Historic Buildings of Iowa: Mason City and Clear Lake

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Settled in North Central Iowa where the Winnebago River meets Willow Creek, Mason City is home to world renowned arts and architecture.

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The Prairie School architectural movement is preserved in Mason City, with buildings designed by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright and others inspired by him.

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A house made of rock, known as The Castle, settled seamlessly into the bluffs overlooking Willow Creek.

A museum built from local brick and tile, which houses one of the best American art collections in the Midwest.

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It is the birthplace of songwriter Meredith Willson, whose musical hit The Music Man, comes alive in a replica 1912 streetscape.

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Nearby in the town of Clear Lake sits the Surf Ballroom, the concert venue where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper gave their final performance on the tragic Day the Music Died.

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Join Iowa PBS as we explore the arts and the architecture within the Historic Buildings of Iowa: Mason City and Clear Lake.

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Funding for this program is provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation, generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.

Visit Mason City is proud to support local productions on Iowa PBS. Names such as Meredith Willson, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buddy Holly are all part of our history. Mason City welcomes you. Learn more at VisitMasonCityIowa.com.

Clear Lake Bank & Trust is pleased to support local productions on Iowa PBS. Clear Lake Bank & Trust is a locally owned community bank serving North Iowa since 1934. Iowa rooted and proud to help our community. Learn more are ClearLakeBank.bank.

 

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Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and constructed in 1908 for Dr. George and Eleanor Stockman, the Stockman House is the first Wright designed Prairie School house in Iowa.

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John Henry: It's just a picture-perfect example of his style at that point in time. He made lots of changes throughout the many, many years he was an architect. But this was just a snapshot of that Prairie School mode.

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Prairie School architecture emerged in Chicago around 1900 from a group of young architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright. They embraced the theories of architect Louis Sullivan, who called for non-derivative, distinctly American architecture rooted in nature with a sense of place. But they incorporated modern elements, like stylized ornamentation. It was a movement that emphasized nature, craftsmanship and simplicity.

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John Henry: They discovered each other and devised an idea that architecture in this country should be different than it is in England. The most popular style was Victorian. They wanted something that was typically from the Midwest, from the prairies and reflected that simplicity of the prairie environment. And you see throughout these Prairie School examples all kinds of emphasis on horizontal lines.

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Prairie School celebrates the long, low landscape of the Midwest, the structures spread out over their lots, featuring flat or shallow hipped rooflines, rows of windows, overhanging eaves and bands of stone, wood or brick across the surface. The Stockman House represents these features.

John Henry: The exterior design involves bands of windows, windows that are all tied together. It also is very symmetrical. So, everything on the exterior and interior is centered around the chimney or the fireplace. Being symmetrical, nothing is really off balance, so there is a comfort in that. And also, that horizontal emphasis, the wide soffits, the overhangs at the roofline, and they're very practical. You can open the windows, it won't rain in. They shade the house from the hot sun in the summertime. But, when the sun is on more of an angle, they allow more light in. It's really a practical design.

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The interior of Prairie School architecture incorporates low roofs, a central chimney and open floor plans. Wright believed these features were the anecdote to the confined, closed in architecture.

John Henry: Wright thought that if you lower a ceiling in an area, it will make it more comfortable if you're sitting down, so it makes a cozy place to sit. The veranda on this house has a low ceiling because it is a place where people should gather and talk. It just becomes more comfortable if you're sitting down. Quite often the ceilings are low in some of the larger houses just to keep people moving. They're more comfortable if they're on the move going to a space that is bigger and more open.

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For 80 years, the Stockman House was located at 311 1st Street, next to the First United Methodist Church, until 1989 when the church wanted to expand its parking lot.

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The house was sold and moved to its current location of 530 1st Street, just north of the Rock Glen Historic District. The River City Society for Historic Preservation purchased the home and beautifully restored it under the direction of Mason City architects Bergland and Cram. Upon its relocation, the house was rotated so that its former north elevation now faces west.

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John Henry: There were quite a few projects that needed to be done, a lot of it just cosmetic things. The roof needed replacement. The soffits, the extensions at the eaves needed to be replaced. The plaster within the house was damaged through the years. All of that was returned to what it was originally. They took scrapings of the color and so all the rooms reflect the original colors, using resources from historians and architectural consultants to make sure that it was done properly. Fortunately, the woodwork had not been painted, so it was easy to get that back in condition. The floors had been covered with that shag carpeting that was popular in the '60s and some of it had been glued down and so those had to be removed and the floors refinished. But, very nice woodwork, all the public areas are quarter sawn oak, which really came out nice.

