Vander Veer Park Historic District

About this property

The Vander Veer Park Historic District is a historic district in Davenport, Iowa, United States, that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Over its 70.8-acre (287,000 m2) area, in 1985 it included 66 contributing buildings, two contributing structures, one contributing site, and one contributing object. The historic district consists of houses surrounding Vander Veer Park. The neighborhood is located 22 blocks north of the Mississippi River at the head of the Harrison-Main-Brady thoroughfares, which originate in the city's central business district and rise above the bluffs. The park is bounded on the north by Central Park Avenue, to the east by Brady Street, south by Lombard Street, and to the west by Harrison Street. Middle- and upper-middle-class houses were built between 1895 and 1915 and are Queen Anne and Tudor Revival style. The neighborhood is anchored on the south by St. Paul Lutheran Church and the Outing Club. The focal point of the historic district is Vander Veer Park, which is a trapezoid of 33 acres (13 ha). The beautiful atmosphere of the neighborhood is marred only by the density of traffic on Brady and Harrison Streets (formerly US 61). In 1885 the city of Davenport acquired the property that had been the Scott County Fairgrounds. It is a significant example of landscape planning, and of the civic improvements that were being made by the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Five years after the land was purchased and improved it was named Central Park after New York City's park of the same name. Like its namesake it featured naturalistic landscaping, a glasshouse, floral gardens, a large pond, picnic pavilion, and a picturesque bridge. Central Park was the first major park established by the City of Davenport. The year that it opened the city established the Board of Parks Commissioners. They acquired other properties and established residential parks similar to Central Park. The parks included both Lookout Park, later renamed Riverview Terrace, and Prospect Park that were brought into the city's system in 1894. Fejervary Park was acquired in 1902. Other major projects in the city's beautification program included riverfront improvement that created LeClaire Park and included the W.D. Petersen Memorial Music Pavilion, Dillon Fountain, and Union Station between 1911 and 1931. Central Park was renamed Vander Veer after an early Davenport park commissioner in 1911. In the 1930s Civil Works Administration crews altered the park's plan by removing the corner entrances at Brady and Lombard Streets and at Harrison and Lombard Streets. The original street lights and the iron fountain were replaced with modern light standards and a stone-and-concrete fountain that was operated electrically.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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