The carriage step in front of the Couch-Carskaddan house in Muscatine’s West Hill Historic District
This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on May 10, 2023.
May is Preservation Month, when we celebrate historic places and ponder the importance of remembering.
I lived in Muscatine almost 20 years before I paid attention to our historic homes—beyond admiration, I mean.
“Lumber barons built these mansions. Aren’t they grand?”
In 2001, I reported the startup of the city’s first Historic Preservation Commission. At the commission I heard of historic stuff that could have been saved if people had known or cared before it was too late—before neglected structures got derided as eyesores or obstacles to progress. Not every old building can be saved or should be saved, they said. Documenting what we have is the first step toward mobilizing resources to be able to save any of them.
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