In Buildings of Iowa, David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim trace Iowa's architectural history from the earliest Native American influences to the present. Divided into five regional areas--Mississippi River East, Mississippi River West, and the Central, South, and North regions--the book's entries within each area are presented on a town-by-town basis to include the full array of Iowa's architectural offerings in various styles. Whether discussing farm houses, barns, and silos or churches, schools, courthouses, and libraries, the volume shows how a unity of rural and urban is effectively mirrored in Iowa's buildings.

George L. Horner, University Architect and Planner, 1906-1981 -- Buildings -- Architects -- Chronology of Building Completion/Occupancy Dates -- Sculptures -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index

Naegele's "Guide to the Only Good Architecture in Iowa" is a deceptive title but it is not a misnomer. 'Guide' is accurate.' Iowa' is fairly accurate. 'Naegele's' is there because this is a personal account, one that makes no attempt to be unbiased. 'Naegele's' qualifies 'Good', "good" being not absolute but contingent and personal and therefore a very questionable qualifier. 'Only' is the title's difficult word. "Only Good Architecture in Iowa" suggests that architecture is a scarce commodity in Iowa, a suggestion with which Naegele would agree if by "architecture" one means high architecture.By 'Architecture', however, Naegele means "good building," regardless of whether or not that which is built was designed by an architect or whether, in fact, it is a habitable structure or even a building at all. Most entries in this guide are concerned either with vernacular works that are habitable tools-barns, corncribs, ventilator machines, silos-or with built works that are not really buildings at all: billboards, bridges, murals, graveyards, landscapes, wind turbines and water towers. 'Only' brings irony to the title, rendering questionable the assumption it asserts and initiating debate within an otherwise matter-of-fact description. Its inclusion in the title predicts the book's mildly contentious, but always utterly practical, nature.

In June 1950, Frank Lloyd Wright paid a surprise visit to the Grant house, under construction near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This was Wright's first visit to the site, and he was worried about the house because, unlike most of Wright's clients, Doug Grant was building it himself, serving as his own general contractor and doing his own electrical work and carpentry. He and his wife, Jackie, quarried all of the stone for the house from their own quarry on the property, and both took an active part in the construction. Upon his return to Taliesin, Wright told the assembled group of architects and apprentices that he was extremely pleased by what he had seen. He delivered a long tribute to Grant, calling the act of building one's own house "an American proceeding." The book's foreword, contributed by the Wright Foundation's Director of Archives, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, calls the Grant house, "among some of the finest and most inspired that Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed."

In Buildings of Iowa, David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim trace Iowa's architectural history from the earliest Native American influences to the present. Divided into five regional areas--Mississippi River East, Mississippi River West, and the Central, South, and North regions--the book's entries within each area are presented on a town-by-town basis to include the full array of Iowa's architectural offerings in various styles. Whether discussing farm houses, barns, and silos or churches, schools, courthouses, and libraries, the volume shows how a unity of rural and urban is effectively mirrored in Iowa's buildings.

Lourdes and Churchtown, Woden and Clio, Emerson and Sigourney, Tripoli and Waterloo, Prairie City and Prairieburg, Tama and Swedesburg, What Cheer and Coin. Iowa’s place-names reflect the religions, myths, cultures, families, heroes, whimsies, and misspellings of the Hawkeye State’s inhabitants. Tom Savage spent four years corresponding with librarians, city and county officials, and local historians, reading newspaper archives, and exploring local websites in an effort to find out why these communities received their particular names, when they were established, and when they were incorporated. Savage includes information on the place-names of all 1,188 incorporated and unincorporated communities in Iowa that meet at least two of the following qualifications: twenty-five or more residents; a retail business; an annual celebration or festival; a school; church, or cemetery; a building on the National Register of Historic Places; a zip-coded post office; or an association with a public recreation site. If a town’s name has changed over the years, he provides information about each name; if a name’s provenance is unclear, he provides possible explanations. He also includes information about the state’s name and about each of its ninety-nine counties as well as a list of ghost towns. The entries range from the counties of Adair to Wright and from the towns of Abingdon to Zwingle; from Iowa’s oldest town, Dubuque, starting as a mining camp in the 1780s and incorporated in 1841, to its newest, Maharishi Vedic City, incorporated in 2001. The imaginations and experiences of its citizens played a role in the naming of Iowa’s communities, as did the hopes of the huge influx of immigrants who settled the state in the 1800s. Tom Savage’s dictionary of place-names provides an appealing genealogical and historical background to today’s map of Iowa. “It is one of the beauties of Iowa that travel across the state brings a person into contact with so many wonderful names, some of which a traveler may understand immediately, but others may require a bit of investigation. Like the poet Stephen Vincent Benét, we have fallen in love with American names. They are part of our soul, be they family names, town names, or artifact names. We identify with them and are identified with them, and we cannot live without them. This book will help us learn more about them and integrate them into our beings.”—from the foreword by Loren N. Horton “Primghar, O’Brien County. Primghar was established by W. C. Green and James Roberts on November 8, 1872. The name of the town comes from the initials of the eight men who were instrumental in developing it. A short poem memorializes the men and their names: Pumphrey, the treasurer, drives the first nail; Roberts, the donor, is quick on his trail; Inman dips slyly his first letter in; McCormack adds M, which makes the full Prim; Green, thinking of groceries, gives them the G; Hayes drops them an H, without asking a fee; Albright, the joker, with his jokes all at par; Rerick brings up the rear and crowns all ‘Primghar.’ Primghar was incorporated on February 15, 1888.”

Michael Harker’s goal is to record Iowa’s historically significant architecture before it disappears forever. From Coon Center School no. 5 in Albert City to Pleasant Valley School in Kalona, North River School in Winterset to Douglas Center School in Sioux Rapids, and Iowa’s first school to Grant Wood’s first school, he has achieved this goal on a grand scale in Harker’s One-Room Schoolhouses.