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The Stockman House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 and is open to the public for guided tours.

John Henry: One of the things that Wright is always concerned about is consistency of materials. You'll see, for instance, in the entry area it has always had a bare concrete floor, unusual for the interior of a house. You'd think, well, let's put tile on it to make it pretty. But it is consistent because the floor is at grade with the exterior sidewalk. So, you're on concrete there, you're coming in on concrete, and very practical because you come in with wet overshoes. The consistency goes as far as bringing some of the exterior elements to the interior design. So, sometimes we think of well, you've got an architect that designs the basic shelf and then you have an interior designer that designs the interior. Well, that isn't true in Wright's case. He took something like the pattern of window panes, muntins in the windows, and used them for interior cabinet doors. He put flower boxes outside the windows so that you had that natural environment right outside the window, in some cases blocking the view of the street. If you're sitting down and looking out a window, you see flowers and plants and it just looks really natural. Upstairs you will notice that the rooms have one type of wood trim and the hallway has this quarter sawn oak. Normally you'd think, well let's put a door in that matches the hallway, but instead he put a doorway that was half oak and half birch so that the interior of that room was consistent throughout.

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Prairie School's popularity faded rapidly in the United States after 1915, although its influence can be seen in everything from modernist architecture to mid-century ranches.

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John Henry: Well, there's no question that this was the beginning of kind of a revolution for architecture in Mason City. This was built in 1908 and the Historic Park Inn Hotel followed on its footsteps in 1910. If you appreciate good architecture, and particularly that period of the Prairie School, this is a hotbed for that.

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Scott Borcherding: The Historic Park Inn Hotel is one of two hotels that Frank Lloyd Wright designed in his career, one in the United States being this one, the other one the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. That hotel suffered from an earthquake. Parts of it still remain, but it is not operating as a hotel anymore. So, that left the Park Inn Hotel.

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In the early 1900s, a small group of prominent citizens wanted to build a new bank and hotel in Mason City. Frank Lloyd Wright was selected as the architect for the project. The original Historic Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank opened its doors in 1910. Over the next several decades, the buildings saw many changes, and the property's luster wasn't maintained. In 2011, after an $18.5 million renovation, Frank Lloyd Wright's structure reopened as a world class destination once again.

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Scott Borcherding: The Park Inn Hotel is unique to Mason City, it is unique to the United States. It is the last hotel that Frank Lloyd Wright designed.

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Scott Borcherding: The demise of the hotel locally was pretty unfortunate. As early as the '20s it started to change functions, then it became an apartment building for many, many years and the bank turned into retail space.

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Scott Borcherding: The decline of the building was really kind of sad to see. The '80s were different for downtowns, malls were happening and development was just different then. But, as historic preservation became popular, the energy in the community rose with historic preservation. A local group got together and said, we need to do something and that was kind of really when things snowballed and it got really rolling to save this building.

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Scott Borcherding: And, the goal was always to make it open to the public so people would come and see it and be able to experience it.

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The building is a tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright and his Prairie School innovations. It serves the public as a 27-room boutique hotel, restaurant and lounge. The former bank building has been converted to an elegant ballroom and conference center.

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Scott Borcherding: The Prairie School style was a pretty harsh reaction to the Victorian style that preceded it. Victorian style was big, it was opulent, it was heavily detailed and it was maybe in some respects unnecessary. But it showed financial stability, it showed success, it showed prominence. And the Prairie School style was really kind of the contradiction to that. It was modesty and comfort and manageability.

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Frank Lloyd Wright was at the peak of his Prairie School period when he designed the hotel. His commission was three-fold, design a bank, a hotel and law offices. The Historic Park Inn Hotel fully embodies Wright's genius with its front facing Mason City Central Park across the street, the hotel reflects its natural environment.

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Scott Borcherding: By definition, Prairie School architecture is kind of of the land. So, when you think prairie, you think horizontal, kind of low to the ground, and those are elements that are used in a lot of Prairie School architecture. So, when you see the Park Inn Hotel and the City National Bank building, you'll notice the wide overhangs on the roofs and the rows of windows and a lot of horizontal elements that make it of the prairie.

