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A Literary Walking Tour of Eastside Iowa City, Spring 1990

Literary Walking Tour of Eastside of Iowa City Page 5

and now...

Black Angel, Oakland Cemetery, (East end of Brown Street). It is rumored that you have not been to Iowa City unless you have been kissed under the Black Angel (preferably under a full-moon). Made of a cast metal, the statue was commissioned by Teresa Dolezal Feldevert in memory of her first husband, Nicholas, and a son who died in infancy, Edward. The artist was U Mario Korbel, a Polish sculptor from Chicago. Feldevert was born in 1836 in Strmilov, Bohemia, where she was a practicing physician. Her foreign MD license was not recognized in the US so she practiced midwifery. She died in Iowa City in 1924. (Waverly Independent Republican, 8-28-24; Iowa City Press-Citizen, Irving B. Weber)

"At night I roamed the bars with friends: The Mill [120 E Burlington], Dave's Foxhead Tavern [402 E Market Street] George's [312 E Market], playing pool, playing pinball and Space Invaders. All those secret love affairs everybody knew about. All those horrible parties where you were supposed to talk to the famous writer, who could barely talk himself, which was why he wrote in the first place." (Darrah Cloud, Seems Like Old Times) "...I tended bar at The Mill, poised midway between the waitresses who dreaded the weekly seige of small-tipping impatient poets and poseurs, who occupied the front room every Tuesday after workshop, and that group of writers...I'd see people leaning towards each other in intense, life and death literary discussions over the syntax of the pre-ante-penultimate line of someone's daily sestina, watch a first year person's eyes glance side to side when a name they'd never heard of got dropped into the conversation, witness the easy confidence of someone whose story had obviously gone well in workshop that day, and then he or she'd get up to go to the bathroom, and in his or her absence, everyone at their table would cut them down in a barrage of catty commentary....I'd see people staying after the rest had gone home, talking over problems and helping each other. I'd watch writers come in alone, find a corner, pull out some paper and commence to chew their pens and stare out the window." (Peter Nelson MFA UI Writers' Workshop, and bartender, Seems Like Old Times)

Hamburg Inn No. 2, 214 N Linn Street. "Once upon a time at Hamburg Inn No. 2 breakfast cost you sixty-nine cents. We're talking 1974, and you got your two eggs any style, wheat toast paddled with butter, two pretty if chemical jellies, hashbrowns done "al dente" and something called bottomless coffee. My great teachers at the Workshop were: John Cheever, Stanley Elkin, Stephen Becker, Jack Leggett, John Irving and Miki, chief waitress at Hamburg Inn No. 2, or was it No. 1. Such are the caprices of memory." (Allan Gurganus, Seems Like Old Times, May 1986) Hamburg Inn No. 1 is now the "Jade Garden" at 119 Iowa Avenue.

Henry Black's Gaslight Village, 400 block (north side) of Brown Street. "...in 1966 there were 40 people living at Black's, mostly grads and mostly Workshop." (Seems Like Old Times)

Writers' Workshop Locations: First located in what is now Calvin Hall -- just up the hill from the Iowa Memorial Union (IMU) on Jefferson Street. As the staff and student numbers grew, the offices, classrooms, storerooms, and the editorial offices of the Western Review (formerly the Rocky Mountain Review) were moved to a post-WWII sheetmetal quonset hut on the banks of the Iowa River by the IMU. When that location

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and now... Black Angel, Oakland Cemetery, (East end of Brown Street). It is rumored that you have not been to Iowa City unless you have been kissed under the Black Angel (preferably under a full-moon). Made of a cast metal, the statue was commissioned by Teresa Dolezal Feldevert in memory of her first husband, Nicholas, and a son who died in infancy, Edward. The artist was U Mario Korbel, a Polish sculptor from Chicago. Feldevert was born in 1836 in Strmilov, Bohemia, where she was a practicing physician. Her foreign MD license was not recognized in the US so she practiced midwifery. She died in Iowa City in 1924. (Waverly Independent Republican, 8-28-24; Iowa City Press-Citizen, Irving B. Weber) "At night I roamed the bars with friends: The Mill [120 E Burlington], Dave's Foxhead Tavern [402 E Market Street] George's [312 E Market], playing pool, playing pinball and Space Invaders. All those secret love affairs everybody knew about. All those horrible parties where you were supposed to talk to the famous writer, who could barely talk himself, which was why he wrote in the first place." (Darrah Cloud, Seems Like Old Times) "...I tended bar at The Mill, poised midway between the waitresses who dreaded the weekly seige of small-tipping impatient poets and poseurs, who occupied the front room every Tuesday after workshop, and that group of writers...I'd see people leaning towards each other in intense, life and death literary discussions over the syntax of the pre-ante-penultimate line of someone's daily sestina, watch a first year person's eyes glance side to side when a name they'd never heard of got dropped into the conversation, witness the easy confidence of someone whose story had obviously gone well in workshop that day, and then he or she'd get up to go to the bathroom, and in his or her absence, everyone at their table would cut them down in a barrage of catty commentary....I'd see people staying after the rest had gone home, talking over problems and helping each other. I'd watch writers come in alone, find a corner, pull out some paper and commence to chew their pens and stare out the window." (Peter Nelson MFA UI Writers' Workshop, and bartender, Seems Like Old Times) Hamburg Inn No. 2, 214 N Linn Street. "Once upon a time at Hamburg Inn No. 2 breakfast cost you sixty-nine cents. We're talking 1974, and you got your two eggs any style, wheat toast paddled with butter, two pretty if chemical jellies, hashbrowns done "al dente" and something called bottomless coffee. My great teachers at the Workshop were: John Cheever, Stanley Elkin, Stephen Becker, Jack Leggett, John Irving and Miki, chief waitress at Hamburg Inn No. 2, or was it No. 1. Such are the caprices of memory." (Allan Gurganus, Seems Like Old Times, May 1986) Hamburg Inn No. 1 is now the "Jade Garden" at 119 Iowa Avenue. Henry Black's Gaslight Village, 400 block (north side) of Brown Street. "...in 1966 there were 40 people living at Black's, mostly grads and mostly Workshop." (Seems Like Old Times) Writers' Workshop Locations: First located in what is now Calvin Hall -- just up the hill from the Iowa Memorial Union (IMU) on Jefferson Street. As the staff and student numbers grew, the offices, classrooms, storerooms, and the editorial offices of the Western Review (formerly the Rocky Mountain Review) were moved to a post-WWII sheetmetal quonset hut on the banks of the Iowa River by the IMU. When that location