HomeMy WebLinkAboutTate Arms NRHP nominationNPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Sections 1 – 4 page 1
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places
Registration Form
This form is for use in nominating or requesting determinations for individual properties and districts. See instructions in National Register Bulletin, How
to Complete the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. If any item does not apply to the property being documented, enter "N/A" for "not
applicable." For functions, architectural classification, materials, and areas of significance, enter only categories and subcategories from the instructions.
Place additional certification comments, entries, and narrative items on continuation sheets if needed (NPS Form 10-900a).
1. Name of Property
historic name Tate Arms
other names/site number Alberts, Charles and Dorothy, House; Williams Hotel; State Inventory No. 52-05284
Name of Multiple Property Listing N/A
(Enter "N/A" if property is not part of a multiple property listing)
2. Location
street & number 914 South Dubuque Street not for publication
city or town Iowa City vicinity
state Iowa county Johnson zip code 52240
3. State/Federal Agency Certification
As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended,
I hereby certify that this x nomination request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards
for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional
requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60.
In my opinion, the property x meets does not meet the National Register Criteria. I recommend that this property
be considered significant at the following level(s) of significance: national statewide x local
Applicable National Register Criteria: x A x B C D
Signature of certifying official/Title: Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer Date
State Historical Society of Iowa
State or Federal agency/bureau or Tribal Government
In my opinion, the property meets does not meet the National Register criteria.
Signature of commenting official Date
Title State or Federal agency/bureau or Tribal Government
4. National Park Service Certification
I hereby certify that this property is:
entered in the National Register determined eligible for the National Register
determined not eligible for the National Register removed from the National Register
other (explain:)
Signature of the Keeper Date of Action
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Section 7 page 2
5. Classification
Ownership of Property
(Check as many boxes as apply.)
Category of Property
(Check only one box.)
Number of Resources within Property
(Do not include previously listed resources in the count.)
Contributing Noncontributing
X private X building(s) 1 0 buildings
public - Local district 0 0 site
public - State site 0 0 structure
public - Federal structure 0 0 object
object 1 0 Total
Number of contributing resources previously listed in the National Register: N/A
6. Function or Use
Historic Functions
(Enter categories from instructions.)
Current Functions
(Enter categories from instructions.)
DOMESTIC/multiple dwelling DOMESTIC/multiple dwelling
7. Description
Architectural Classification
(Enter categories from instructions.) Materials
(Enter categories from instructions.)
LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY foundation: STONE/limestone
AMERICAN MOVEMENTS/Foursquare walls: STUCCO
roof: ASPHALT
other:
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Section 7 page 3
Narrative Description
Summary Paragraph (Briefly describe the current, general characteristics of the property, such as its location, type, style, method of
construction, setting, size, and significant features. Indicate whether the property has historic integrity.)
The Tate Arms, located at 914 South Dubuque Street in Iowa City, is a two-story brick Foursquare house with
attached veranda and carport. It was completed in 1914. The house is covered in a stucco coating that was limited
historically to the area under the veranda and carport, but now covers nearly all of the exterior walls. The house is
located south of the University of Iowa and downtown Iowa City near Ralston Creek on a floodplain formed near the
junction of Ralston Creek and the Iowa River. Two different railroad tracks are located near the house to the north. The
area around the house has been redeveloped extensively in recent decades and retains few buildings older than 50 years.
The house retains a moderate degree of period integrity. Its massing, brick walls, veranda/carport, and much of its
fenestration pattern are original, except where a few elements have been replaced. Its windows, doors, roof, and most of
its rear wall are modern replacements, although the replacement elements are similar to the earlier elements they
replaced. The house has been altered extensively on the interior. The Tate Arms contains one resource, the house.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narrative Description (Describe the historic and current physical appearance and condition of the property. Describe contributing and
noncontributing resources if applicable.)
(Iowa SHPO Additional Instructions: After the main Narrative Description, discuss any physical alterations since the period of significance under
the subheading Alterations, the seven aspects of integrity as it applies to the property in a Statement of Integrity, and any future plans for the
property under the subheading Future Plans.)
The Tate Arms is located at 914 South Dubuque Street in Iowa City, Johnson County, Iowa (Figures 1–3). It is
located near the north end of the block, close to Benton Street, on the east side of the street. The house is located on a
floodplain formed near the junction of Ralston Creek and the Iowa River, located approximately 2,000 feet south-
southwest of the Tate Arms. The Cedar Rapids and Iowa City (CRANDIC) Railroad and Iowa Interstate Railroad tracks
are located two blocks and one block north of Benton Street, respectively. The large lot across the street from the Tate
Arms has been occupied by the Johnson County Administration Building since the 1980s. From the 1930s to the 2010s,
a National Guard Armory was located south of the site of the county administration building.
Historically the neighborhood was composed of a mix of residences, businesses, and light industrial buildings,
which developed over time through a combination of relatively inexpensive land on the floodplain and the proximity of
the railroads. Between 1926 and 1948, businesses in the area included a junkyard, warehouses, stock yard, garage and
repair shop, coal yard, bulk oil storage, and filling stations. A National Guard Armory, completed in 1938 nearly
opposite the Tate Arms on the west side of Dubuque Street, served as a buffer between the Tate Arms and a sewage
disposal plant completed in 1936.1 Residences lined the east side of Dubuque Street, and predominated in the area south
of the railroad tracks and a block in either direction of Dubuque Street. Nearly all of the residences in the vicinity of the
Tate Arms have been removed, replaced primarily by modern commercial and civic buildings built within the past two or
three decades. In 2009, a year after a flood damaged the sewage treatment plant located a block south of the Tate Arms,
the City of Iowa City targeted the south side of Iowa City, including the area around the Tate Arms, for redevelopment as
part of the Riverfront Crossings District. Much of the new development that has occurred near the Tate Arms in the past
decade has been a result of this initiative by the city. As a result, the setting of the house has changed considerably since
the building’s period of significance ended in 1961. The Tate Arms contains one resource, the house.
House. The Foursquare house at 914 S. Dubuque Street is divided into a principal front section and a smaller
rear section, both two stories in height (Figures 4–5). A one-story veranda and carport (possibly originally a carriage
porch) wraps around the front (west) and north sides of the house. The house rests on a stone foundation. The walls are
constructed of brick, which has been covered by stucco in recent decades. The roofs over the main section, rear section,
1 Sanborn Map Company, Iowa City, Johnson County, Iowa (New York: Sanborn Map Co., 1933), pp. 13–14; Sanborn Map Company, Iowa City,
Johnson County, Iowa (New York: Sanborn Map Co., 1933, with updates through 1948), pp. 13 –14; “Iowa City’s New Sewage Disposal Plant,
Seen From the Air,” Iowa City Press-Citizen (Iowa City, Iowa), June 29, 1936, p. 12; “More Than $400,000 Spent on Construction Work in City in
1937,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, December 31, 1937, p. 2.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Section 7 page 4
veranda, and carport, are all hipped roofs covered in composition shingles. The only exception is that the east end of the
roof ridge in the hipped roof over the front section ends in a small east-facing gable that overlooks the hipped roof of the
rear wing. This gable was added recently; as late as December 2014, the roofs over both sections were hipped (Figure 6).