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Entrances lowered to ground level welcome guests. Wide expanses of glass showcase what's inside. Lateral wings provide retail space on the ground floor and hotel rooms on the top two floors.

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The first level is the lobby, protected by the cantilevered ladies balcony at the second level -- and the ladies parlor rising behind it.

 

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Scott Borcherding: The Park Inn Hotel is lucky to have a couple of styles of windows, especially once we consider the City National Bank building as well. Leaded glass windows were restored, some of them were original and were stabilized, but we also had some replaced. They are unique to the building. They are not a pattern that appears on any other building that Wright has designed. And when you start to dissect them a little bit, you can maybe see trees and branches or leaves kind of happening in some of these patterns. So that, again, kind of mimics the view if you're looking north to Central Park where there are actual trees.

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Scott Borcherding: That is an attribute to this building that we're pretty proud of. We were really lucky to have someone just 10 miles away be certified and able to restore them and recreate them so we could see the process happen, kind of be hands on and make sure everything was right.

 

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Visible from the street, the third-floor hotel rooms serve as a facade masking a skylight covering what was originally the dining room behind the lobby. The courtyard-like space below is complemented by 25 art glass panels set below the skylight, which enhance the color entering the room.

Scott Borcherding: A lot of Wright's designs have what is referred to as compression and release when you experience a building. So, when you come into the hotel, you kind of come into a relatively narrow doorway, right. And then you go to the lobby desk and there is that mezzanine above you and people thar are over 6'2" are probably uncomfortable under that because it is such a low stature. Wright wasn't tall. He didn't feel the need to make things extra tall because he himself wasn't a tall man. But, once you leave from underneath that lobby desk, you experience the release of space underneath the skylight, 25 unique art glass windows that allow daylight to flood the skylight room.

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Though the hotel is one of Wright's crowning architectural achievements, personal scandal would prevent him from seeing the finished structure. He completed the design in the fall of 1909, but later that same year, the architect left the United States with a former client's wife, leaving behind his own wife and six children.

 

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Scott Borcherding: He was never back to see the hotel completed. William Drummond, from Wright's office, did come to Mason City and work with the contractors as the building was being built. While Drummond was coming to Mason City, he designed homes. Walter Burley Griffin was another Chicago architect who was able to come to Mason City and leave his mark here as well. So, those would be the three big names of the Prairie School architecture that we have. There were other local architects too, who started to emulate those styles through different areas of town and we're lucky to have it all.

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Mason City residents have worked tirelessly to preserve and restore the city's historic buildings. In 2005, Wright on the Park Incorporated was established as a non-profit. Its mission was to own, preserve and maintain the Historic Park Inn Hotel and to provide continuing education to the public about its place in the context of architectural history.

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Scott Borcherding: We attempted to be as accurate as possible to what they were when the building was built in the early 1900s. And Mason City is kind of getting to be known for really saving these things and doing what it takes to save them. Wright designed the Stockman House in Mason City. That could have fallen victim to demolition to become a parking lot. People stepped forward and relocated the home so it would not be demolished. The same with another house of significant style that was victim of the flood in 2008. That house was cut in half and a bridge built over a bridge to carry the weight of the house to relocate it, so we wouldn't lose that representation of architectural styles.

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Scott Borcherding: Mason City is really kind of lucky to have the variety of architecture that we have.

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Frank Lloyd Wright's sudden departure in 1910 brought other Prairie School architects to Mason City, many former associates. They included Walter and Marion Griffin and Frances Berry Byrne, among others. Together, the combined their efforts to create the Rock Crest-Rock Glen Historic District, located on both sides of Willow Creek. It was the first planned Prairie School development in America and remains the largest of its kind today.

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Karen Byrne: The Rock Crest area is at the top of the bluff. And it was originally called Rock Crest. Currently it is known as the River Heights area. And then, the Rock Glen is down by the creek.

 

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The Rock Crest-Rock Glen Historic District is one of the primary reasons why Mason City has been ranked by Condé Nast Traveler among the world's 20 best cities for architecture lovers. The non-profit organization, Wright on the Park, offers tours of the area.

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Karen Byrne: When people take the tour, they see a variety of architecturally significant and historical homes here in Mason City.

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Architect Walter Burley Griffin envisioned 18 acres along Mason City's Willow Creek as a beautiful natural setting for a group of houses. He sited each home along the perimeter to create the greatest amount of open land along the creek, insisting on a common area to be enjoyed by all the homeowners.

