1844 – A View From The Capitol’s Cupola.

*Welcome to the Iowa River Valley of Johnson County as it might have appeared in 1844.*

**“A Distant View of Iowa City”** by **George H. Yewell** is the earliest depiction of Old Capitol we have today. Yewell painted this scene as he looked southward from Terrell’s Mill (today’s North Dubuque Street) in 1855.

As we discuss elsewhere, **Chauncey Swan** (pictured above right of center) is often called the ‘Father of Iowa City’. Commissioned in the spring of 1839 by the Iowa Territorial Legislature, Swan traveled from his home in Dubuque to Johnson County in order to choose the best location for Iowa’s new capitol building. That selection was completed on May 4, 1839 when Swan and his traveling partners picked a beautiful, lush spot high atop a wooded hill overlooking the Iowa River. One writer states that the commissioners described the site as “shaped like an amphitheater.” In the picture above, Swan – who was chosen to serve as the building project manager – is depicted with Father Samuel Mazzuchelli as they survey the work on the new capitol. The project began in 1840, opened – in part – in 1842, and was not fully completed until the late 1850’s. Which brings us, now, to…

According to the historical records*, Iowa City’s Capitol Building Project Manager – Chauncey Swan (above left) – on one fair day during the winter months of 1844 – near February 1 – took a party of friends up the wooden stairs of the new capitol building to the “top of the unfinished cupola”.

*This written account – The View from the Old Capitol in 1844 – which is credited here to Mrs. Frances D. Gage – comes from Clarence Ray Aurner’s 1912 reference volume – Leading Events in Johnson County, Iowa History.

With Chauncey Swan – on this 1844 excursion up the capitol stairs – were the following individuals:

F. M. Irish (below left) – the sea captain-turned Iowa City pioneer who arrived in Johnson County in 1838 and had been at the center of public activity from the very beginning. Read more here.

Henry Felkner (below middle) – the farmer/pioneer who arrived in Johnson County in 1837 and became the Johnson County representative to the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Legislative Assemblies of Iowa Territory (1840-1843). Read more here.

Samuel H. McCrory (not pictured) – the first postmaster of Johnson County, serving in place of the late John Gilbert, this farmer/pioneer arrived here in March of 1838. Read more here.

Francis D. Gage (below right) – though we can’t find “first-hand” evidence of Mrs. Gage’s 1844 trip to Iowa City, it’s possible that this highly-influential leader of the early women’s rights movement was visiting from Ohio that day, or, as a writer/reporter, she picked up on this story from one of the “several ladies” who were on this cupola tour with Swan and the others.

**Old Capitol’s cupola** includes a large pillared section that supports the golden dome. In architecture, a cupola is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building – often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air. The word comes from Latin (cupula) and Greek (kúpellon) – meaning a ‘small cup’ turned upside-down. *Visit Old Capitol’s cupola today – click here.*

First of all, remember, this is a cold, clear winter day in 1844. I’m guessing that it was pretty chilly up there, and yet, the view must have been breath-taking. Keep in mind that most buildings in the 1840’s were no larger than two-stories high, so a trip up to the cupola of the capitol building in Iowa City must have seemed like a trip to the top of the Empire State Building for you and me…

This log cabin of F. M. Irish that is mentioned here is the oldest log cabin in Johnson County that is still in existence today! As the report indicates, Irish’s original cabin – probably first built in 1839 and expanded in 1842 – was used in the 1860’s expansion plans of a new, larger home (see below), and today that original log cabin is still the “dining room” of the home that was built around it. Read more details here.

**Samuel H. McCrory**, as we said earlier, came to Johnson County in March of 1838, and from the report here, his home must have become a place of “short-tern” hospitality for all the newcomers who would travel to Johnson County, secure land and then return back East to gather up their family and belongings. It was on these first trips westward that “every single man” must have made McCrory’s house into one, very busy “hostel”.

In this part of the story, we find the team looking southward toward the abandoned town of **Napoleon** – Johnson County’s first pioneer community. It was here, fur-traders **Stephen ‘Sumner’ Phelps** and John Gilbert built their trading posts (below left) – which apparently are, still, somewhat operational in 1844. Also mentioned here is **Johnson County’s first court house** (below right) which was built in Napoleon in 1838 and used until Iowa City was named the new county seat in 1839.

Looking north, the team sees **Walter Terrell’s Mill & Dam** (below)- now fully operational on the Iowa River. Completed in 1843, Terrell’s mill was in direct competition with the **Iowa City Manufacturing Company** which opened a new mill (1844) further west and north – near Clear Creek on the Iowa River – where today’s Coralville Dam now stands.

After their 360-view of Johnson County, the team then turned their attention to the city itself. Three years earlier (May 1840), writer **J.B. Newhall,** after a brief visit here, offered this first “inventory” of Iowa City – population 700…

A spacious city hotel, three or four brick buildings, and several others in progress, ten drygoods, grocery, and provision stores, one drug store, one saddlery, two blacksmiths, one gunsmith, three or four coffeehouses, four lawyers, three physicians, one church, and one primary school.

Two of the larger buildings in downtown Iowa City in 1844 were Walter Butler’s hotel and tavern. Wooden frame facilities – both near the corner of Clinton and Washington Streets, the Tavern (as it is called here) was also know as Butler’s Capitol. A large two-story hall (below left) – this building served as the first home of the Iowa Territorial Legislature in 1841. You can read more here, but without this hall, a handful of partisan politicians from Des Moines & Henry Counties had threatened to pull the legislature away from Iowa City since the new capitol building – still under construction – was not yet ready to host the 1841-1842 Territorial Legislative sessions. Many of the downtown buildings would have been made from wood (below right), but beginning in the fall of 1840, bricks – made by Iowa City’s first brick-maker – **Sylvanus Johnson** – were being used as well.

Looking east from the capitol building, the team is viewing the city blocks across Clinton Street and down Iowa Avenue. As you can see from the 1839 city map (below), the land set apart for churches is being identified here as well. Click here to read more about the downtown commerce area along Clinton Street.

Well, that just about does it for our 1844 tour of Iowa City. As the report goes (below), Frances D. Gage took the story, published it in one of her many articles she wrote for newspapers back East, and obviously, her words stuck around over the years – reappearing in Clarence Aurner‘s volume in 1912.

These two Isaac Wetherby photographs (below) – taken in 1854 – show us how much Iowa City grew over that ten year period between the 1844 view from the Capitol and the mid-1850’s. Statistics tell us that Iowa City exploded in population – from “less than one thousand souls” in 1844 to nearly 5,000 people ten years later!