Pop. 57,696, 11th largest city in Iowa and the 680th largest city in the USA
Dubuque’s Town Clock was moved from the building and tower it was first built on at 825 Main Street in 1873 to the top of its own Town Clock Plaza nearby in 1971. It is the centerpiece of downtown Dubuque and stands at the heart of a unique American city.
Dubuque is historically affluent. At one time it was America’s biggest settlement west of the Mississippi. In the 1800s the largest buildings in the country were factories and warehouses built in Dubuque, to take advantage of nearby forest lumber from Minnesota and Wisconsin and easy river passage through the Mississippi.
River steamboat traffic was so heavy they built a federal port in Dubuque, and even now the Coast Guard still marks the river for commercial traffic traveling the coast of Iowa.
From 1800 to 1950 Dubuque possessed the largest district for millwork manufacturing in the United States. On flat roads every day just outside the port, thousands of Dubuque millworkers came down the bluffs in shifts to lathe, press, cut and form nearly every wooden finishing piece in nearly all wooden single-family homes under construction in America.
Doors, windows, sashes and bars. Railings, balustrades, closets, cabinets and desks. Tables and chairs. Dressers, vanitys and more. At some point, if it was milled from lumber in America, it was likely fabricated in Dubuque.
URBAN RENEWAL REDEVELOPMENT
America’s flirtation with Urban Renewal redevelopment schemes in the 1960s and 70s to clear out decaying inner cores of old manufacturing neighborhoods and repurpose them for new residential and commercial projects came to a semi-frustrating result in Dubuque, and part of the town’s unique architectural style and craftsmanship was deliberately stripped away and lost in the process.
During Urban Renewal, fully half of Dubuque’s historic manufacturing buildings were torn down, and when this started happening and then continued to happen, Mike Schmalz noticed.
“This strips the urban heritage right out of the heart of the city. Dubuque is so unique, so diverse, why strip the details?” Schmalz said.
“In Dubuque the buildings are very important, every type of building architectural style is represented, and in many cases the buildings are nationally significant.”
City Hall, built in 1858. County Courthouse, built in 1891. The Five Flags Center and the Orpheum Theater, first built in 1840, stands as is since 1864. St. Luke’s Methodist Church stands as it has since 1896 and has more Tiffany stained glass windows than any other church in the state. The Eagle Point Bridge was an ultra-modern toll bridge connecting farmers and markets in 1895, and the General Zebulon Pike Memorial Lock & Dam #11 transformed Mississippi river barge traffic in 1937.
“There was this avant garde push to go through and bastardize the architectural stock of the country’s downtowns. Under the guise of modernization they sought to remove details, simplify facades and put coverings on highly detailed work from previous generations.”
Even today, academic professors from architecture departments around the country regularly tour Dubuque with their students to marvel at the different construction and design styles so closely co-located in one place.
Pupils and instructors alike both notice Dubuque’s higher caliber of materials and quality of construction. They all see with their own eyes how buildings in Dubuque were built better, with more detail in the finish and an overall eye for design. The seekers see things from a recent past that tells so many stories about what this city is now. They see things you don’t normally see businesses spending money on any more.
But Dubuque is not Chicago, and there are few public buildings in the city. Most of these big structures started out as investments by private invividuals in family businesses.
“These were giant industrial processing buildings – mills, factories, warehouses – and the investors took pride in ownership and spent money on their real estate. They wouldn’t cut corners to increase profit for shareholders.”
Schmalz was saddened.
“So many cities have let their main street and city center fall apart under Urban Renewal, when it should have been all about architectural revitalization for the stuff that we’ve already got. Designers won awards for this stuff. It’s more in the spirit of who you really are if you repurpose and reuse the things your predecessors invested their capital in. People took care of their most valued things. They sought out quality and worked hardest. ”
“It’s just a crying shame.”
MAIN STREET DOT ORG
The turnaround began in 1985. Dubuque organizers sought outside guidance and soon found themselves embarking on a nationally scrutinized journey as one of seven pilot cities in the Urban Main Street Demonstration Program, funded and coordinated by the National Trust.
In short, Main Street Dot Org, or MainStreet.org as it is now known, teaches leaders how to strengthen their communities through preservation-based economic development in older and historic downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts. It arose as an antidote to the plague of Urban Renewal. The pilot program succeeded and soon state-level organizations across the country began sharing and learning from Dubuque’s pilot city experience.
Dubuque’s own committees and councils since 1985 have revitalized the city and played a hand in attracting nearly $25 million in grant monies to the historic downtown development group. Dubuque Main Street, as the local organization is known, in 1995 earned the city one of just five Great American Main Street program designations. In 2006 the National Trust named the city an Urban Pioneer Award Winner, and in 2007 Dubuque was named the All-America City for the first time.
In 2019 the National Civic League named Dubuque its All-America City for a record fifth time.
More relevant to their success, Dubuque Main Street is a non-profit organization, and is the only city-level Main Street organization in Iowa to secure more than $550,000 in eight of nine cycles through Main Street Iowa’s Challenge Grant program. Civic participation in Dubuque Main Street is vigorous and enthusiastic.
Year round public and community events fill social calendars and seasonal artistic programs in Dubuque due to the combined efforts of Dubuque Main Street and local businesses. The Bluesfest. The Riverfest. The Summerfest. The Dubuquefest. The Taste of Dubuque. Cable Car Square Chili Cook Off and Candle Walk. The Prescott School Summer Percussion Program Concerts. Farmers Market. Discover Downtown Dubuque Days. Puttzin’ Around Downtown.
And All That Jazz.
Every second Friday in June, July, August and September organizers for Dubuque’s All That Jazz close downtown streets, bring in food trucks, fire up the bands and host a Summer afternoon and early evening of music, food, drinks and dancing under Dubuque’s Town Clock.
All That Jazz is the most successful fundraiser for Dubuque Main Street.
PHOTOSHOP MASTERS
Every year since All That Jazz began in 1994, Mike Schmalz has created a new poster for the summer concert series. Organizers use the unique image as a logo for all they seek to accomplish in mounting four months of civic volunteerism and mass public appeal.
The design is featured on posters that advertise the event. It appears on commemorative T-shirts, coffee mugs and bumper stickers. Collectors buy framed prints in limited-edition signature series and hang them in their houses.
For their friends from childhood who moved away, Dubuquers buy and send these prints as gifts that import a taste of home. And those Dubuquers who have moved away, when they come back and see what Dubuque Main Street has done for downtown, all unanimously nod in assent, in a very midwestern display of understated excitement over a thing, that life in Iowa’s very first town is very much better nowadays downtown.
And doesn’t this All That Jazz poster beat all? How about that? Won national awards!
The images carry heat off the surface. Schmalz chooses Dubuque’s iconic Town Clock each year, and brings in other icons from around the city to sit together in composed contrast. You hear the music and the crowd, you feel the outdoor acoustics from talented spirits, playing and listening and enjoying each other’s company on a breezy summer night. Schmalz uses stylized renderings of County Courthouse, the cable elevators, monument towers, big wall and all the art deco, beaux arts and visceral design styles that pump life and sound into the heart of All That Jazz.
How he got there is quite the story…..