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Karen Byrne: It is the concentration of these uniquely designed homes, homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's students, homes designed by local architects, homes designed to work together in that area.

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A sampling of homes on the tour include the Curtis Yelland House, designed by architect William Drummond.

Karen Byrne: The key aspects of this type of home, the going across and drawing your eye across. It is the connection that the home has to the area, to nature and the connection that it has to the ground.

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Karen Byrne: The design is neat and clean. It is respect for merging the home with nature.

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The two-story Egloff Home is covered with stucco and features an off-centered garage and a wall of glass block windows.

Karen Byrne: The first home that we stop and visit is the Egloff Home. That home is an art deco, art moderno style home. It was the home of Dr. Egloff and his wife. It was moved to its current setting a few years ago and it was totally redone and recently received a preservation award from the Iowa Historical Preservation Society.

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The J.E.E. Markley House was built in 1901. Its main feature is the full height porch with 2-story fluted ionic columns and pilasters. Markley, an attorney and prominent resident of Mason City, bought the house in 1908.

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Karen Byrne: The Markley home is a neoclassical revival designed by a local architect. It is a home that is designed to be noticed. The front porch is wide open with pillars that go up and up and up. It is in direct contrast to the Prairie School homes.

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Prairie School homes are designed to draw eyes across, not up. They are created to meld with nature with their colors and their lines. The James Blythe House was a Rock Glen home designed by Walter Burley Griffin. The house is the most spacious of Griffin's Mason City homes and offers a beautiful view of the glen and creek from the living room window.

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Karen Byrne: It is a Prairie School home. It is heavy, it is to the ground, it has the lines that go across on the ceiling and on the overhangs between the levels of the home. It has a little bit of red in the windows. The windows have a Mayan inspired design in the window. And it has a big picture window so that it can look out onto the glen and bring the outside in.

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There are several more architecturally significant homes to see on the Rock Crest-Rock Glen tour. In Mason City Proper, there are at least 33 structures built in the Prairie School style between 1908 and 1922. 17 are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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Peggy Bang: It tells us a lot about the early founders of our city.

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Peggy Bang: Not only did they want to have structures, environments to live in, but they wanted them to be beautiful, they wanted them to say something about our community.

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Peggy Bang: If you're going to do something, do it right, don't just do the ordinary. Just go for it. If you have an idea, do it.

 

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The Joshua Melson House was designed by architect Walter Burley Griffin. Griffin's wife, Marion Mahony Griffin, was a gift architect in her own right. In 1894, she was the second woman to graduate in architecture from MIT and she helped her husband design the Joshua Melson House.

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Peggy Bang: She was well ahead of her time. And I got so excited about that, that the more I read about her, the more I thought it would be fun to have a house that she had worked on. And low and behold, this house was for sale.

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Longtime Mason City residents, Peggy and her late husband Roger Bang, bought the Joshua Melson House in 1994. They often walked by the house, known by locals as The Castle, dreaming of owning it someday. The Bang's took a lot of pride in the house and meticulously renovated it to its original luster. The house was designed for Joshua Melson, a Mason City contractor and visionary. He also was an amateur pilot and architect.

Peggy Bang: He was interested in everything new, moving forward. So, for instance, he had one of the first electric cars in Cerro Gordo County. That is why this house was built with a drive through double garage. The early cars did not do reverse very easily. So, this way he could just drive through the car on the circle drive in and out and have no problems.

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The design of the Joshua Melson House was Griffin’s attempt to completely integrate a house with its surroundings. Griffin created this masterpiece along Willow Creek in Mason City two decades before Wright's design for Falling Water in Pennsylvania. The Joshua Melson House rises three stories out of the creek wall and is capped with concrete keystones.

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Peggy Bang: This house was built between 1912 and 1914. We think it took three years to build. It is a three-story home built into a limestone cliff overlooking Willow Creek. It is concrete and native limestone. Concrete was kind of a newer material at the turn of the 20th century and Mason City had the largest cement manufacturing plant in the United States. Everybody was really quick to pick up the use of concrete. But one thing that is interesting in this house, not only are the floors poured concrete with tile on them, but the roof is made from concrete slabs that are put together in a low hip style. So, it becomes a very unusual Prairie School house.

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An asymmetrical entryway is on the first floor of the house, with the front and back doors directly opposite each other.

