Willard Boyd, president of the University of Iowa from 1969 to 1981, died on Tuesday. Boyd, known to everyone by his nickname “Sandy,” was 95 years old. Boyd was president during a period of great change and unrest, with protesters challenging the established structures of power at the university over issues such as the war […]
Iowa City history
Posted inCommunity/News
The Black Angel and Ana Mendieta
“I have been carrying on a dialogue between the landscape and the female body (based on my own silhouette). I believe this has been a direct result of my having been torn from my homeland (Cuba) during my adolescence. I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). My art […]
Posted inCommunity/News
‘Your voice is valuable’: The LGBTQ Iowa Archives and Library welcomes a new director
The LGBTQ Iowa Archives and Library (LIAL) has a new interim director, Madde Hoberg. The former executive director Aiden Bettine founded LIAL in 2020 while working on the Transgender Oral History Project of Iowa. Bettine, then an archivist at the University of Iowa, realized there were no LGBTQ-specific collecting development policies in archives across Iowa. […]
Posted inCommunity/News
‘Bloom County’ is coming to television as an animated series, bringing echoes of Iowa City with it
Almost 42 years after it was first launched, 33 years after its creator discontinued it and seven years after he revived it, the much-beloved comic strip “Bloom County” is set to become an animated series on Fox. And when Berkeley Breathed’s creation hits TV screens, it’ll be bringing echoes of Iowa City with it. “Just […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Best of the CRANDIC Spotlight: Colonial Lanes owner Brad Huff on keeping Iowa City’s oldest bowling alley a safe, retro escape
Best of the CRANDIC 2021 winner: Best Bowling Alley Bowling, putt-putt, arcade games, a lunch counter and sunken bar. That’s how Colonial Lanes rolls. The business opened in 1959, and current owner Brad Huff has overseen the lanes at the CRANDIC’s Best Bowling Alley since 1972. Little Village sat down with Huff to discuss CL’s […]
Posted inLetters
‘Cowboy Justice’: A first-hand account of the deadly 1991 UI campus shooting, 30 years later
It’s Nov. 1, 1991, an ordinary Friday afternoon, the day after Halloween. I’m sitting alone in a big office on the fifth floor of Van Allen Hall, where the Physics Department at the University of Iowa is housed, when I hear a loud noise on a floor below: Pop pop pop. That sounds like gunshots, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Public Space One purchases historic Iowa City mansion
Public Space One bought a mansion. To be more specific, PS1 is expanding into the Close House, a historic building on the well-trekked corner of South Gilbert and Bowery streets in downtown Iowa City. The purchase marks a bold new chapter for the arts nonprofit, which spent the better part of the last decade in […]
Posted inCommunity/News
The Hall Mall is dead, long live the Hall Mall!
“I came up with the Hall Mall name,” Kirk Stephan said through chuckles as he recalled opening what would become Iowa City’s original incubator of small businesses in the early 1970s. “I wanted to have a longer one, but it turned out that advertisers charged more money the more letters you had!” More than a […]
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The Highlander, Iowa City’s strange, star-studded supper club, is now a historic hotel
I was a little nervous during my first meeting as a member of Iowa City’s Historic Preservation Commission a few years ago. After we voted to adjourn, I breathed a sigh of relief — I hadn’t made a motion at the wrong time and didn’t seem to screw anything up. And then a former commissioner […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa City Bike Library focuses summer rides on racial justice, ‘the power of the bicycle’
In early July 2021, the Iowa City Bike Library is releasing the first in a series of four bike rides touring the Iowa City area intended to create awareness of calls to action in the community. The Raise It Up Rides are audio-guided routes visiting points of interest relating to racial inequities, identifying systems of […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Coast Guard to honor Hawkeye football great Emlen Tunnell for his bravery in WWII
Emlen Tunnell made history on the football field — first as a Hawkeye, then in the NFL — and continued do so after his playing days ended in 1961. In 1965, he became the first Black assistant coach in the NFL, and in 1967, Tunnell was the first Black player inducted into Pro Football Hall […]
Posted inCommunity/News
The ‘demure white supremacy of the Midwest’
Beneath a veneer of “niceness,” the Midwest is among the very worst places to live in the United States if you’re a person of color. That’s what historian and University of Iowa history professor Colin Gordon discovered while completing a report for the Iowa Policy Project titled “Race in the Heartland: Equity, Opportunity, and Public […]
