When the Irish community that gave Davenport’s Cork Hill its name outgrew their first church on this site, they hired (who else?) the Midwest’s preeminent Irish-American ecclesiastical architect to design the replacement, the Cork-born James J. Egan.

Designed by Edward Durell Stone, the architect’s only building in Iowa, this New Formalist version of the Davenport Public Library replaced a neoclassical Carnegie Library built on this site in 1904.

Jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke’s childhood church, Davenport’s First Presbyterian holds an annual jazz liturgy in honor of Bix. The building itself is an impressive example of Richardsonian Romanesque, built in 1899 and designed by C.E. Gottschalk & John Grant Beadle.

Designed by Iowa architect John W. Ross and completed in 1896, Davenport's Richardsonian Romanesque-style City Hall is one of a handful in the US to host a Socialist administration, after they swept to power in the 1920 municipal elections.

The first dam conceived as part of the massive engineering project that tamed the Upper Mississippi River, Dam No. 15 between Davenport and Rock Island is the longest roller dam in the world. Not that that’s saying a whole lot.