Unless otherwise noted, the windows throughout the house are modern 1/1-light windows with metal-clad wood sash,
brick sills, and, on the first story only, wooden lintels. With the exception of those on the south side, nearly every 1/1-
light window on the house has non-operable, decorative exterior wood shutters.
The facade of the front section, which faces west, has two openings on each floor. On the first floor is the front
door on the north and a cottage window on the south covered by a 12-light storm sash. The modern front door,
constructed of fiberglass, has a single large light above two panels. On each side of the door is a non-functional,
decorative sidelight with three stacked lights above a panel. A narrow single-light transom, also non-functional, extends
across the opening above the door and sidelights. The cottage window, which appears to be the only original wood
window that survives in the house, has obscure glass in the upper sash. On the second story are two 1/1-light windows,
one over each first-floor opening.
A prominent feature of the front of the house is the veranda, which spans the facade and wraps around to the
north side of the house where it merges with a carport that shelters a section of the driveway. The veranda has masonry
piers and masonry posts, both of which are tapered. Both the piers and posts typically have inset panels on their main
public faces, including those facing a person standing between the two posts that flank the front entrance. The veranda
has a poured concrete deck that appears to date to the mid- to late twentieth century and has no railing. The carport
extends north across the driveway from the east end of the veranda on the north side of the house. The carport has the
same piers and posts found elsewhere on the veranda. Where the veranda meets the house walls, pilasters replace the
posts. In the case of two posts and one pier, the original masonry structure has been replaced by a modern wooden pier
or post with a design matching the historic ones. The plan is for these posts to be covered in stucco to better match the
original posts, but this has not yet been done.
The north side of the house is divided into the front and rear sections, with the front section recessed relative to
the rear wing. The rear wing has a paired window on the first story and single window on the second story. In the re -
entrant angle between the two wings, a non-functional modern fiberglass side door is located in the west wall of the rear
wing under the veranda roof. A 1/1-light window is located on the second story above this door. On the north wall of
the main section are a paired window near the east end on the first floor and two windows on the second floor. The east
window on the second floor is a typical 1/1-light window, while the west window is a single-light diamond-shaped
window with obscure glass. The diamond shape of the window and its use of obscure glass suggest that the window was
installed during the mid-twentieth century. While it is probably not original to the house, it most likely dates to the
property’s period of significance. The diamond-shaped window had been installed by 1981, but no earlier photograph of
the house showing the window was discovered during the research for this nomination.2
The rear (east) side of the house has masonry only on the north and south ends. The center of the rear wall on
both stories is clad in pressed panels, probably of fiberglass or another plastic-based material, that imitate a stucco finish.
The only windows in this wall—two on each story—are located in the central paneled sections. These windows are
slightly broader than the 1/1-light windows set in historic openings found elsewhere on the house. They are also the
most modern, having been installed since December 2014, replacing seven older (but still modern) windows formerly
located on this wall (Figure 6).
On the front section of the south side are two 1/1-light windows on each floor. The rear section of this side,
which is recessed slightly relative to the front section, has one 1/1-light window on each floor, as well as a second
smaller window opening on the second floor. This smaller window, which has been sealed, is located to the west of the
main window, and may indicate the current or former location of a bathroom. The only window on this side to have
shutters is the westernmost window on the first story.
According to the 2014 county assessor’s record, undertaken before the present remodeling, the house contained
2,356 square feet of total living area, with 1,178 square feet per floor. There were ten rooms above ground, including
2 See John Riley’s photograph of the house in November 1981 published in connection with Sandra Stanar, “Commune Happy It Can Still Call
House Its Home,” Iowa City [Iowa] Press-Citizen, November 11, 1981, p. 2A. Because Gannett charges a large usage fee to reproduce this image,
it is not included in the present nomination.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Section 7 page 5
five bedrooms, and a full basement, but no attic. There was one full bathroom.3 The interior of the house has been
altered extensively by multiple remodelings since 1979, most recently an extensive renovation completed by the present
owners in 2014–2015.4 The only original woodwork observed during an inspection of the property on December 12,
2017, were the floor joists under the first story floor that remain exposed in the basement. These joists vary in size and
spacing. They include nearly full dimension 2" x 12" joists placed on approximately 20-inch to 22-inch centers in the
rear section, and smaller nearly (or slightly more than) full dimension 2" x 8" joists placed on approximately 18-inch or
19-inch centers in the front section. The only joists observed with cross-bracing between the joists are those in the
southwest corner room.
The two upper floors are divided into one condominium unit on each floor. The floor plan is modern, since all
the original interior walls were removed during one or more of the previous renovations. They were replaced most
recently during a complete redesign of the interior undertaken during the 2014–2015 renovation. The rooms currently
have vinyl plate flooring, drywall walls and ceiling, and maple doors and trim. A new fireplace constructed of Cultured
Stone (manufactured stone veneer with recycled content) has been installed in the southwest corner of each floor.
Alterations. The most notable change to the exterior of the house has been the covering of all exterior brick
surfaces with stucco. During the building’s period of significance, the stucco exterior was limited to all or part of the
area of the first floor under the veranda roof. Stucco was added to the rest of the exterior sometime between 1981 and
1994. Another major alteration has been the replacement of nearly all of the windows and doors with modern
replacements. Except on the rear wall, these modern replacements have been placed within the historic openings. On the
rear wall, an earlier clapboard exterior was replaced in recent decades by synthetic panels molded to imitate stucco. The
windows in this paneled section are modern, introduced during the 2014–2015 renovation. Other alterations to the
exterior may have been made, but the limited evidence available from historical photographs suggests that the changes
described above have been the most significant changes to the building’s exterior. On the interior, the building has been
altered substantially. Neither the original floor plan nor any original woodwork appears to survive above the basement
level. Because no information on the original floor plan was discovered during the research for the present nomination, it
is not clear to what extent the original floor plan has been altered.
Statement of integrity. This house retains moderate to excellent integrity in all seven aspects of integrity on the
exterior, and substantially compromised integrity on the interior.
Because the house remains on its original site, the house retains excellent integrity of location.
The building’s integrity of setting remains only moderate. While its relation to the Iowa City street grid and to
Ralston Creek has not changed, nearly all of the residences and commercial buildings and all of the civic buildings that
surrounded the house during its period of significance have been removed. While the area still retains a mix of civic,
commercial, and residential buildings, the residences are modern apartment buildings and the civic buildings and nearly
all the commercial buildings are also modern.
The integrity of design of the house appears to be moderate to high, although the almost complete absence of
photographs of the house during its period of significance makes it difficult to identify with certainty changes that have
been made to the design over time. Its Foursquare form is undoubtedly original, and its veranda and carport also appear
to be original, or at least to date to the building’s period of significance. Furthermore, no obviously modern or otherwise
incompatible additions have been constructed. The fenestration pattern in the brick sections also appears to be largely or
entirely original, although the rear wall, which was not brick historically, has been altered substantially in recent years.
