116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: City greenhouses
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The Noelridge Greenhouse in Cedar Rapids – known for its annual Easter and Mother’s Day open houses – dates to 1971. But the five greenhouses at Noelridge had predecessors.
The city’s first greenhouse was built in the 70-acre Bever Park in 1900. The park was just a few years old when the city’s parks committee decided to build a greenhouse in the park “so that flowers can be raised for all the city parks. The contract will be let in the course of a few days and the building will be erected yet this summer,” according to a July 1900 story in the Cedar Rapids Daily Republican.
The greenhouse was 20 by 50 feet and was built in the park’s southwest corner, where the sun was most accessible and a greenhouse would be most protected from winter winds.
“We have made a good start this year in the direction of beautifying the parks and the irregular little plats at some of the intersections that have heretofore been overrun with weeds,” Alderman Willis G. Haskell told the Gazette. “In our new greenhouse at Bever Park we will propagate thousands of plants …, most of which we will use in the big parks.”
The plan after that was to interest neighbors of the little irregular lots to plant flowers there and care for them.
City gardener
The first city gardener was Otto Wolff. He was hired in 1901 on a one-year contract at a salary of $600. In 1902, he was named superintendent of parks. He held that post until April 1920, when Parks Commissioner H.J. Whitfield decided the post should be abolished because it was superfluous. Wolff went on to serve as gardener at Brucemore until his death in 1931.
The greenhouse contract included the building of a cottage for the park superintendent, making it easier for him to care for the plants in the greenhouse.
“The raising of the flowers by the city will save a considerable amount of money each year,” the article said.
The new greenhouse proved to be inadequate almost immediately. The parks committee asked for money to build an addition in August 1901 that would include a heating plant.
In Wolff’s 1906 annual inventory report, he said the greenhouse was full, but more plants were needed each year.
A fig tree, donated by Mrs. John Horak, was added to the plants in the greenhouse in 1907.
Greenhouse growth
The city eventually had three greenhouses, side by side, attached to the maintenance garage.
Parks Commissioner J.D. Kennedy oversaw the installation of a new heating plant at the greenhouses in 1922. In 1924, the original glass unit of the greenhouse was torn out and replaced with a new one.
Banana trees, started from seed in January 1925 in the greenhouse and transplanted to Greene Square in the spring, were returned to the greenhouse in the fall. One of them had fruit on it.
With Ed Stefan as parks commissioner in 1930, about 60 workers were kept busy in the spring mowing grass and getting Cedar Rapids parks ready for the summer. That included transplanting thousands of flowers into public spaces.
Dr. T. Frank Hersch had a collection of more than 300 tropical and medicinal plants at his home in 1941. When he ran out of space, he began moving the rarer specimens to the Bever Park greenhouse. Among those moved were a bird of paradise plant, a banana tree, two camelias and a flowering maple.
Gardner & Reinis role
Don Gardner became park superintendent in 1949, working under Parks Commissioner Richard C. Jones. Along with his salary of $5,400 a year, Gardner lived rent-free in the city-owned caretaker house at Bever Park.
When Jones died in 1956, Gardner was appointed parks commissioner. On Gardner’s agenda: development of 400 acres of new parkland acquired the year before in the northeast quadrant (Noelridge Park), the southwest (Jones Park), and northwest (Manhattan Robbins Lake Park).
In 1968, the city’s garden clubs began promoting a new greenhouse. Calling the Bever Park greenhouse “small, outdated and deteriorated,” they petitioned the city council for a replacement. Parks Commissioner Gardner and City Horticulturalist Stan Reinis said land at Noelridge had been reserved for a greenhouse for years. Rebuilding at Bever Park was rejected because its heavy woods were too shady.
Money for new greenhouses was appropriated in 1968, the year the city supplied flowers for 60 parks.
When Reinis was elected parks commissioner in 1969, he designed Jones, Noelridge, Cherry Hill, and Cedar Valley parks as well as the Twin Pines and Jones Park golf courses.
He said the shortage of greenhouse space led the city to rent two greenhouses from Cedar Memorial Cemetery in 1970, and that still was not enough.
1970 Noelridge construction
Under Reinis, the contract for construction of new greenhouses at Noelridge was advertised for bids Oct. 14, 1970.
Construction of the city’s five new, aluminum-frame, 103-by-32-foot greenhouses began in early winter 1970, but was halted in May 1971 by a building trades strike.
A two-bedroom apartment was included to house the city’s horticulturalist, Dale Huddleson and his wife, Joy, who would monitor the greenhouses.
The move to the new greenhouses began in mid-January 1972. In February, the operation halted to wait for warmer weather. Reinis said the old Bever greenhouses had to be heated through the winter anyway, since the park maintenance buildings’ water lines ran through there.
A ribbon-cutting was held May 13, 1972. The two-day open house included the Noelridge greenhouses’ first Mother’s Day open house.
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