Time Machine: The Commonwealth Apartments

Building was built in 1925

March 2, 2015 | 6:00 am

CEDAR RAPIDS A fairground with a horse racetrack and a baseball park, near the intersection of Second Avenue and 14th Street East, gave way to the development of Cedar Rapids Central Park addition in 1886.

There will not be a single vestige of the old fair grounds left in a month, reported The Gazette. The future inhabitants looking upon a populous portion of the city in after years will be surprised to know that Central Park addition was once the scene of the contest for twine binders and game chickens, and beautiful flowers, and golden harvests, and races. A force of about sixty men are out in that vicinity at work with twenty or thirty teams, and are transforming the fair grounds, where representatives of all counties in Iowa once gathered ... This makes an end of the racetrack and the boys with their trotters are casting about to see where they can get a racetrack.

Part of that site became a luxury apartment hotel in 1925.

The Commonwealth Inc. began as a corporation in 1924. Officers E.E. Wilcox, president; John B. Terry, vice president; F. Junkerman, secretary and treasurer; E.B. Cameron, O.C. Olney, Joe McRaith and William Chamberlain, directors, planned to build an apartment house that rivaled those in bigger cities. The structure designed by architects H.E. Hunter and Norman Hatton was built for $600,000 by general contractor O.F. Paulson. Made of brick, concrete and steel, its elaborate trims gave it charm.

When it opened in 1925, it provided the best for its residents and hotel guests.

All the features of the big city apartments will be included in the Commonwealth, related a 1924 article in The Gazette. A spacious lobby, womens room, mens room, childrens play room, commodious storage room, a complete steam heating plant, a water softener, and a central refrigerator plant providing icing facilities and circulating ice water to all apartments, two passenger and one service elevators, and large laundries with clothes dryers will be provided. Light, gas and heat will be furnished. Heated garage accommodations will be erected in the rear.

There also was a dining room, tea room, delicatessen, beauty shop and 104 apartments in varying sizes over seven floors.

A Gazette story in November 1939 described it as one of the show spots in Cedar Rapids and an apartment house which is set apart by a distinction acquired through constant effort to maintain the finest service and accommodations year after year.

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Time Machine: The Commonwealth Apartments