Postcarding around old Des Moines

I spent a little time at the museum Friday afternoon leafing through an album of postcards that have nothing in particular to do with Lucas County but depict instead a variety of buildings and scenes elsewhere in the state. The collection was assembled by the late Jimmy Durham and dates from the turn of the 20th century when, if you wanted a visual reminder of something, the easiest solution was to buy a postcard.

That's one of my favorite views of downtown Des Moines, above, entitled "Seven Church Spires." The view is north from the intersection of Eighth and Grand toward an area once known as Piety Hill because of the number of houses of worship located there. 

The postcard title is a little misleading since you can actually count more than seven spires and one of the seven houses of worship included in the count was a synagogue and didn't have a spire.

Anyhow, the structures are (from left) St. Paul's Episcopal Church with the spires of First Methodist Church just behind it, Central Christian Church, First Baptist Church near the center, then Plymouth Congregational and, at the far right, Central Presbyterian. Temple B'Nai Jeshurun, not clearly visible, is sandwiched between the Baptist and Congregational churches.

St. Ambrose Cathedral, out of the photo to the right, was too far away to make it into this colorized photograph. Today, the Principal Financial Group tower is just out of the photograph to the left.

St. Paul's --- now the Cathedral Church of St. Paul with modified tower and greatly expanded --- is the only one of the houses of worship shown here that remains. A new First Methodist was built nearby, but all the other congregations as time passed sold their valuable commercial real estate and moved elsewhere.

While we're in downtown Des Moines, here's a view down Walnut Street taken at about the same time.

Headed north to University Avenue, this is Old Main, built during 1883, which still stands on the Drake University campus.

And here, near the intersection of 2nd and Euclid, is the campus of Highland Park College, later Des Moines University, which has vanished entirely, a substantial part of the campus covered in 1956 by one of the city's early shopping malls, Park Fair.

And finally, who doesn't remember a trip to Riverview Park?