East Village, Des Moines

The neighborhood on the east bank of the Des Moines River has gone by many names, but for most of its history it was simply the east side, the part of town that mattered once the Iowa Capitol chose to plant itself on high ground above the river.

The area was platted in eighteen fifty-four, and for decades it flooded too regularly to develop quickly. But the announcement in eighteen fifty-six that the new state capitol would be built on the east bluffs changed the calculation entirely. Suddenly this was the side of the river where state government lived, where lawyers and legislators needed offices, where commercial traffic flowed. By the time the current gold-domed Capitol opened in eighteen eighty-six, the neighborhood had its own railroad depot, its first brick storefronts, and a street grid that would persist for over a century.

The people who filled those storefronts came from across Europe. Scandinavians, Eastern Europeans, and later arrivals from dozens of countries set up shops, bakeries, and community halls along what is now East Grand Avenue. Many of the original buildings they constructed are still standing. About forty commercial buildings in the East Des Moines Commercial Historic District, listed on the National Register in twenty nineteen, reflect three distinct architectural eras: Victorian commercial from the eighteen nineties, the horizontal Prairie-influenced styles of nineteen fifteen to nineteen twenty-five, and Art Deco and Moderne influences from the late nineteen twenties.

The modern name, East Village, dates only from nineteen ninety-eight, when a deliberate revitalization effort rebranded the neighborhood and attracted galleries, restaurants, and boutiques to the old storefronts. The rebrand worked, perhaps too well. Today the block is one of Des Moines' most fashionable addresses, its Victorian brick facades sheltering coffee shops and design studios where hardware stores and grocers once stood. The Capitol still watches over it all from the bluff, unchanged.