This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
As a poor boy growing up in Chicago at the turn of the century, Alfred Caldwell alternated between acting out the legends of Homer and King Arthur and sneaking into Wrigley Field without a ticket in order to watch the Cubs play.
By his teens, myths had won out over the Cubs. Caldwell's dream was to dredge up a lost city like Atlantis from the bottom of murky waters, set it right, and create an advanced civilization. In real life, he got as far as Dubuque, Iowa, and the Mississippi River.
With very little formal schooling, Caldwell became a landscape architect in Chicago, working for several prominent designers. Several visits to Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin made him a firm convert to the prairie school, especially his belief that beauty arose from the use of native materials.
It was this conviction that landed him the job of WPA Superintendent at Dubuque in 1934. The Dubuque city fathers were applying for a WPA grant to make something of Eagle Point Park on a bluff above the city. They weren't concerned about the beauty of local materials—limestone and lumber—what sold them was its cheap price.
Caldwell took the job with the stipulation that every part of the design be his, not only the landscape, but the buildings as well. Here was his chance to turn a pristine Eden into a beautiful and civilized Atlantis.
Caldwell opened a limestone quarry nearby, trained WPA workers to harvest and work the stone; he cut down park trees for lumber. Slowly, Eagle Point Park was transformed into a prairie school showplace of pavilions, gateways, terraces, shelters, ponds and vistas, all looking as if they had risen naturally on the site. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt toured the site in 1936. "This is my idea of a worthwhile boondoggle," the President said.
Then, the complaints began. Caldwell was taking too much time; he was building too well for just a park, and worst of all, he was a Chicagoan, not a native Dubuquer. Caldwell was fired and sent back to Chicago before he had finished what he called "my city in a garden."
For my part, I think I know the real reason. Dubuquers were worried that if Alfred Caldwell had been allowed to carry out his dreams, Dubuque might have dwindled into a mere shanty town at the gates of Atlantis.
Rock Island Lines is supported by grants from the Illinois Humanities Council, the Illinois Arts Council—a state agency—and by Augustana College, Rock Island.
