DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) - A city in eastern Iowa has begun rebuilding the porches of five historic buildings at a center that was once an orphanage for the children of Civil War soldiers.
Davenport’s Capital Manager Clay Merritt told the Quad-City Times that several porches at the Annie Wittenmyer Center have been removed in order to be rebuilt. Merritt said that concrete foundations and wood railings had worn on the center’s porches at the administrative building and four cottages.
Merritt said the nearly $188,000 construction project will replicate the building’s historic look. Stone work will match the building’s original foundations.
Merritt said wood supports are holding up the porch roofs to be held in place until the replacement work is finished.
He said the cottages are currently used by a theater program and a church. The administrative building is used by a nonprofit that runs programs for children. The agency operates programs out of many buildings on the center’s campus.
The center was used as an orphanage until the mid-1970s. The city acquired the campus and its more than 20 buildings in 1976.
None of the center’s buildings were constructed in the Civil War era, but many were built in the late-1800s. The maintenance and renovation of the center is ongoing.
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Information from: Quad-City Times, http://www.qctimes.com
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