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Traveling through rural Iowa can reveal some surprising enterprises.
Join me in Calhoun County.
DAN: Lake City calls itself the town with everything but a lake.
It was drained decades ago for farmland.
But it's not without its charms for visitors.
Founded in 1856 by prairie settlers,
there's plenty of history in Lake City,
including some old buildings that were in need of renovation.
Luckily some residents were up to the task.
To start you off, I paid a dollar for the building.
That should tell you pretty much what shape it was in.
We re-tuck pointed the building,
re-plastered the building.
Dan: Colin King turned this historic Carnegie Library,
which opened in 1909, into a restaurant he calls the
"Carnegie Café".
He honors this history of the building in many ways.
An image of the philanthropist who financed over 100 libraries
in Iowa back in the day, Andrew Carnegie,
is displayed in the entryway.
The library circulation desk is now the bar.
And some of the original library bookshelves now display
memorabilia Colin has collected.
Colin also has a construction business
and he did much of the renovation himself.
But he now devotes most of his attention to being the sole chef
and menu planner at his cafe.
We're very well known for salads.
Also known for sandwiches, blackened tenderloin sandwich,
which is grilled.
We are also known for our French onion soup.
COLIN: We have over 40 some items on the menu.
What I would highly recommend is our staple of the restaurant
which is the apple berry chicken salad
along with red velvet cheese cake.
Boy, this dressing is phenomenal.
What is it?
It's a secret Colin designed and he doesn't give it out.
The only way you can have it is if you buy the restaurant.
Dan: Well...
I'll just stick to savoring the "mystery" dressing.
And it's obvious I'm not alone in my love of the food here.
As the noon-hour approaches, the restaurant fills up with other hungry patrons!
COLIN We pull from a 60 to 100 mile radius even for lunch.
Lake City is very strong community.
A lot of support in the community as you'll find out
throughout your day on your tours.
Dan: After lunch I move on to visit with other people in Lake City
who, like Colin, renovated a vintage downtown structure.
Paul and Judy Iverson spent four years converting the first and
second floors of this former office building into a
restful and artistic retreat for overnight visitors.
They call it Cornerstone Suites.
We wanted to make all the rooms bright and restful.
We knew from the beginning we wanted the rooms to be themed.
So we weren't sure what kind of theme to do.
Eventually we found a painting we liked, happened upon it.
Thought "Oh!"
Let's do artists, because this is kind of an artist community.
Dan: One of Lake City's artisans is Paul Iverson himself.
He's a woodworker who hand-crafted much of the
furniture in each suite to be in the same time
period of the featured artists.
The rooms even replicate some of the details in the paintings on display!
For example, in this, the Johannes Vermeer Suite,
the 1600's era Dutch artist's painting with a tile floor,
comes to life in the "real" tile floor of the bathroom.
In the suite named for Carl Larsson,
a Swedish painter from the late 1800's to early 1900's,
the red wooden table and chairs in this painting-- come
to life in "3-D" in the same room ...
again thanks to Paul's woodworking skills.
Adjacent to this sitting room, in the bedroom,
an artist friend created a mural of one of Larsson's paintings.
I have always loved Carl Larsson.
This is a picture I remember from when I was a teenager
and I said 'yes, lets go with that.
And I have a Scandinavian heritage so it fit in pretty well.
Tell me about the artist that inspired this room.
The artist here was William Bureau,
French painter around the time of Carl Larssen
in the mid to late 1800s.
He painted a wide genre of pictures.
Pictures of angels,
pictures of young women sitting by fountains.
It looks like this is the corner suite of Cornerstone Suites.
So what am I seeing out the window?
Out here you see our Maple City Square.
Has a bandstand replica of 100 years ago,
fountain we raised private funds.
Dan: Paul built the bandstand in the park.
He says he honed many of his woodworking skills while working
at another unique business in town.
Dobson Pipe Organ Builders.
Founded in 1974 by Iowa native Lynn Dobson this renowned
company designs and builds pipe organs primarily for churches,
colleges and concert halls all over America.
But during our visit, they were working on a project for the
Merton College Chapel at the University in Oxford, England.
The number of intricate details are mind-boggling to me.
From the woodcarving to adjusting pipes,
or "voicing" them as those in the business call it.
And how the heck can they even ship the final product?
That I'm told will be nearly 40 feet tall,
27 feet wide and weigh more than 16 tons.
We did get a brief look in the shop area,
which isn't generally open to visitors.
But the company doesn't mind if people drop by the lobby to
see photos of some of the organs they've built,
and to view many of the sculptures owner Lynn Dobson
creates from the wood scraps left on the shop floor!
The creativity that comes out of this quiet community is simply amazing.