The interior of the house has also been altered substantially, although it is difficult to determine the extent to which basic
3 Richard J. Carlson and Marlin R. Ingalls, Iowa Site Inventory Form for site 52 -05284 (Tate Arms, 914 S. Dubuque Street, Iowa City, Iowa), p. 3,
included in Appendix III of Richard J. Carlson and Marlin R. Ingalls, Phase I Intensive Historic Architectural Survey of the Sabin School and
Southside Iowa City Neighborhood, Johnson County, Iowa , Technical Report 121 (Iowa City, Iowa: Office of the State Archaeologist, 2015). The
current assessor’s records for this property identify it as a two-unit condominium, with each unit having six rooms (three bedrooms) above and no
rooms below; see Iowa City, Iowa, Assessor, Property Reports for 912–914 S Dubuque Street Condominiums Unit A and 912–914 S Dubuque
Street Condominiums Unit B, at http://iowacity.iowaassessors.com/, accessed April 12, 2018.
4 Conversation between Richard Carlson and Jeff Clark, one of the owners of the property, at 9 14 S. Dubuque Street, Iowa City, Iowa, December
12, 2017. A few photographs of a few interior rooms taken in the 1950s and 1960s are available in the “Tate Arms” storyboard included in Box 2 of
the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Section 7 page 6
features such as the floor plan have been altered due to lack of historical documentation. In any case, the interior is not
considered to be a significant feature of the house for the purposes of eligibility under this nomination.
The house retains only moderate integrity of materials on the exterior. The most prominent changes on the
exterior have been the concealment of the original brick walls behind a stucco coating and the replacement of all the
windows and doors. There is historical precedent for the stucco coating, however, since at least part of the first story
appears to have been stuccoed since the 1940s.5 Only the second story stucco has been added since 1981. Another
change has been to the rear wall, which once had clapboard siding, but now is clad in modern panels pressed to imitate
stucco. The house retains its original stone foundation and brick walls, as well as its veranda and carport, although a few
individual pieces have been replaced with modern materials. The integrity of materials on the interior is low. The
finishes on the first and second stories have been replaced entirely during multiple remodeling campaigns after the
building’s period of significance. The only original materials that remain exposed on the interior are located in the
basement.
The house appears to retain only moderate integrity of workmanship on the exterior. The stucco coating has
concealed the brick walls, brick window sills, and wooden lintels that formerly were exposed on the second story, so the
workmanship of these features has been obscured. The original workmanship is likely only to have been concealed by
the stucco, not replaced, however. For this reason, the building’s integrity of workmanship on the exterior is evaluated as
moderate. On the interior, the integrity of workmanship is low because all of the original features above the basement
level have been removed in renovations undertaken after the building’s period of significance.
Because the house retains its basic design and its most important materials from its period of significance,
despite some newer or replacement features, it retains good integrity of feeling.
Because the house remains in use as a multiple-family residence—a function similar to but not the same as the
rooming house function it served during its period of significance—its integrity of association is moderate to high.
From the above discussion, it is clear that the Tate Arms has suffered a greater loss of integrity, particularly on
the interior, than one would typically expect to see on a building evaluated as individually eligible for listing in the
National Register of Historic Places. The reason the Tate Arms is considered to meet National Register eligibility
criteria is that it is one of only four extant buildings in Iowa City that represent a significant historic context, described in
greater detail below in the Statement of Significance: African American housing in Iowa City during the period of
heightened racial segregation in housing during the first half of the twentieth century. As described in greater detail
below, the four surviving buildings that represent this historic context—out of at least four dozen that once represented
it—are the Tate Arms, the Iowa Federation Home at 942 Iowa Avenue, the former Short’s Shoe Shine building at 18 S.
Clinton Street, and 630 S. Johnson Street. Of these four buildings, the Tate Arms is the only one located in the former
1st Ward, which, as described below, was the location of the great majority of African American housing in Iowa City
during the early to mid-twentieth century. The Tate Arms is also the only one of the four built for an African American
owner, and the only one purpose-built as a rooming house for African American roomers. Moreover, the former Short’s
Shoe Shine building at 18 S. Clinton Street—a downtown commercial storefront with party walls on both sides rather
than a freestanding building—was either rebuilt entirely or substantially remodeled in the early 1970s, to the extent that it
now retains considerably less integrity than the Tate Arms.6 The ca. 1865 building at 630 S. Johnson Street remains in
use as an apartment house, but it has only a weak association with Iowa City’s African American history. It was
occupied by a chapter of the black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi for a single year (1919–1920), and has no other known
African American association. For these reasons, the Iowa Federation Home (which is also being nominated for listing
in the National Register) and the Tate Arms are the only two buildings in Iowa City that both have a significant
association with Iowa City’s pre-1950 black community and retain a sufficient degree of period integrity on the exterior
to be recognizable to people who lived in the buildings during their periods of significance.
5 Andrew Bassman, “The Tate Arms: An Iowa City Historic Landmark” (research paper conducted for an unspecified university class ca. 2012;
copy on file, City of Iowa City, Neighborhood and Development Services Department, p. 8. See also Figures 8–10.
6 “South Clinton Street, 000-Block, 1972,” Iowa City [Iowa] Public Library, Digital History Project, Urban Renewal, 1970s–1980s, Collection,
http://history.icpl.org/items/show/845; accessed June 21, 2018. The slide, which appears to show the replacement of the building or storefront at 18
S. Clinton Street, is undated, but it was printed in April 1972.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Section 8 page 7
8. Statement of Significance
Applicable National Register Criteria
(Mark "x" in one or more boxes for the criteria qualifying the property for
National Register listing.)
X A Property is associated with events that have made a
significant contribution to the broad patterns of our
history.
X B Property is associated with the lives of persons
significant in our past.
C Property embodies the distinctive characteristics
of a type, period, or method of construction or represents
the work of a master, or possesses high artistic values,
or represents a significant and distinguishable entity
whose components lack individual distinction.
D Property has yielded, or is likely to yield, information
important in prehistory or history.
Criteria Considerations
(Mark "x" in all the boxes that apply.)
Property is:
A
Owned by a religious institution or used for religious
purposes.
B
removed from its original location.
C
a birthplace or grave.
D
a cemetery.
E
a reconstructed building, object, or structure.
F
a commemorative property.
G
less than 50 years old or achieving significance
within the past 50 years.
Areas of Significance
(Enter categories from instructions.)
ETHNIC HERITAGE/BLACK
SOCIAL HISTORY
Period of Significance
1914–1961
Significant Dates
1914
1940
Significant Person
(Complete only if Criterion B is marked above.)
Alberts, Charles
Tate, Elizabeth Marie Crawford Saulsbury
Cultural Affiliation (if applicable)
Architect/Builder
unknown
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Section 8 page 8
Statement of Significance
Statement of Significance Summary Paragraph (Provide a summary paragraph that includes level of significance, applicable criteria,
justification for the period of significance, and any applicable criteria considerations).
