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Paved Beach Page 3

Tourist launch picking up passengers from the paved beach at 57th Street. The German Building is on the right, along with benches. c. 1913

The Iowa Building

What is usually referred to today as the Iowa Building at 56th Street west of South Lake Shore Drive is really not the Iowa Building, at least not the original Iowa Building. In fact, the structure not only doesn't look like the original Iowa building, it is also smaller and stands at a distance from where the original once stood. Nonetheless, it is still called the Iowa Building-not just by park enthusiasts, but by the Chicago Park District as well. The name is now so entrenched that no other has emerged to replace it. The story of the Iowa Building goes back to the same time as those early plans to pave the beach. A large, finely constructed seawall was built near the edge of the lake in 1884 in anticipation of the construction of a permanent public shelter for visitors in a "time of storm." The one story structure, designed by Daniel Burnham and completed in 1888, was built of granite with a slate roof. Aside from protecting the public from inclement weather, it was also explicitly constructed to serve as a venue for dancing and musical entertainment. To that end, its interior was lined with maple from floor to ceiling and was said to be large enough to accommodate 2500 people. While it must be emphasized that the construction of the Shelter had no direct relationship to the planning for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the building's lasting fame came as a result of how it was used during the fair. Due to a mix-up, a site elsewhere on the grounds that was to be for the State of Iowa became unavailable and the WCE Commissioners offered Iowa's representatives the Jackson Park Shelter instead, with the sole proviso that it be left as found at the end of the fair. The site would be at the northeastern corner of the fairgrounds, almost on the lake. Recognizing this as a particularly attractive siting and an opportunity to reduce its construction costs, the Iowa Columbian Commission readily accepted the arrangement and set about converting it into a showplace for their state and its products. The Iowa commissioners then hired the Cedar Rapids architectural firm of Josselyn & Taylor to design Iowa's State Building for the fair. The architects proposed using the original shelter or east section, which was 80 feet by 120 feet running east to west, as the main exhibition hall. A second section, a three story building 60 feet by 112 feet extending further west, would be added on to western edge of the shelter, thereby increasing the size of the structure at ground level by 70 per cent. Viewed from the south, it would have the appearance of a single cohesive structure. The firm's plan was accepted by the Iowa Commission and approved by Daniel Burnham, Chief of Construction for the WCE commission. Bids were sought for construction and a contractor, presumably from Iowa, won with a bid of $23,700. Josselyn and Taylor received another five percent of that amount for preparing the plans and superintending construction. The building was dedicated on October 22, 1892 and it formally opened on May 1, 1893 when the fair began. The main entrance into the building was through the new west section, and faced the Palace of Fine Arts. The rest of the addition was devoted to the accommodation of the public and officials. Its first floor contained a reception hall, men's and ladies' parlors, a special room for Iowa's Governor and commissioners, a post office and parcel receiving room, smoking room, writing and waiting rooms and toilets. The second floor, set back from the entrance, consisted of a large meeting room approximately 37 by 50 feet that was used for an art exhibit and special events, a press room, a reporters' room, and four sleeping rooms for officials. Rooms for janitors were located on the truncated third floor. The east section, the original shelter, was where the main exhibition hall was located and its décor was intended to vividly display Iowa's agricultural productivity and vigor. On entering the hall, visitors discovered that its walls, ceilings and columns were covered almost entirely with colorful scenes and decorative designs made of small grains, seeds, grasses, corn shucks and colored corn kernels. Twelve hundred bushels of corn and three and a half car loads of other Iowa-grown products had been transported to Chicago to support this decorative natural extravaganza. Near the center of the hall was a scale model of the Iowa State Capitol building made of glass seeded with Iowa cereals. The model was made by the Chicago firm of Wells Glass Company and at the end of the fair was shipped to the Agricultural College at Ames, a predecessor of Iowa State University. With the closing of 1893 Exposition, the added turrets and the rooms in the west section came down and the Jackson Park Shelter was returned to its original state, all those seeds presumably having been faithfully removed. It remained a part of the Jackson Park landscape until 1936 when it was demolished. Its demise coincided with a grand effort to widen what became South Lake Shore Drive, to extend the shoreline further into the lake, and then to defend it with a revetment made of large roughly hewn limestone blocks north and south along the lakefront. While the Promontory Point was being completed and landscaped, construction on a new Jackson Park shelter, designed by E. V. Buchsbaum, was ordered in 1936 by the CPD and completed in 1937, funded by the federal Works Project Administration and a $20,000 donation from the Museum of Science and Industry.