Quote:
Originally Posted by fflint
I had no idea Cedar Rapids was so urban and urbane! I especially like the former city hall building on the island.
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Iowa cities tend to punch far above their weight, since our boom days were 1910 through 1940, and then we didn't really have the suburban rush that took businesses out of downtowns, meaning we tended to keep our downtowns mostly intact without waves of new buildings to replace the old ones, but we also didn't have the population losses that vacated downtown businesses.
Iowa City has the highest population density between Chicago and central Denver, Des Moines has perhaps the largest skyscraper cluster for a metro under 600k in the country, all of our Mississippi River towns (Dubuque, Clinton, Davenport, Muscatine, Burlington, Keokuk) have well preserved late 1800s/early 1900s cores, etc. Was it Thundertubs that had a great series where he followed the Mississippi down, photographing the river cities?