The Tate Arms, originally built as a residence and rooming house for Charles and Dorothy Alberts, is eligible for
listing in the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A in the areas of Black Ethnic Heritage and Social
History for its importance in illustrating African American responses to racial segregation in housing, including
university student housing, in Iowa City during the early to mid-twentieth century. The house was built in 1914 as both a
residence for its black owner and a rooming house for black residents of Iowa City. For the next half century it provided
housing to both black students at the University of Iowa and other black residents of Iowa City—primarily unmarried
men—at a time when housing options for black residents in the city were extremely limited. From 1940 to 1961, it
operated as the Tate Arms, with its tenants primarily black male University of Iowa students. Nearly all of the rooming
houses, apartment houses, and fraternity houses in Iowa City that housed African American men during the early to mid-
twentieth century have been demolished. The Tate Arms is one of a very small number that remains standing. It is also
the only one known to have been built for a black owner and used as a rooming house from the time it was built. The
house is also eligible under Criterion B in the areas of Black Ethnic Heritage and Social History for its association with
its original owner and probable builder, Charles Alberts, and for its later association with Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford
Tate. Alberts built and operated this house as what was almost certainly the only rooming house in Iowa City built
expressly to provide housing for the city’s black residents during a time of increasing racial segregation in housing in the
early twentieth century. Elizabeth Tate, with her husband Junious (Bud) Tate, operated a rooming house for black male
students at the University of Iowa from the 1930s to the 1960s. She is significant under Criterion B because of her
importance, over a period of nearly three decades, in providing room and board to black university students who would
otherwise have found it difficult or impossible to secure lodgings in Iowa City at a time when university-owned housing
was unavailable to black students and when most white landlords would not rent to black tenants. The Alberts and Tate
families were two of only eight known landlords in Iowa City who maintained rooming houses for African American
tenants for at least a decade during the early to mid-twentieth century. The house is important for its association with
both Charles Alberts and the Tates, but only one historic name can be assigned to a building listed in the National
Register of Historic Places. Because the house is known locally as the Tate Arms, this name has been adopted as the
building’s historic name. The significance of the house is at the local level. The property’s period of significance
extends from 1914, when the house was opened as a rooming house, to 1961, when the Tate Arms rooming house finally
closed its doors and the building ceased to be used as a rooming house for Iowa City’s black residents. Because nearly
every other residential building in Iowa City that historically housed black tenants between the late nineteenth and mid-
twentieth centuries has been demolished, the Tate Arms is considered to meet National Register eligibility criteria despite
its somewhat compromised integrity. The building was designated an Iowa City Historic Landmark in 2014.
Narrative Statement of Significance (Provide at least one paragraph for each area of significance.)
(Iowa SHPO Additional Instructions: For properties not nominated under Criterion D, include a statement about whether any archaeological remains
within or beyond the footprint of the property were assessed as part of this nomination under the subheading Archaeological Assessment.)
Iowa City’s African American Community, ca. 1860–1940
From 1860 to 1940, Iowa City had a small black population that never exceeded 110 people or fell below 50,
according to census records.7 The black population represented about 1.2 percent of the city’s total population in the
7 While federal census figures are largely accurate, several instances were found during the 1900–1940 period where a black resident of Iowa City
was counted twice in the census, or where a white individual was mistakenly recorded as black. These errors slightly exagger ated the black
population by three to six people for the census years 1910, 1920, and 1930. On the other hand, a significant undercounting of black residents
occurred from the 1920 census on, since census records typically record university students in their home towns, not in the c ities where they attend
school. While a small percentage of University of Iowa students were included in the census as living in Iowa City because they worked in the city
or were living with a family member there, the majority of University of Iowa students were counted in the census in their ho me communities.
Therefore, throughout the period under consideration here, the actual population of Iowa City during a given academic year was generally several
thousand more than the official census figure for that year. After a rapid increase in the number of black stude nts attending the university in the
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Section 8 page 9
period immediately following the Civil War, in 1870 and 1880, but from 1890 through 1970 the city’s black population
varied between about one-half and one percent of the total population.8
Iowa City had few black residents before the Civil War. At the time of the 1860 census, Johnson County, where
Iowa City is located, had a black population of just 30, 22 of whom lived in Iowa City.9 By 1870, the city’s African
American population had risen to 71 (out of 93 in Johnson County as a whole), and by 1880 it had reached 86 (out of 103
in Johnson County). The early black migrants to Iowa City came from a variety of places, with the pre-Civil War
migrants dominated by families from Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Ohio. After the Civil War, many of the
black residents of Iowa City and Johnson County were born in Iowa, and they formed the majority by 1880. Migrants
from elsewhere came primarily from the three southern states mentioned above, as well as Virginia, Alabama, and
Missouri.10 The core of Iowa City’s small black community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was
largely formed during this period of rapid growth in the years following the Civil War.
After reaching a peak of 86 in 1880, the black population of Iowa City dropped to 50 by 1890, and remained
steady between 54 and 61 from 1900 to 1920.11 The small number of older black residents who died or moved away
during this period was roughly equal in number to the small influx of new black residents. After 30 years of this
stability, the black population of Iowa City nearly doubled between 1920 and 1930, jumping from 54 to 106 people. In
both years, the majority of the black residents were born in either Missouri or Iowa, with Illinois a distant third in both
years. Texas was fourth in 1930 and was tied for fourth in 1920 with South Dakota, Kentucky, and New York. While
the general distribution of the places of birth of Iowa City’s black residents appears to have remained fairly steady
between 1920 and 1930, it should be noted that the percentage of black residents born in one of the states of the former
Confederacy grew from 13 percent in 1920 to 22.6 percent in 1930. This suggests that the first Great Migration—the
mass migration of African Americans from the southern states to the North in the decades before World War II,
discussed below—had a small but measurable effect on the black population of Iowa City. By 1940, the city’s black
population had fallen again, with 77 people recorded in the official count.
1910s and 1920s, described below, the actual number of black residents of Iowa City during the school year was typically doub le or more the
official census figure.
8 For the total population, see “Total Population for Iowa’s Incorporated Places: 1850–2000,” State Data Center, State Library of Iowa, electronic
document, http://www.iowadatacenter.org/datatables/PlacesAll/plpopulation18502000.pdf; accessed April 5, 2018. For the black population, see
United States Bureau of the Census, The Statistics of the Population of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872), p.
137; Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883), p. 418; Report on
Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part 1 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1895), p. 531; Twelfth
Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1900, Census Reports, Volume 1: Population, Part 1 (Washington D.C.: United States Census
Office, 1901), p. 617; Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910, Volume 2: Population, 1910, Alabama–Montana
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 638; Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920, Volume 3:
Population, 1920 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922), p. 318; Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population, Volume
3, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Offi ce, 1932), p. 765; Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population,
Volume 2, Part 2, Florida–Iowa (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1943), p. 974; A Report of the Seventeenth
Decennial Census of the United States, Census of Population: 1950, Volume 2, Characteristics of the Population, Part 15, Iowa (Washington, D.C.:
United States Government Printing Office, 1952), p. 15-62; The Eighteenth Decennial Census of the United States, Census of Population: 1960,
Volume 1, Characteristics of the Population, Part 17, Iowa (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 17 -61; 1970 Census of
Populations, Volume 1, Characteristics of the Population, Part 17, Iowa (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1973), p. 17-107.
