Historic Hotels & Inns in Iowa

Ways in

Themes in Iowa

Dubuque and the Mississippi River towns

Dubuque, which the City calls Iowa’s oldest city, has five stays: Hotel Julien Dubuque, opened in 1915 on a corner the hotel says has held a hotel since 1839; the Redstone, wagon maker Augustine A. Cooper’s Richardsonian Romanesque duplex on Bluff Street; the Richards House, a Stick Style B&B in the Jackson Park district; the Hancock House, grocer Charles T. Hancock’s Queen Anne mansion on Grove Terrace; and Four Mounds Inn, with rooms in the 1908 Grey House and the 1924 White House of a bluff-top estate. In Davenport, the Beiderbecke Inn is grocer and banker Charles Beiderbecke’s 1881 house in the Hamburg Historic District; the inn honors his grandson, the jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. In McGregor, the Little Switzerland Inn fills the North Iowa Times Building on Main Street, and one unit is an 1842 log cabin moved to the lot in 1986.

Restored downtown hotels

Des Moines has four, all downtown: Hotel Fort Des Moines and the Renaissance Des Moines Savery Hotel both opened in 1919 (at the Savery, ask for a room in the 1919 main block, not the c.1899 annex or the 1950s west wing); the Surety Hotel fills George B. Hippee’s office tower, bought in 2017 and turned into a hotel; and the Hyatt Place Des Moines Downtown occupies upper floors of the 1924 Liberty Building. In Davenport, W.F. Miller’s Hotel Blackhawk opened in 1915 and reopened in 2010 after a restoration, and The Current Iowa fills D.H. Burnham and Company’s 1910 Putnam Building. Sioux City’s Art Deco Warrior Hotel, closed in 1976, reopened in 2020 with some rooms in the adjacent Davidson Building, and in Mason City the Historic Park Inn Hotel, the last surviving of the six hotels Frank Lloyd Wright designed, was restored in 2011.

The Amana Colonies and the college towns

Die Heimat Country Inn is in Homestead, one of the seven Amana Colonies villages that became a National Historic Landmark in 1965; the inn says its 1856 building was a stagecoach stop and then one of the colonies’ communal kitchens. The Amana Society bought the whole village of Homestead in 1861 to gain its railroad connection, and the colonists lived communally until 1932. In Iowa City, the Brown Street Inn is a 1913 gambrel-roofed house built for civil engineering professor William G. Raymond on a brick-paved street where many university faculty lived. In Ames, the Iowa House Historic Inn fills a 1924 fraternity house in Campustown, near Iowa State University.

Perry, Decorah, the Cedar Valley and Keosauqua

In Perry, Harry and Will Pattee built Hotel Pattee in 1913 as a memorial to their father, and the hotel says each room is decorated around the region’s history and people. Decorah’s Hotel Winneshiek opened in 1905 with an octagonal three-story lobby under a stained-glass ceiling; Norway’s Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Märtha stayed in 1939, and it reopened as a hotel in 2000 after years as apartments. The Black Hawk Hotel in Cedar Falls stands on a Main Street lot that has held a hotel since 1853, and in Waterloo the Weis Mansion is manufacturer Henry Weis’s 1902 house. In the south, Edwin Manning’s ‘Steamboat Gothic’ hotel in Keosauqua stands by the Des Moines River; book the historic hotel, not the 1960s annex.

Road trip

Davenport to Decorah, inn to inn

Davenport

Start downtown at the Hotel Blackhawk, opened in 1915, or in the Hamburg Historic District at the Beiderbecke Inn, Charles Beiderbecke’s 1881 house.

Dubuque

Give Dubuque two nights: Hotel Julien in the Old Main district, or a historic house such as the Richards House or the Hancock House. Pick from our Dubuque guide.

McGregor

Stay at the Little Switzerland Inn in the North Iowa Times Building on Main Street, or in its log cabin, built in 1842 and moved to the lot in 1986.

Decorah

End at the Hotel Winneshiek, Turnock & Ohrenstein’s 1905 Beaux Arts hotel, with a three-story octagonal lobby under a stained-glass ceiling.

Context

History and architecture

Iowa became the 29th state on December 28, 1846. Dubuque, which the City calls Iowa’s oldest city, was opened to settlement in 1833, and Hotel Julien Dubuque says a hotel has stood on its corner since 1839, the year Antoine LeClaire’s LeClaire House, remembered as Davenport’s first hotel, was built on the site of today’s Current Iowa. In Cedar Falls, a hotel has stood on the Black Hawk Hotel’s lot since 1853, and Burr’s Hotel was in place there by 1884. The Amana Society bought the village of Homestead in 1861; Die Heimat Country Inn there dates its building to 1856. Decorah’s Hotel Winneshiek opened in 1905, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Park Inn in Mason City in 1910, Hotel Pattee in Perry in 1913, the Blackhawk in Davenport and the present Hotel Julien in 1915, Hotel Fort Des Moines and the Savery Hotel in 1919, and the Warrior in Sioux City in 1930. Several later declined, closed or became apartments before their restorations: the Winneshiek reopened in 2000, the Blackhawk in 2010 and the Warrior in 2020, the Park Inn’s restoration was finished in 2011, and Davenport’s 1910 Putnam Building became The Current Iowa in 2017.