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The living room and dining room wrap around a central fireplace in an open floor plan, emblematic of the Prairie School style.

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The lower level looks out over Willow Creek and opens onto a side tea terrace.

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Peggy Bang: That was one of Wright's ideas, to blur the interior and exterior, and I think the Griffins also agreed with that philosophy, because there is just a flow between the inside and out.

 

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Wright's departure in 1909 left space for Griffin to establish his own Prairie School movement in Mason City. The Rock Crest-Rock Glen Historic District is known today as his greatest American achievement and the world's largest unified collection of Prairie School homes surrounding a natural setting.

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Peggy Bang: In this particular house, you can see very clearly that what Griffin did unusual is he has corner piers that are rougher and heavier than the center part of the house. So, this house is 30 feet by 30 feet by 30 feet with these bump out piers, then a row of windows in between.

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This prolific period in Griffin's career occurred as he molded his own vision of Louis Sullivan's concept of a modern architecture free from the examples of historic styles.

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Peggy Bang: Prairie School architecture is easy to live in, it is very comfortable for the Midwest and it was made for the prairie. It is kind of practical. It's beautiful, but simple. It doesn't have the complicated woodwork that you might see in Victorian or Queen Anne, which is also beautiful, but it's a different type of beauty. So, this is more of a simplicity beauty. The one thing that makes our city unique is Willow Creek because this 18-acre development that is around Willow Creek, called Rock Crest-Rock Glen, it's the only development of Prairie School houses around a common site in the whole United States. And it's amazing 100 years later it's still that way. So, people have respected that idea. And it is visionary.

 

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Griffin is now credited with developing the L-shaped floor plan, the car port and the first use of reinforced concrete. Many of his homes carry the familiar design elements of the Prairie School, yet Griffin developed his own style of architecture.

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Peggy Bang: I think it is more textured than what Mr. Wright's would be. As far as the interior is concerned, there's a lot of similarity. The L-shaped plan, which probably was invented by Walter when he worked for Mr. Wright, between the living room and dining room there is a cantilevered porch that pops out looking to the north, which is beautiful.

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Mason City has taken a lot of pride in its unique buildings designed by some of the country's best architects like Walter Burley Griffin and Frank Lloyd Wright. Community leaders have worked hard to preserve these architectural gems.

Peggy Bang: When I have seen things, the Stockman House, the hotel, this house, were the main ones that I worked on, when I see things that I feel have been good for our environment, good for our community, then it is fun to restore them and share that information with other people.

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As construction began in 1909 on Frank Lloyd Wright's Historic Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank, a young musical prodigy was practicing his piano lessons just blocks away on Superior Street.

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Nearly 50 years later, Mason City would gain national notoriety as River City and the birthplace of the Music Man himself, Meredith Willson.

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Nick Whitehurst: Meredith Willson, who wrote The Music Man, was born right here in Mason City. This is the place where he based River City.

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Nick Whitehurst: He's the one who said it, I just had to remember what it was like growing up in Mason City, Iowa to write this. He didn't have to actually make anything up. A lot of those references he made in The Music Man come straight from here.

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Nick Whitehurst: Music was very alive in Mason City then. Most kids actually had an instrument in their hand because that was an outlet. There was municipal bands, there was band inside of schools.

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Nick Whitehurst: The Boy Scouts had a band of their own that was here.

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Nick Whitehurst: I think music was a way of expression for everybody at that point.

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At the age of 17, Willson left home for New York City, where his musical journey took off.

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He played first flute in the John Philip Sousa Band and performed in the New York Philharmonic with George Gershwin, Igor Stravinsky and Arturo Toscanini.

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Willson became a conductor in the 1930s and '40s and would become a household name as a band leader, popular songwriter and comedian during the Golden Age of Radio.

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In 1957, Meredith Willson's The Music Man became a smash hit on Broadway and a popular film version followed in 1962. The story of phony music professor Harold Hill and Marian the Librarian put Mason City on the map as the inspiration for the fictional town of River City, Iowa.

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Terry Branstad: And we have with us Rosemary Willson, Meredith Willson's widow. And we'd like to have her and the mayor cut the ribbon at this time.

Nick Whitehurst: In 1993, there was a large dedicated group of people that felt the need for the Meredith Willson boyhood home to be on display.

Terry Branstad: And with this, Rosemary, we officially open Phase 1 of the Meredith Willson Home today.