9 Slightly different census figures are given in Jan Olive Nash, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Bethel A. M. E. Church,
Iowa City, Johnson County, Iowa (copy on file, State Historic Preservation Office, State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines), p. 10. Nash notes
that the official census figure of 30 black residents of Iowa City is off by eight because the same family was recorded twice, although she
mistakenly identifies this number as the black population of Johnson County as a whole rather than just Iowa City.
10 This analysis is based on an examination of the manuscript census rolls available on Ancestry.com, so the total numbers given here sometimes
vary slightly from the official census numbers. Slightly different numbers are also given in Nash, p. 10, which results in a slightly different
interpretation here of places of origin. It should also be noted that some formerly enslaved people could not reliably tell the census taker which state
they were born in because the separation of enslaved children from their parents and the forced migration of enslaved people of all ages were
common before the Civil War.
11 The 1890 and 1940 census figures cited here are the official figures; the others, from 1900 to 1930, like the earlier census figures given above, are
based on an examination of the manuscript census population schedules rather than the official census figures.
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Black Students at the University of Iowa, ca. 1875–1965
During its period of operation as the Tate Arms, and to a lesser extent under the ownership of Charles Alberts
and other earlier owners, the house at 914 S. Dubuque Street was home to many University of Iowa students.12 The
official census figures cited above did not generally include university students, who typically lived in Iowa City during
the academic year and sometimes the summer sessions as well. Black students at the university were rare before the
1910s. The University of Iowa was established in 1847, and the first known African American student at the university,
Alexander Clark, Jr., received his law degree in 1879.13 The university reportedly began keeping a record of the racial
demographics of its students in 1922, but these early records appear no longer to be available. Currently available
records at the university identify enrolled students by ethnicity only beginning in 1977.14 For this reason, sources other
than the university registrar’s records have been consulted to estimate the number of black students attending the
university prior to 1922.15 In particular, the following discussion relies on two databases compiled by the author of the
present nomination for use in this nomination and a related nomination of the Iowa Federation Home at 942 Iowa
Avenue in Iowa City. Like the Tate Arms, the Iowa Federation Home was used historically as a rooming house for black
tenants during Iowa City’s long era of segregated housing, in this case for black female students at the University of
Iowa. The two databases include one database of black students at the University of Iowa compiled from student
directories (1904 and 1911–1927), and one database of black residents of Iowa City compiled from state and federal
census records (1900–1940) and Iowa City city directories (1901–1959).16
Fewer than ten black students attended the University of Iowa in any given year prior to the early 1910s.17
Because the number of black university students was typically only a small fraction of Iowa City’s black population
before the mid-1910s, the pre-1920 census figures are reasonable approximations of the total numbers of black residents
12 The University of Iowa was originally, and officially still is, known as the State University of Iowa (abbreviated SUI), but this name began falling
out of favor in the 1930s and 1940s, and it has not been used officially since 1964, when the board of regents adopted “The U niversity of Iowa” as
an official shorthand name for the university; see Jon Van, “SUI No More: Regents Okay Change to U. of I.,” The Daily Iowan (Iowa City, Iowa),
October 24, 1964, p. 1. The present nomination uses the modern shortened name.
13 Hal S. Chase, “ʻYou Live What You Learn’: The African -American Experience in Iowa Education, 1839–2000,” in Bill Silag, Susan Koch-
Bridgeford, and Hal Chase (editors), Outside In: African-American History in Iowa, 1838–2000 (Des Moines, Iowa: State Historical Society of
Iowa, 2001), p. 140.
14 Herbert Crawford Jenkins, The Negro Student at the University of Iowa: A Sociological Study (unpublished Master of Arts thesis, The University
of Iowa, Iowa City, 1933), pp. 4–5; personal communication with Michelle Davenport, University of Iowa Office of the Registrar, November 13,
2017.
15 Two main sources have been used to compile these estimates. First, the Iowa State Bystander (later renamed The Bystander), an African
American newspaper published in Des Moines, Iowa, beginning in 1894, often mentioned individual black students and occasionally published lists
of black students attending the university. Second, University of Iowa student directories, available in the University of I owa Libraries Special
Collections, include one directory published by a private publisher in 1904, and a nearly continuous run of directories published by the university
starting in Spring 1911. Student directories do not identify students by race, but they list local addresses. Local a ddresses can often be used to
identify black students because racial segregation in housing led to certain addresses being occupied by black students for multiple years. A
comprehensive, but not exhaustive, list of black female students at the university for most years between 1907 and 1946 was compiled in 1999 by
Richard Breaux; see Richard Breaux, “Women of 942 Iowa Avenue and other African-American Women at the University of Iowa before 1947,”
folder 1, Iowa Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs collection, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.
16 Richard J. Carlson (compiler), “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century,” database compiled from
federal and state census records and Iowa City city directories, 1900–1959 (copy on file, Office of the State Archaeologist, University of Iowa, Iowa
City); Richard J. Carlson (compiler), “Black Students at SUI and their Addresses from Student Directories,” database of black students at the State
University of Iowa, 1904–1927, compiled from student directories (copy on file, Office of the State Archaeologist, University of Iowa, Iowa City).
For both databases, if a person was listed in any year at an address known to have been occupied by at least o ne black resident in that year or an
adjacent year, an attempt was made to locate that person in census records or other sources to identify their racial classifi cation. In nearly all cases
where such an individual was identified in census records, they were found to be black. The only exception discovered is Ella Moore’s house at 219
E. College Street, which appears to have been rented on at least one occasion to a white student: Julius R. Hecker in 1909. It should be noted that
this method does not identify any black residents who lived in Iowa City only in houses not typically occupied by other black residents. The
number of black students reported here therefore most likely underestimates the total number of black students at the univers ity in any given year, at
least for those years for which the only source of information is student directories. Given the level of racial segregation common in Iowa City
housing in the early to mid-twentieth century, however, it is believed that the number of black students reported here is close to the total number
enrolled, at least for the years under consideration here. In addition to the students known from student directories, a sma ll number of black
students from period before 1911 are known from a scattering of other sources, primarily the Iowa State Bystander.
17 In 1907, for example, eight students were enrolled at the university; see “Race Echoes,” Iowa State Bystander (Des Moines, Iowa), December 20,
1907, p. [8].
