Muscatine Photo Tour (Clinton, Fort Dodge, Ottumwa: apartments, city hall, condos)

[DMRyan]

Muscatine is the perfect mix of rivertown grime, and restored historic downtown charm. You can tell it's got enough corporate influence to see that there are dollars at work here, at least in the downtown area.

Bridge crossing the Mississippi River:


Views from the south end of town:




Welcome to Muscatine:










County Administration Building:


Muscatine County Courthouse:




Riverfront Hotel renovated to condos:










Newer Bank Building:








Carver Center:


City Hall:




Lots of colorful rowhouses:








Laurel Building:








Senior Apartments:


Stanley Consultants Headquarters:








From the Riverfront:




Historic Churches:






Historic Homes






















The reason for Muscatine County's elevated air pollution levels?

[wingit]

Nice pics you have posted. You say views from the southend of town, you are actually looking from the eastern end of town towards the south end of town. The river kind of runs east to west along the downtown riverfront, so I guess technically you approach from the southeast side of Muscatine from Illinois. The last pic of the smoke stacks is the south end of Muscatine. The blueish building on the left is Muscatine Power and Water's electric generating plant. The other tall smoke stack is GPC, a grain alcohol processing plant. Actually from the Iowa side of the bridge looking downtown is more westerly than anything, the river's main channel turns hard left (south) just upstream from the GPC smoke stack in your photo. The chute that looks like it is heading straight for the blue building, is actually backwater of the Mississippi. The main channel continues to the right (southwest) in your picture. At any rate, the GPC smoke stack is definately in what is considered Muscatine's south end.

[dcisive]

Nicely done and a sweet memory. I only went through town once but my grandfather in his day use to have customers there and traveled there fairly often in the 40's and 50's. It's sure nice to see older buildings well preserved living right next to newer ones just fine. Unlike so many other older towns that let their older buildings rot. Nicely done.

[fkostas]

Wow, nice work. I remember Muscatine as having the most wonderful brick buildings-The Welch apartment building is a really fine example.

Doesn't look run down or poor to me. The streets were clean, historic buildings maintained, with beautiful river views. It obviously was a fairly wealthy city. Looks like it's doing just fine.

[DMRyan]

Most of the cities of Iowa in the 25,000-30,000 people range aren't doing so hot economically, but Muscatine seems to be in better shape than the Clinton's, Fort Dodge's, and Ottumwa's of the world. It's got a good industrial base, and enough corporate HQ might to make it in this world. Being close to the Quad Cities metro doesn't hurt either.