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Nick Whitehurst: Fast forward about six years, the President of the Mason City Foundation at that time had presented Rosemary Willson with the idea of The Music Man Square, which is the top hat to his legacy. We're always going to be here to honor Meredith Willson.

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With the support of Willson's widow, Rosemary, planning commenced on a multi-million-dollar facility dedicated to the life and legacy of Mason City's most famous son.

Nick Whitehurst: Construction started in about 1999. They had a lot of properties they had to purchase, a lot of land just to be able to create such a large area. The 1912 streetscape opened in 2001. The entire square itself opened in 2002.

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Mason City's Music Man Square transports visitors back in time to 1912 River City, where traveling salesman Harold Hill stepped off the train to start a boy’s band.

Nick Whitehurst: My favorite thing that I get to see when people walk in the door is when they go, wow! Because you don't expect to see an actual streetscape. You get taken back to 1912.

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Nick Whitehurst: Each one of the shops actually along the 1912 streetscape is from the movie. But, if you look at the second floor, each one of those businesses is actually based on something that was here during that time.

 

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Nick Whitehurst: Stroll on down about halfway through, you're going to run into the Meredith Willson Museum, which is our hidden gem here in Mason City. It is a tribute to everything he has done.

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Nick Whitehurst: We have his actual piano --

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Nick Whitehurst: -- his desk --

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Nick Whitehurst: -- the Grammy that he received for the score of The Music Man. Our largest space here is actually depicted from the River City High School. We call it Reunion Hall and it fits over 300 people. One weekend we might be doing a wedding reception, but the next one we might be hosting a concert. Sock hops are not all that rare around here. We also have anything from a local band to a comedy show. We also have another space, which is home to the New Horizons Band. They practice twice a week and then they have two annual concerts every year.

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Nic Whitehurst: That room actually has the background of Madison Park, which is also famously from the movie. The mural along that wall was done by a local artist, Jan Kostka, back in 2001.

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Music Man Square stands next door to Meredith Willson's boyhood home. After leaving possession of the Willson family, the 1895 Queen Anne Victorian served as a boarding house and was later divided into apartments. The Mason City Foundation purchased the property in 1993 and restored it to its original condition, reflecting Willson's turn of the century childhood.

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Nick Whitehurst: Luckily, the Willson's were a fairly wealthy family in Mason City. We had a lot of photos to go off of. Wallpaper, everything in there is as close to original as they could get. As soon as you walk in, you get that feeling of early 20th century. It is very much a turn of when things are starting to change in our country. There are a few radios there, there is a Victrola, there are certain nods to that era. The very first parlor that you walk into, that's actually where Rosalie Willson taught piano. She was the basis for Marian the Librarian. We have some photos there of actually the boys, as I always refer to them when I give my tours, learning piano. There's instruments from their childhood. They have the formal dining room, which has artifacts from their actual estate. There's so much all the way up until the adult photos.

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Meredith Willson wrote more than 400 songs, 7 symphonic works and 4 stage musicals over the course of his career. His songs were performed by Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and The Beatles. But a Christmas song, which continues to climb the charts each December, is perhaps his best-known work of all.

Nick Whitehurst: A lot of people don't realize that Meredith Willson wrote, "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas". Every year as a nod to him and just to celebrate one more of his accomplishments, we decorate the 1912 streetscape and the Music Man Square to the nines. It becomes basically a snow globe inside of a building. We have upwards of 35 to 45 trees that are decorated. Families come to see Santa, they come by to take their photos, everybody is welcome and we have been lucky enough to be able to offer this as a free event to the community so that everybody can come and get a little bit of cheer. And I'll be honest, every day walking in, in December, you're just happy.

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Nick Whitehurst: Music Man Square has always been here to celebrate Meredith and music. But we have done all sorts of things throughout the arts. We have supported the local high school and held a lot of competitions here for them. Weekly we have music classes. Any community event is welcome here at Music Man Square. We try to make sure that anybody trying to do something for Mason City knows that they can come here and do it.

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On a cliff overlooking Willow Creek stands the Charles H. MacNider Art Museum. Around 1920, a prominent architect from Minneapolis named Carl. A. Gage was commissioned to build the structure by Burr Keeler, an attorney in Mason City.

Edith Blanchard: He worked for one of the brick and tile companies here in town, and so this was really built as a home that showcased sort of what you could do with building a home out of brick and tile. It has different tile samples throughout the house as well as a shake shingle steam bent roof, which was very unusual.

