PHOTOS: Last-ditch effort under way to save historic immigrant homes from demolition

Preservationists are seeking an emergency grant to examine immigrant worker homes that played a role in the Sinclair meatpacking plant.

Six of the row of eight flood-damaged homes, across from St. Wenceslaus Church at Fifth Street and 12th Avenue SE, are slated to be demolished within weeks.

Workers are removing asbestos from the homes in preparation for demolition beginning around July 1, said John Riggs, the city's project manager for flood demolition.

Five of the six homes are considered an imminent environmental threat because of asbestos or other hazardous materials, while one at 1227 Fifth St. SE, is an imminent threat because of structural damage.

The structurally damaged home is a different style than the row of cottages that preservations would like to save.

Rod Scott, president of Preservation Iowa, said the group is seeking an emergency grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to hire a professional to determine if the homes are repairable.

Scott said an Iowa City investor is considering rehabilitating and moving the homes to the nearby New Bohemia district.

The homes are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places and are included in the Czech Village/New Bohemia Main Street District.

Cedar Rapids historian Mark Stoffer Hunter said he would prefer the homes remain in place.

Built in the 1880s, the cottages served as housing for immigrants working at the Sinclair meatpacking plant and a nearby carriage factory, both of which were rapidly expanding, he said.

A friend of plant owner Thomas Sinclair from Ireland developed the homes, but Stoffer Hunter said Czech immigrants likely lived there.

The seven cottages are the sole remaining examples of worker homes built in a row in Cedar Rapids, he said.

“It think they're real jewels,” Stoffer Hunter said. “You could literally step out your front door and go to work or go to church.”

That's what Hattie Drahos did while living at 1215 Fifth St. SE, one of the homes slated to go.

A member of St. Wenceslaus Church, Drahos, 86, also worked for nearly 10 years at what was then known as Wilson & Co.

Her parents moved into the home in 1932.

She and her daughter, Diane Drahos, 53, were still living there when it flooded in June 2008.

“I'd hate to see the family home go,” Diane Drahos said.

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