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of Iowa City during that period. From 1913 to 1930, however, the number of black students at the university rose
dramatically, from 16 in 1913 to 145 in 1930.18 By the time of the 1920 census, the number of black university students,
47, was approaching 60, the number of black residents of Iowa City recorded in the census. By 1930, there were more
black university students (145) than black residents of the city recorded in the census (110).19 Thus, at least during the
1920s and early 1930s, the black population of Iowa City during the school year was typically double or more the official
census count. In addition, while overall university enrollment was increasing during the same period, the number of
black students was rising at a higher rate than the overall increase. Black students, who comprised a negligible
percentage of the total student population at the turn of the twentieth century, represented about one percent of the total
student population by 1921, and nearly 1.5 percent by 1930.20
During the 1940s and early 1950s, the number of black students attending the university dropped significantly
relative to the early 1930s. While no specific enrollment figures for this period have been discovered, one estimate from
1942 was that “we have over a hundred colored students here.”21 By 1946, this number had evidently dropped, since a
newspaper editorial estimated that “University Negro students number approximately 45 men and 15 women.”22 The
impression of one black student who enrolled in 1950 and graduated in 1957 (with two years off in 1951–1953 for
military service) was that “When I went to UI, there must have been fifteen or fewer undergraduate black men and
almost no black women.”23
Black student enrollment at the university probably began to increase around the mid -1950s, but there appear to
be no permanent university records from this period classifying students by race. In response to a request by black
students, the university in 1956 stopped recording racial classifications on permanent academic records of individual
students.24 This may have been the reason that, in 1964, the head of the university’s committee on human rights (and
future University of Iowa president) Willard L. Boyd said that it was “not known how many Negroes are enrolled at the
university, because race is not indicated on records.” However, race must have been recorded in temporary or unofficial
records, at least, since Boyd estimated that the number of black students at the time was about 275.25 This number, if
accurate, was nearly double the number of black students enrolled at the previous peak around 1930. Just four years
later, in 1968, however, the number of black students at the university was estimated to be only 160 out of 17,000
students.26 It is not clear whether one of the two estimates was significantly off, or whether the number of black students
dropped significantly between 1964 and 1968.
Racially Segregated Housing in Iowa City, 1900–1965
Iowa City, like most northern cities, has no history of municipal ordinances requiring racial segregation in
housing. Instead, it has a long and continuing history of both de jure and de facto racial segregation stemming from the
dominant American culture of white supremacy. This culture has informed numerous individual decisions by white
property owners and real estate agents; written and unwritten policies of institutions such as mortgage lenders and the
University of Iowa; and zoning laws, racial covenants in deeds, federal housing and mortgage insurance policies, and
18 In December 1913, the Iowa State Bystander reported that “[n]ever in the history of the State University of Iowa has there been so many colored
students in attendance as is the case this year,” although no number was specified; see “Colored Students in the State Univer sity of Iowa,” Iowa
State Bystander, December 19, 1913, p. 1. At least 16 black students were enrolled that year; see Carlson, “Black Students at SUI and their
Addresses from Student Directories.” The number of black students enrolled each year from 1922–1923 through 1932–1933 is included in Jenkins,
p. 5.
19 There was a small amount of overlap, since some university students were counted in Iowa City’s census in these two years, bu t many more black
students were not counted as were counted.
20 For overall student enrollment, see “University of Iowa Enrollment Chart, 1856–1942,” University of Iowa Office of the Registrar, available on
the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections web site, http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/sc/archives/faq/enroll1856 -1942/, accessed November 14,
2017. The otherwise steady rate of increase was punctuated by occasional declines in the number of students enrolled, particularly during World
War I and in the early years of the Great Depression.
21 Mother Hubbard, “Home Defense,” Iowa City Press-Citizen (Iowa City, Iowa), May 18, 1942, p. 12.
22 “The Negro and Prejudice,” in the “As Viewed From Here” editorial column, Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 7, 1946, p. 6.
23 Theodore “Ted” Wheeler, “Going the Distance,” Testimonial Four in Lena M. Hill and Michael D. Hill (editors), Invisible Hawkeyes: African
Americans at the University of Iowa During the Long Civil Rights Era (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016), pp. 136–137, 138.
24 “University to Drop Racial Query on Student Records,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 5, 1956, p. 3.
25 “Panelists View Human Rights, Cite Need for Local Program,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, January 9, 1964, p. 3.
26 “Increasing Negro Students Aim of $50,000 Fund at UI,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, April 9, 1968, p. 1.
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other local, state, and federal laws and policies that actively encouraged racially segregated housing during much of the
twentieth century.27
During the nineteenth century, no more than a few black families lived in Iowa City. The nineteenth century
population peak came in 1880, when 14 households in Iowa City were headed by black men or women, for a total black
population of 86. Most of Iowa City’s black residents in the nineteenth century were long-time residents, typically
families of formerly enslaved people who moved to the city in the decades following the Civil War. The early black
residents lived in different locations in the city, though even then families tended to be concentrated in certain locations:
near the African Methodist Episcopal (A. M. E.) Church on S. Governor Street; other locations in the southeast part of
the city within a few blocks of the A. M. E. church; on the Iowa River floodplain between the city center and the river;
and along Dubuque Road (now N. Dodge Street) on the far north side of the city.28 The black residents at this time lived
almost exclusively in family groups. A small number of unrelated renters lived with black families, and an even smaller
number of black residents lived and worked as servants in the households of white families. No rooming houses for
black men or women are known to have been operated in Iowa City in the nineteenth century.29
As the city’s black population decreased slowly in the last decades of the nineteenth century, a pattern of
increased housing segregation in Iowa City became apparent. By the time of the 1900 census, when twelve households
with a black head of household were recorded in Iowa City, half of these households were concentrated in a small area
on the south side of the city. This area basically comprised a four-block stretch of Maiden Lane near the railroad tracks
and Ralston Creek, together with a few houses located within about a block of Maiden Lane that were clustered near the
southern city limits. Of the remaining six households, all were located along or south of Iowa Avenue, a pattern not seen
twenty years earlier.30 While economic factors certainly played a role in this distribution of housing—nearly all of the
adult black males recorded in 1900 had working-class jobs, working either as unskilled laborers or in one of the building
trades—it is unlikely to have been the only factor, since inexpensive housing could be found elsewhere in Iowa City in
1900, including north of Iowa Avenue.31
For this reason, it is puzzling that Gabriel V. Cools, a black graduate student at the University of Iowa who
completed his Master of Arts thesis in 1918, could conclude that:
The Negro population of the city is scattered all over the community. The streets on which they may be
found are College, Dodge, Dubuque, Jefferson, Linn, Clinton, Madison, and Governor. In no instance
are there more than two families living on the same street, and even then they are so widely separated
that there is no close contact between them. The Negroes all live in desirable localities, side by side with
the whites. As far as it has been ascertained there is perfect harmony between them. Both races seem
too absorbed with their own business to spare the time to find fault with the other.32
The black household on Jefferson Street that Cools mentions must have been a brief anomaly at the time he was
conducting research for his thesis, since no black household north of Iowa Avenue was recorded in either the 1910 or
27 The literature describing this history is extensive. Important recent works that have attempted to push this “hidden” histor y into the mainstream
include Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liverwright
Publishing Corp., a division of W. W. Norton & Co., 2017); Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial
Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 2005); and James W. Loewen , Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension
of American Racism (New York: The New Press, 2005). Rothstein, in particular, argues that much of what we think of today as de facto
segregation actually has a strong de jure component.
