Curious Iowa: What happened to the cannon in Greene Square?

CEDAR RAPIDS — More than a century ago, a massive Civil War cannon proudly sat in Greene Square in Cedar Rapids. Today, the park is cannon-less and Scott Huffman of Cedar Rapids wants to know where the cannon went.

Huffman asked Curious Iowa, a Gazette series that answers readers’ questions about our state, its people and culture, to track down the cannon.

We spoke with Tara Templeman, curator at The History Center, and dug through newspaper archives to find the answer. We found out how Cedar Rapids acquired the cannon and how it became a headache during World War II.

How did the cannon end up in Greene Square?

The cannon in question was forged with Swedish iron in 1865 and is said to have weighed between 13.5 and 15 tons. Originally, it would have fired a 10-inch shell. It was 16 feet long and would have been five or six feet tall when fully mounted, Templeman said.

The story starts with an unnamed male reporter for The Gazette alerting Alderman W.G. Haskell that the U. S. government was giving away old cannons. Haskell jumped at the opportunity.

Haskell was a notable businessman and city council member who helped plan the Cedar Rapids park system. He was first elected into the Iowa Senate in 1916 and served until his sudden death in 1927.

  Buy Photo

Templeman said the decommissioned cannons originally were to be given to soldiers monument associations, municipal corporations and posts of the Grand Army of the Republic.

“They passed an act in 1896. Prior to that, every instance had to be approved of and so it was just taking too much time.” Templeman said. “So, they just sort of gave the authority to the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy to make these decisions … so you see a lot of Civil War cannons in city parks around the turn of the century.”

In August of 1900, Haskell was able to secure two cannons from Fort Hancock at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The cannons were shipped by slow freight and they arrived in October. The city only had to pay for the transportation of the cannons, and according to Gazette records, the railroads donated to the effort.

Master mechanic R.W. Bushnell from the Cedar Rapids and Northern Railway oversaw the movement of the cannons from the flat car located on a side track between Fourth and Fifth avenues to the parks.

Templeman said it was difficult to find out what strategy was used to move the cumbersome cannons.

The smaller cannon was placed in Bever Park. This cannon weighed about 9,800 pounds and was “not in excellent condition,” Templeman said. Joe Christle of Cedar Rapids told The Gazette in 1942 that he used four horses to haul the cannon up the hill to park.

The bases the cannons sat on were provided by E.J.C. Bealer, but an issue with the rock delayed the installation of the cannons in the parks.

When Bealer placed the rock, the weather turned cold and caused the water inside the rocks to freeze and they broke.

“Bealer went back and said that since that had happened, it didn’t make sense for him to pull out additional rocks until the weather warmed up,” Templeman said. “and so between October and April, basically nothing happened because they didn’t have the foundation to put the cannons on.”

The Greene Square cannon sat in the park on ties between October of 1900 and August of 1901 when it was finally put into place on its foundation.

Where is the Greene Square cannon today?

  Buy Photo

Fast forward to 1942. Across the country, scrap metal drives were held to support the war effort.

“Basically no bicycles were manufactured at the time because the metal needed to be used for the war. Kids were, in some cases, encouraged to bring in their army men, their figurines, their toys to some scrap metal drives.” Templeman said. “There was rationing of anything that was needed for the war effort and it was seen as a very patriotic thing to do,”

In July 1942, Louis Wokoun of Cedar Rapids wrote to The Gazette, suggesting throwing the Greene Square cannon and two “idle” fire escapes at Washington High School into a scrap drive. Months later, the cannon met that very fate.

In September 1942, the war department requested that Iowa communities scrap all metal war relics. In addition to the Greene Square and Bever Park cannons, the city of Cedar Rapids had two WWI 77-millimeter cannons that were on display on the First Avenue Bridge and in front of the Linn County Courthouse. A fifth cannon was located in Cedar Memorial Park.

  Buy Photo

According to an article published in The Gazette on Sept. 6, 1942, the war department’s request was upsetting for some Iowans who placed historical value on the cannons. State Curator Ora Williams said the request was “premature and irregular.”

George S. Bushnell, the only surviving Civil War veteran in Cedar Rapids, recognized the sentimental value of the relics. But, the 93-year-old told The Gazette that a member of his family, Capt. Edwin L. Ruprecht, was serving in the war at the time.

“I wouldn’t want Edwin or any other soldier, sailor or marine to be without ammunition,” Bushnell said. “If metal is really precious for the war effort, the old relics probably should go.”

An article from The Gazette on Nov. 29, 1942 noted that “public officials decided to set a good example for the community at large by earmarking the various souvenir cannon in the city for the scrap pile.” Beyond this brief mention, we were unable to track down record of the removal of the Bever Park cannon.

How was the Greene Square cannon removed?

This cannon put up a fight. The steel mills wouldn’t be able to process it in cannon form, so the plan was to cut it into pieces with an acetylene torch provided by the La Plant-Choate company. That didn’t work.

Records in The Gazette chronicle that the next course of action was lifting the cannon — but “the big piece got away from them and dropped on the Greene Square lawn.”

  Buy Photo

On Oct. 16, about 300 spectators watched as six men, two cranes, two trucks, and a motorcycle escort removed the cannon from its home of over 40 years.

It was loaded onto a truck with a derrick truck crane holding the rear end of the truck bed up. Two cables snapped in the removal process. The derrick truck drove in reverse the whole way to E. Cohn and Sons, 900 L. St. SW.

From there, the plan was to wait for a cold day and drop weight on the cannon to break it.

Harry Cohn, a Cedar Rapids scrap metal dealer, told The Gazette on Oct. 29, “We tried to break it up, but it’s about the toughest piece of metal I ever saw. We dropped a two-ton hammer on it from about 40 ft. up, but the weight just bounced off without cracking it.”

Finally, they decided to load up the cannon in one piece and ship it to a Peoria, Ill. steel mill. It’s impossible to know what the cannon became, but the intention at the time was that the retired cannon would live to see another fight — just in a new form.

Have a question for Curious Iowa?

Tell us what to investigate next.

Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com