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In 1964, General Hanford MacNider and his wife purchased the building and gave it to the city of Mason City to be made into an art center. They named it after his father, Charles H. MacNider, who was President of the First National Bank of Mason City.

 

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Edith Blanchard: If you think of like the Salisbury House in Des Moines, that is similar to what we are, but a smaller scale. So, it's just meant to look like an English Tudor cottage.

The English Tudor design is derived from a 16th century architectural style. The key characteristics include a lavish use of half-timber work, large groups of rectangular windows, complex roofs with many gables, and a lot of brick work.

Edith Blanchard: One of the interesting aspects is it has both stucco and all the different brick patterns. The gentleman who created the home was an executive at one of the brick and tile companies, so not only is there many different sample patterns throughout the entire building, but if you look on the outside of the building, there's different patterns actually even in the brick work on the exterior. The home for a long time was actually heated using steam and we've left the original radiators and the wooden boxes over the top and with a cane front on the front of them, which is very unique.

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One of the most distinctive architectural features of the MacNider Art Museum is its roof. In 2008, the steam formed wave-coursed thatch-style cedar shingle roof was replaced with a new one of the same type. It is one of the few left of its kind in the Midwest.

Edith Blanchard: When I first started here in 2007, the roof had been damaged due to hail and just over time it needed to be replaced. And as a city department, I went to the city council and asked for the funding and it was a lot of money to replace it. It would be much easier to just put on a regular asphalt roof. But they felt it was really important due to the historical nature of our community and importance of architecture to repair it and replace it in the correct way.

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Edith Blanchard: This technique is pretty rare, we actually had to bring the company from Florida when they put a new roof on in about 2008, 2009. How it is done is they take shingles and then they have a vat of open steam and they are bent to different architectural shapes and that gives the impression of an English thatched roof.

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An impressive aspect of the museum is its permanent collection of American art, which includes paintings, prints, drawings, ceramics, sculpture and fused and blown glass.

Edith Blanchard: So, many people don't realize that the MacNider has one of the top collections of American art in the Midwest. We have artists such as Dale Chihuly, Alexander Calder, Mary Cassatt, Grandma Moses, Romare Bearden, Jaune Quick-to-See, that span 200 years of American art. And that is due to generous people of our community, generous donors. So, in addition to having a large American art collection, we have a changing exhibition gallery. And this is a large space in which it was designed to bring in different kinds of art. So, for example, African art or photography, and that was designed to expose members of the community to new and different kinds of art, art from different cultures and enhance what we already had in the collection.

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The MacNider Art Museum also has a large collection of Bil Baird hand puppets and marionettes. Bil Baird was a master puppeteer of the mid and late 20th century who created many memorable television and film characters. His puppets, featured in the 1965 film, The Sound of Music, are on display at the MacNider Art Museum. The predecessor of puppeteers like Jim Henson, Baird moved to Mason City with his family as a teenager, then returned to Cerro Gordo County following a lengthy career in show business.

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Edith Blanchard: We have over 600 puppets that are part of the Bil Baird puppet collection. After he had a long career in New York City and did many famous shows, his puppets came back here to live after his retirement.

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MacNider has undergone a series of additions and modifications over the years telling the story of a growing public arts center.

Edith Blanchard: MacNider Museum is a unique space for art because what we have done is taken a building that is art in and of itself and created wonderful spaces within that building to highlight our unique and one-of-a-kind art collection.

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Edith Blanchard: As we have added onto the building, we have been extremely mindful and cognizant that we wanted it to appear seamless. And, most of the time we have people ask, where the new building starts and the old building ends, because they can't figure it out. And I really credit our architects for that.

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A short drive west from Mason City, Clear Lake offers music lovers its own celebrated history with the legendary Surf Ballroom. The famed landmark is home to countless musical moments from Big Band and Swing, to Jazz, Rock and Roll, and the Blues. The Surf Ballroom has become a repository for fond memories spanning generations.

Nikki Johnson: There is so much history here at the Surf. People from all around the world know the name, the Surf Ballroom.

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Built in 1933 by developer Carl Fox, Clear Lake's signature night spot originally stood on the shore of the 3,600-acre body of water.