28 This is based on an analysis of the approximate locations of households in Iowa City headed by a black head of household, as identified in the
1880 U.S. census and 1885 Iowa state census. While exact addresses are not listed in either year, locations by street are gi ven in 1880 and by street
or intersection in 1885. See 1880 United States Federal Census and All Iowa, State Census Collection, 1836 –1925, both on Ancestry.com, accessed
2018.
29 These conclusions are based on an analysis of the types of household occupied by Iowa City’s black residents as listed in the 1880 and 1900 U.S.
census and 1885 Iowa state census.
30 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.”
31 During this period, throughout the residential areas north of Iowa Avenue, s maller and older houses sat side-by-side with large modern houses
built for the middle and upper middle classes. Smaller and less expensive houses predominated further east in the Goosetown neighborhood
northeast of Iowa Avenue. In two instances, one in 1909 and one in 1918, black students at the University of Iowa briefly rented houses in the
Goosetown area. Both were isolated instances that appear to have lasted no more than a single year.
32 Gabriel Victor Cools, The Negro in Typical Communities of Iowa (Master of Arts thesis, The State University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1918), p. [126].
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1920 census. At the time of the 1920 census, 14 of the 18 black households in the city were located in the city’s 1st
Ward, located south of Washington Street and west of Maiden Lane.33 Two others were located along Iowa Avenue in
the 4th Ward, and the last two were located near the railroad tracks south of Bowery Street in the 5th Ward. No black
households were recorded in either year in the 2nd or 3rd Wards, apart from a single household in 1910 located in the
2nd Ward just north of its boundary with the 1st Ward.34 While the geographical distribution of black households in
1910 and 1920 was not confined to a single neighborhood, suggesting that the pattern of racial segregation in Iowa City
at this time was not as rigid or absolute as it was in other cities or at different times, the pattern is clear. It was reinforced
as the number of black residents of the city increased during the mid-twentieth century, as shown in the following table:
Table 1. Locations of Addresses in Iowa City, Iowa, with One or More Black Heads of Household, as
Listed in Federal and State Census Records, 1900–1940
Year No. of Addresses
in 1st Ward
No. of Addresses
outside 1st Ward
Total No. of
Addresses
Percentage of
Addresses in 1st Ward
1900 6 6 12 50
1910 7 5 12 58
1920 14 4 18 78
1925 18 435 22 82
1930 22 4 26 85
1940 20 4 24 83
Note: It was not verified whether the ward boundaries remained the same during the entire period covered by this
table. In order to make the table useful for comparative purposes, the boundaries of the 1st Ward for years covered
by the table are taken to be those shown on the 1900 and 1917 maps of Iowa City.
The percentage of black households concentrated in Iowa City’s 1st Ward is a useful indicator of the overall
racial segregation of the city’s housing. As this table demonstrates, racial segregation rose rapidly in the decades
following 1900, until roughly four in five black households in the city were concentrated in the 1st Ward between 1920
and 1940 (Figures 7 and 8). By the mid-twentieth century, African American housing in Iowa City was largely
concentrated along S. Capitol Street south of its intersection with Prentiss Street; Prentiss Street east of S. Capitol Street;
and areas along the Ralston Creek floodplain, specifically the 800 and 900 blocks of S. Dubuque Street and areas of S.
Linn Street and Maiden Lane. The increase in racial segregation paralleled, and was almost certainly influenced by, a
rapid rise in Iowa City’s black population. As noted above, the number of black university students grew rapidly during
the 1910s and 1920s, essentially doubling the city’s resident black population during the time when school was in
session.
This population growth paralleled several contemporary and related events at the national level: the rise and
entrenchment of Jim Crow laws in the South, which codified a racial hierarchy that placed white people at the top; the
first Great Migration of African Americans from the southern states t o the North to escape both the Jim Crow laws and
the racially motivated terrorism by which white people enforced the racial hierarchy; and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan
and other white supremacist and nativist organizations, whose goal was to maintain and enforce the dominance of white
Christians in all aspects of society, and which flourished nationally during the 1920s.36 The noticeable increase in the
33 The north three blocks of the 1st Ward have Linn Street as a western boundary, since Maiden Lane does not extend north of Cou rt Street. The 1st
Ward boundaries stayed the same from 1900 to 1917, at least; see Huebinger Survey and Map Publishing Company, Atlas of Johnson County, Iowa
(Davenport, Iowa: The Huebinger Survey and Map Publishing Co., 1900), p. 51; Economy Advertising Company, Atlas of Johnson County, Iowa
(Iowa City, Iowa: Economy Advertising Co., 1917), pp. 52 –53.
34 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century”; Huebinger Survey and Map Publishing Company,
p. 51.
35 Only three households outside of the 1st Ward are listed in the 1925 Iowa State Census, but for the purposes of this table, t he Iowa Federation
Home at 942 Iowa Avenue—a private dormitory for black female students at the University of Iowa established in 1919 and operated until 1951—is
counted as an additional address in 1925 because it is included in other census years.
36 The effect of the first Great Migration on Iowa City appears to have been fairly limited, since black migrants from the South typically moved to
industrial cities in the North. In Iowa, this meant a substantial growth in the black population of larger cities like Des Moines, Waterloo, Cedar
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black population of Iowa City during the 1920s, combined with national trends that served to broaden and deepen white
supremacist ideas among the nation’s white majority, almost certainly strengthened the trends towards racial segregation
in Iowa City’s housing already seen in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Early Multiple-Family Housing for African Americans in Iowa City, 1910–1940
The Tate Arms, originally built as a rooming house for Charles and Dorothy Alberts, appears to have been the
first, and was possibly the only, house in Iowa City built expressly to house African American roomers during the period
of heightened racial segregation in housing during the early to mid-twentieth century. As noted above, research in
census records and city directories indicates that between 1880 and 1900, Iowa City’s black residents lived exclusively in
single-family homes or duplexes, with at most one or two unrelated roomers living with the principal individual or
family at that address. By 1910, a small number of addresses housed more than two unrelated black roomers, but all
appear to have been former single-family homes. In any case, all of these houses have been removed, and no longer
survive to represent this historic context. Such addresses included 812 E. Bloomington Street, which housed black
university students in 1909, but was occupied as a single-family residence by a white family both before and after that
year, and was replaced by the current Craftsman-style house at the same address in the 1910s. Another example was 331
S. Madison Street, which housed black families and university students from about 1909 to 1912, but was shortly
afterwards replaced by another building. Other houses where more than two unrelated roomers lived appear to have been
used at most only temporarily as rooming houses, and were primarily single-family residences.37
The first known buildings in Iowa City that served primarily as rooming houses for black tenants were the
Charles and Dorothy Alberts houses, later known as the Tate Arms—the property being nominated here—which opened
in 1914; a rooming house at 221–227 S. Capitol Street (non-extant) operated by Milton Thompson in 1915 and possibly
for a few adjacent years; and a house at 118 W. Iowa Avenue (non-extant) that was occupied by five unrelated black men
in 1915. Milton Thompson’s rooming house was a row of four flat buildings formerly occupied exclusively by white
tenants, but which in 1915 was managed by Milton Thompson, an African American man, who rented rooms to black
tenants. Between January 1916 and January 1917 the building at 221–227 S. Capitol Street was removed and replaced
by a glove factory for E. F. Rate’s Sons Co.38 The house at 118 W. Iowa Avenue was an older house that had been
occupied by white families in the late nineteenth century.39 City directories indicate that this house continued to be
occupied by African Americans in 1918 and perhaps 1919, and that it was removed between 1919 and 1922 for what is
now Hubbard Park on the University of Iowa campus.
