Vision Iowa Grant Expected For Wright-Designed Mason City Hotel

The Vision Iowa Board is expected to award as much as $9 million in state funds Wednesday to a Mason City group restoring a landmark hotel and bank designed by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright.The project, with a total price tag of about $33 million, will ensure the preservation of the only remaining hotel designed by Wright, whose Prairie Style architecture revolutionized the way buildings were constructed in the mid-1900s.

The award will include $1 million for redevelopment of the Mason City library, creation of an interpretation center at the Wright-designed Stockman Home, and the construction of the East Park Performing Arts Pavilion. Mason City entities will provide about $16.5 million in funds, most of it in the form of a $7.6 million library bond issue approved by voters last November.

The announcement is expected when Lt. Gov. Patty Judge and members of the Vision Iowa board meet on Wednesday to make what has been characterized as a major announcement

A media advisory e-mailed to statehouse reporters on Tuesday didn’t identify the recipient of the Vision Iowa grant, but the board has been in negotiations with the Mason City group for several weeks and a contingent of local leaders plans to be at the meeting in Des Moines Wednesday.

Mason City will become the 13th Iowa city to receive funding through the Vision Iowa program. About $220 million has been awarded to major projects in Burlington, Clinton, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, Dubuque, Ottumwa, Des Moines, Sioux City, Storm Lake and Waterloo/Cedar Falls.

In addition, millions of additional dollars have been awarded to smaller projects. In order to receive the grants, communities are required to prove the viability of the project and secure local matching funds. In Mason City, a large portion of the project will be funded through the sale of $7.6 million in bonds.

Although Wright is perhaps best-known for his work in designing homes in the Prairie Style, his portfolio also included several businesses, including seven hotels around the world. The other six, all modeled after the Park Inn, have been demolished.

Mason City is already considered an important repository of Prairie School architecture in the Midwest and the Rock Glen / Rock Crest neighborhood is one of the largest groups of such houses anywhere.

Wright’s Stockman House is already a popular attraction in Mason City. In addition, five Prairie School houses in the neighborhood were designed by Walter Burley Griffin, two houses by Francis Barry Byrne, one by local architect Einar Broaten, and one by Curtis Besinger. On the south edge of Rock Crest is another Prairie style house by William Drummond when he was in the supervising the last months of construction of the Park Inn Hotel.

The Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Because of its deteriorated condition the Park Inn Hotel was listed on the `Ten Most Endangered Historic Properties’ by the Iowa Historic Preservation Alliance in 1999. The Park Inn Hotel was designated as a `Save America’s Treasures’ official project by the White House Millennium Committee in 2000.