Des Moines Women’s Club Visits the Fair. 1893

From Des Moines Architecture & Design, by Jay Pridmore. The History Press, c2015 p81-82

An early episode of the City Beautiful movement came in 1893 when the Des Moines Women’s Club traveled to the World’s Colombian Exposition to visit the “White City,” palaces designed by the nation’s leading architects-was obvious to anyone who witnessed it. It’s example motivated the leaders of many growing cities to bring order and beauty to their own, which if left to economic utility or chance would have neither.

On the train to Chicago, one imagines, the Women’s Club passed the industrial districts of Des Moines’ East Side without comment. Coming home was another matter, however, as the women had been dazzled by the power of the fair’s Cours d’Honneur with pristine buildings and water features. As the discussed the beauty they had seen in Chicago, they were shocked if not surprised at what they saw out the windows. No sooner had the train passed within view of the State Capitol than Des Moines gave the impression hardly of a White City, but of a red city mostly brick or even a black city, covered in soot from the smoke of bituminous coal. Then came the river. If there was anything that distinguished it beyond ramshackle huts it was advertising signs that rose over sagging roofs on both banks. By the time the train pulled into the depot several blocks west of the river, the women were saying that something ought to be done about bringing public beauty to Des Moines, which was otherwise an economically healthy city.

It would take time to bring a sense of order and beauty to the Des Moines riverfront. But members of the Women’s Club, mostly the first generation of “society women” in Des Moines, possessed not just time but also ambition, and they worked, initially behind the scenes, to promote good planning and specifically a more dignified riverfront. It took time, but they got involved in 1900 when the Park Board brought landscape designer Warren H. Manning, formerly of Olmsted and Vaux (designer of New York’s Central Park and much of the Chicago fair). Manning had a look and was impressed by the city’s prospects. He delivered a report and called Des Moines “exceedingly fortunate in possessing so much of its river frontage in the very heart of the business district.” In the City Beautiful manner, he suggested, it should be reserved for public building.

The first building of the imagined riverfront, the Public Library, was ready in 1903. It took another six years for the second, the new Post Office. That one was nearly finished when the Women’s Club, perhaps impatient, brought another City Beautiful advocate to Des Moines. Charles Mumford Robinson, a journalist who wrote about cities in magazines such as the Atlantic, visited, and his report affirmed what Manning had said. He went steps further to detail a plan of broad boulevards radiating out from the river. Riverfront development would be marked by additional government buildings. He wrote, “A row of public buildings on either side, and park-encompassed, will creat-almost is creating-a Civic Center of extraordinary excellence.”

The only copy of Robinson’s illustrated report is located in the Des Moines Women’s Club archives.