Vinton, Iowa

I’ve got another correction to make to the Wikipedia page on the Carnegies of Iowa.  Besides correcting the address for the Carnegie in Emmetsburg, I must add an address for the Carnegie in Waverly, as it didn’t provide one, just that it now served as City Offices.  That sent me off on a prolonged hunt trying to find it.  It was a Sunday morning, so I couldn’t ask at the new library.  I had to initially rely on whoever I saw who happened to be out and about.  The first was an older guy riding his bike on the sidewalk.  He didn’t know.  Nor did another older couple out walking their dog. A young officer at the police station had no knowledge of where the Carnegie might be or even if there had been one. He called someone to ask, but that person didn’t have the answer either.  A jogger said the former library had been across from the Fareway supermarket, but he didn’t realize it had been a Carnegie.  When I went to give it a look, it was clearly not a Carnegie.  The plain building was now home to an insurance company.

A carpenter doing some renovation of a porch said he knew all the old buildings in town, but he didn’t think any had been a library. He was the only one to give me a lead, thinking that maybe an old building with columns on the Wartburg College campus on the outskirts of the town might be what I was looking for.  

It was too far from the center of town for it to have been a plausible candidate, as a central location was one of Carnegie’s prerequisites. I had passed by the college and knew there was a Casey’s gas station nearby where I could take advantage of its WiFi to do a little more research. There is a website devoted to the Carnegies of Iowa. It gave me the news that the Carnegie was no more, but gave no date as to when it was torn down.

At least my search led to some other discoveries, including a mural appropriate to my present undertaking.

Another was one of those eight-foot tall bronze replicas of the Statue of Liberty that the Boy Scouts of America made available to communities for $350 in 1950 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Scouts, a program they called “Strengthen the Arm of Liberty.” There are some 200 of them scattered in 39 states. I have stumbled upon a few in my travels.  

They are always a stunning site, giving such a jolt of pleasure that I have considered making them my next quest when I complete the Carnegie quest, which I’m about half way done with. I ought to be combining them. There are nineteen in Iowa, the most of any state other than Kansas and Missouri, who have twenty-five and twenty-four. Wikipedia has a list. I’ll be able to see another in Dubuque in a couple of days when I stop by for its Carnegie.  

The next day I called the Waverly library to ask when the Carnegie had been razed and where it had stood.  I was told that it hadn’t been torn down, but had been encased by new walls making it an entirely different building.  It was that undistinguished building across from the Fareway at 100 Second Street, SW. The news made me want to go back and give the building a closer look and go inside to see if it did have any distinguishing features.  I couldn’t do it on this trip, but perhaps sometime in the future.

Though I was denied in Waverly, the next town, Waterloo, twenty miles south along the Cedar River, made up for it with a pair. Waterloo, like Waverly, had communities on either side of the river. When the Carnegies were built in 1902 Waverly was a growing, bustling city of 15,000 earning two grants from Carnegie for a west side and east side library on either side of the Cedar River. Both are distinguished edifices, though neither still serve as libraries. 

The west side branch is now a law office and has lost none of its grandeur, other than its new entrance oddly placed directly below the original entrance replacing the steps up it. It made it appear as if it provided entry to a bunker.

The east side branch was just a mile away across the river. It shared the same stand-alone light fixtures of its brother to the west, but otherwise bore no similarity other than being a large formidable building. Unlike the other it included “Free to All” along with its identification as a “Public Library.” Its tenant, which offers “neighborhood services,” did not seem to have the resources to maintain the building as well as the law firm. It was looking much older and haggard, as if it might have dated to the early 1800s, rather than 1900s.

I left the river and ventured back into small-town Iowa for the Carnegie in Reinbeck. It’s simple brick and stucco design had a small addition tucked to its back side where one now entered the library. There weren’t sufficient funds to close off the original entrance so a sign on the door reading “Not an entrance” had to suffice.

The addition to the Traer Carnegie was tacked on to its side and provided the new entry. The former entrance had been turned into a patio. The “Public Library” over the entry was uniquely flanked on both sides by “Carnegie,” a nice double dose. Neither Reinbeck nor Traer were large enough towns to warrant Monday morning hours, so I could only soak up their auras sitting outside for a few minutes snacking and resting before my next jaunt. As I sat on the bench in front of the Traer library a young woman asked me when the library opened. She was distraught that it wouldn’t open for a couple of hours. “I just took my meds,” she said, “I have the shakes and I need a place to sit down.”  

Twenty-five mikes to the east, Vinton had a population large enough to support a McDonald’s and to have library hours commencing at nine a.m., well after I arrived. It’s addition to the rear did not disallow entry up the original steps, as I always prefer, as did Carnegie as a symbol of rising up to knowledge. The interior had been fully renovated with outlets in the floor. It didn’t have the warm den-like atmosphere of its past, but the usual large windows and high ceilings of the Carnegies still gave it an ambiance lacking in modern-day replacements. One could check out a wide variety of cake pans for two weeks.

I didn’t care to linger long as I was enjoying my first four-star riding conditions since I began these travels over two weeks and a thousand miles ago. There wasn’t a cloud in a sky that was a brighter blue than I could remember. It was an ideal 70-degrees with just a hint of a wind that was giving me a slight assist. This was a day when I didn’t want to stop riding and had me in that state of mind that there wasn’t anything else I’d rather be doing.