary of Edward Rowan, the each side of the river, a Lutheran primary gallery’s first professional director. school, and a Catholic academy. I arrived in Cedar Rapids just in time to hear I he public schools were fortunate in having the roar of the explosion which blew the Doug­ an able, progressive superintendent, Arthur las Starch Works sky high on the night of May Deamer, and progressive-minded school 22, 1919, killing forty-three men, among them board members. In 1920, Deamer and his the workman who had just taken my father’s board proposed that Cedar Rapids mortgage its place fifteen minutes earlier. That fall I started future and build one or two new grade schools school at the old Taylor School; before I com­ to replace obsolete buildings, and several new pleted schooling in January of 1930, I attended junior high schools. The new junior highs almost everv west-side school. My family would change the school system from an 8-4 moved often. basis of grades to a 6-3-3 basis, a relatively new concept at that time. One hope was that with THE CEDAR RAPIDS this system, students who might otherwise schools in 1920 included drop out at the end of eighth grade might be Washington High School, a encouraged to complete ninth grade. For a three-story Gothic stone time in the 1920s, Madison School on the west structure across the railroad side was the site of classes for fourteen- to tracks from the Union nineteen-year-olds who had dropped out and Depot. The Gazette usually referred to it as the then returned. Cedar Rapids High School, even though there Bolstered by support from women voters, was a newer high school on the west side. That who had just won the right to vote in August, was the Grant Vocational High School, in­ the proposal carried by a landslide. Work on tended to train west-side students in the man­ Junior High School and Buchanan ual arts which led to factory jobs. To west- grade school got under way at once. Roosevelt, siders the implication was clear — the east side Franklin, and \\ ilson junior highs followed in was cultured, upper class; its students would turn. \\ ilson opened in September of 1925. go to college and become the city’s leaders. In 1923 the school 1 )oard ordered a program So in the early 1920s, west-side citizens, of accelerated classes which would allow egged on by their children, rebelled against some students to complete seventh and eighth this discrimination. They demanded and got grades in a year and a half. Students were to be the same liberal arts program that the east-side selected for the program on the basis of test school had. The first liberal arts class at Grant scores and their grade point averages for fifth 34 THE PALIMPSEST Known as the “White Bank,” American Trust and Savings Bank was where Cedar Rapids schoolchildren deposited pennies on Bank Days. As students practiced thrift, new multistory buildings downtown reflected prosperity. SPRING 1987 35 and sixth grades. In the fall of 1924, I was one of signed for right-handed students, and I invari­ six southwest-siders selected, three girls and ably got a failing grade in penmanship because th ree boys.