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Nikki Johnson: It was actually destroyed by a fire in 1947. So, this building was rebuilt the following year in what was the overflow parking location for the original. So, this building was built in 1948. The original owner and designer, Carl Fox, he wanted the building to feel like a tropical getaway, kind of like an ocean beach club. And so, the Surf, that is how it kind of got its name.

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Nikki Johnson: The first thing you see when you walk into the Surf are pineapples on the wall. Those are an international sign of welcome. And there are so many little details throughout the building, especially in the ballroom. They really all come together in the ballroom because, again, that's why the Surf was built back then as a place to go dancing. The ceiling is dark blue to represent dancing underneath the night sky. We have the original cloud machines that project lights of clouds that float across the sky. The murals, of course, all along the walls of the crashing waves and the palm trees.

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The beach club feel Fox was looking for culminates in the ballroom where the 6,300 square foot dance floor has collected footsteps for over 80 years.

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Nikki Johnson: They sanded down to the original and sealed it up really nice. And when they did that, it actually, it lightened that wood five or six shades. It looked like a brand-new floor, but it is that original wood. They picked that wood because it looked most like a sandy beach and that really make it make sense when they did that.

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The ballroom seats just over 2,000 people. But its 166 booths are rarely occupied for long.

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Nikki Johnson: They are very close together and they were created as a space just to take a break in between dancing. So, they weren't made to sit and watch the show the whole time, they were designed small and actually uncomfortable as well by design because Carl Fox, he didn't want people sitting, he wanted them out on the dance floor.

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The warm tropical vibe of the Surf serves music fans well for the ballroom's flagship event, the Winter Dance Party.

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Held the first weekend of February, the Surf Ballroom becomes a shrine of remembrance for the Day the Music Died.

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Nikki Johnson: We are known for being the last concert venue for Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP, the Big Bopper Richardson. And so, they came here the night of February 3rd, 1959 on what was called the Winter Dance Party tour. And a lot of people know they did not make it to their next destination. And so, that day and that event became known around the world as the Day the Music Died. And even though the Surf will always be associated with that event and with that time, we're very thankful and honored to be able to say that the music truly does live on here at the Surf.

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The events of February 3rd, 1959 forever sealed the Surf Ballroom's place in music history. Adjacent to the ballroom, the Cypress Lounge proudly showcases memorabilia of the artists killed that fateful night.

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Nikki Johnson: Everyone that you see on the wall, that means they have played here at the Surf Ballroom. The musicians on the left-hand side are the blues musicians that have been there, so B.B. King, Joe Bonamassa, Walter Trout. And then on the righthand side is a lot of the country musicians that have been here. So, Blake Shelton, Willie Nelson, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride. For the Big Band musicians, there are very, very big names from that time like Lawrence Welk, Count Basie, Duke Ellington. And so, Lawrence Welk, I believe he holds the record for playing the Surf the most. I believe he played here seven or eight times.

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Each February, fans and musicians travel to the Surf Ballroom to pay respect to the lost legends of rock and roll and the building that protects their legacy.

Nikki Johnson: It's definitely a timeless place. You leave with a new appreciation and understanding of what happened that night and the cultural impact that it had on the world, and just the fact that it's still here and the music is continuing to live on.

 

Through the years, the Surf Ballroom has continued to be a cultural ambassador for music history. Since 2009, the Surf has operated as a non-profit education center and museum, with every corner of the building holding onto history.

Nikki Johnson: We're able to share the story of the Surf in such a hands-on way, in a creative learning environment, and let the music really speak for itself and teach for itself, because it's a great teacher and has the ability to reach and connect people of all ages, all walks of life. So, that music, it still is creating opportunities and it's still alive here at the Surf.

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Two towns in North Central Iowa, where history is passed down through art, architecture, music and celebration. Where some of the best-known figures of the 20th century practiced their craft, left their mark and met their fate. The story of what came before, cherished by a new generation, and preserved for those yet to come. A story that lives on in the Historic Buildings of Iowa: Mason City and Clear Lake.

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Funding for this program is provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation, generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.

Visit Mason City is proud to support local productions on Iowa PBS. Names such as Meredith Willson, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buddy Holly are all part of our history. Mason City welcomes you. Learn more at VisitMasonCityIowa.com.

Clear Lake Bank & Trust is pleased to support local productions on Iowa PBS. Clear Lake Bank & Trust is a locally owned community bank serving North Iowa since 1934. Iowa rooted and proud to help our community. Learn more are ClearLakeBank.bank.