Last Wednesday when we left off, Nader and I were still hanging around Budget Travel’s “Coolest Small Town”, Mount Vernon. On this trip we will finish up in Mount Vernon and then head north to Stone City and then to Monticello for lunch.
If you are trying to remember what I ate for lunch in Monticello, just click on the link below to refresh your memory:
Tenderloining: Monticello Field Work
Here are the pictures from this segment of my Birthday Road Trip:
Despite the Methodists’ “Open Doors” slogan, this church was locked up tight. Which is a shame, cause I’d love to see the inside.
I have not, but I’d like to.
After this, we left Mount Vernon and ended up in Stone City.
This is St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. It was built in 1913 and closed in 1992.
It was turned into an “oratory”.
I don’t know what an oratory is because I’m not a Catholic, I just crush fish on Fridays a lot. Big Pun fan out there?
If you don’t know Big Pun and don’t get the weak reference… don’t look it up. Do us both a favor and don’t look it up.
The stained glass was imported from Germany.
The remains of the old bridge that went across the Wapsipinicon River.
This building isn’t the backdrop of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”… it is an information center… But he had quite the connection to Stone City…
The back of this church is in part of a Grant Wood painting… but that isn’t his only connection to Stone City…
Grant Wood painted a painting called “Stone City, Iowa” in the same year he painted “American Gothic”. Wood painted the town in 1930 after Stone City had seen it’s best days. It was a boom town because of its limestone quarries, but by 1930 Portland cement had been developed and that brought quick economic decline to Stone City. Now Stone City is an unincorporated town. Not much remains of the town but this church and a general store and a few other buildings. However, there are still active quarries and they are flourishing.
Grant Wood’s “Stone City, Iowa” painting is located at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska.
But that still isn’t Grant Wood’s only connection with Stone City. Stone City was the location of the Stone City Art Colony which was an art colony that gathered in Stone City during the summers of 1932 and 1933. It was founded by Grant Wood, Edward Rowan, and Adrian Dornbush. Now, try to convince me this isn’t amazing. Residents of the colony lived in ice house wagons that they decorated themselves. I wish I had more information about it, but there isn’t a ton of information about it out there. At least not that I’ve found. I’ll have to keep digging into it.
After we left Stone City, it was on to Moncticello!
The City Hall
That concludes my pictures in Monticello. The next collection will start the trip home. Starting with going through Independence, Iowa.