This week in Iowa City
About Iowa City
Iowa City was planned on purpose: in 1839 the territorial legislature called for a new capital nearer the middle of Iowa, and two commissioners drove a stake into a bluff above the Iowa River and laid out the streets from there. The stone Old Capitol went up starting on the Fourth of July, 1840, and when Iowa became a state in December 1846 its first government met under that dome, wrote its constitution there, and 59 days later created the State University of Iowa. When the capital moved to Des Moines in 1857 the lawmakers handed the building to the university, and it still sits at the heart of the Pentacrest, now a museum, with four Beaux-Arts halls standing guard at its corners. Writing took root here too: the Iowa Writers' Workshop began in 1936 as the first program of its kind, bronze plaques along Iowa Avenue honor 49 authors with Iowa ties, and in 2008 UNESCO named Iowa City the world's third City of Literature and the first in America. Today about 75,000 neighbors share the brick Pedestrian Mall, with the public library, Friday night concerts in summer, and the 1912 Englert Theatre a block away.