No other rooming house in Iowa City built after 1914 that served as the main building on a property was
identified as having been built primarily to house black roomers. A small number of secondary buildings that served as
rooming houses for black tenants may have been built on properties where the main house was also owned or occupied
by a black family. One possible example is 318 and 320 E. Benton Street. A house at 318 E. Benton Street was first
listed in Iowa City city directories between 1920 and 1922. It was occupied by Charles Donnegan, a black man, and his
white wife Lottie Donnegan. The Donnegans also owned an older house at 320 E. Benton Street that was occupied by
Rapids, and Council Bluffs, but only limited growth in smaller, less industrial cities such as Iowa City. Nonetheless, Iowa City’s black population
increased substantially between 1920 and 1930, from 60 to 110 by the official census count. At least part of this growth is likely attributable to the
Great Migration. Historian Richard Breaux is probably correct in concluding that the growing black student population in Iowa City during the
1920s was attributable more to what David O. Levine has called the “culture of aspiration” than to the Great Migration. Howe ver, Breaux
mistakenly states that the population of Iowa City decreased during the 1920s. In fact, both the overall population and the black population
increased between 1920 and 1930. See Richard M. Breaux, “‘Maintaining a Home for Girls’: The Iowa Federation of Colored Wome n’s Clubs at
the University of Iowa, 1919–1950,” The Journal of African American History, Volume 87, Cultural Capital and African American Education
(Spring 2002), n. 44, p. 253.
37 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.”
38 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century”; Sanborn Map Co., Insurance Maps of Iowa City,
Johnson County, Iowa (New York: Sanborn Map Co., 1912), p. 13; Sanborn Map Co., Iowa City, Johnson County, Iowa (New York: Sanborn Map
Co., 1920), p. 8. The E. F. Rate’s Sons Co. was located on S. Linn Street until a January 1916 fire. By January 1917, the c ompany’s new factory at
223 S. Capitol Street had been built. See “Rate Fire Loss Reaches $30000,” Iowa City [Iowa] Citizen, January 11, 1916, p. 1; classified
advertisement advertising for workers for E. F. Rate’s Sons Co., Iowa City [Iowa] Daily Citizen, January 20, 1917, p. 7.
39 Cynthia L. Peterson, et al., Archaeological Investigations of the Historic Hubbard Park Site (13JH1440), Johnson County, Iowa, Technical
Report 1 (Iowa City, Iowa: Office of the State Archaeologist, 2015), p. 83.
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black renters starting in the mid-1920s, although it was earlier occupied by white tenants.40 Whether or not any of these
houses were built specifically to house black tenants, none remains standing today.
The need for rooming houses in Iowa City operated specifically for African American tenants starting in the
1910s resulted from the growing number of black university students and other black residents described above. As a
result of white majority opinion in the mid-twentieth century, black students attending the University of Iowa found it
difficult to secure decent and affordable housing. Until the University of Iowa completed construction of its first student
residence halls in the second decade of the twentieth century—Currier Residence Hall for women in 1913 and
Quadrangle Residence Hall for men in 1920—all university students were expected to find housing through the local
private housing market in Iowa City.41 Black students at the university entered the same housing market, but found their
options severely limited by the practices of local white landlords and other property owners. Moreover, the university’s
construction of its first two residence halls was of no help to black students, since unwritten policies barred black
students from residing in university dormitories until after World War II.42
When only a handful of black students attended the university, the limited number of housing options available
to them in Iowa City were sufficient. Black male students typically lived either in their places of employment—hotels,
commercial buildings, or racially segregated white fraternity houses—or else lived with one of the few African American
families living in Iowa City. Black female students generally lived in the households of white university professors or
other white members of the Iowa City community, typically working as domestic servants for those families.43 Prior to
the 1920s, only two local black families are known to have opened their doors to black university students.44 Other black
individuals or families rented rooms to university students in the 1920s and later. One was Charles Alberts, who rented
rooms in his house at 914 S. Dubuque Street—the house being nominated here—to students from 1920 to about 1926,
and who was succeeded at the same address by other black individuals or families who rented to students through the
early 1960s.45 Black male students who worked as shoe shiners at Short’s Shoe Shine, operated by local black
businessman Haywood D. Short, were able to rent rooms in Short’s building at 18-1/2 S. Dubuque Street.46
When the number of black students at the university began to grow in the first decade of the twentieth century,
and especially in the 1910s and 1920s, the traditional housing options for black students became insufficient. Black male
students, who comprised the majority of black students at the university in the first decades of the twentieth century,
responded in 1914 by forming a chapter of a Greek-letter society, Kappa Alpha Psi (originally named Kappa Alpha Nu)
fraternity, and renting a succession of buildings as chapter houses. A second black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha,
established a chapter at the University of Iowa in 1922, during a period of rapid growth in the university’s black student
population.47 In addition, the number of black families in Iowa City grew during the 1920s, and more of these families
40 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.”
41 For information on Currier and Quadrangle residence halls, see John Beldon Scott and Rodney P. Lehnertz, The University of Iowa Guide to
Campus Architecture (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006), pp. 66–67, 150–151.
42 Jenkins, p. 29. Currier Hall was “officially” desegregated in 1946 by five African American women—Esther Walls, Virginia Harper, Nancy
Henry, Gwen Davis, and Leanne Howard—although Harper has stated that “the first African American women to live in the dorms went
unacknowledged because they were ‘light-skinned’”; see Breaux, “‘Maintaining a Home for Girls’,” p. 249. The men’s dormitories—Quadrangle
and later Hillcrest—presumably ended their unwritten policy of racial segregation at around the same time, although no published sources have
been located that identify the date these dorms were desegregated. One source claims that this policy was official rather than unwritten in at least
one case—that of Quadrangle, whose 1919 constitution reportedly explicitly restricted that dormitory to white students—but this claim has not been
corroborated elsewhere; see Larry Perl, “Jessup Era Good as (Old) Gold,” The Daily Iowan (Iowa City, Iowa), March 9, 1977, p. 8.
43 These conclusions are based on a comparison of addresses of black students in University of Iowa student directo ries published in 1904 and
1910–1915 with the same addresses listed in the six Iowa City city directories published between 1901 and 1915. For information o n black female
students’ domestic work, see “Tag Day. Tag Day,” The Bystander, July 11, 1919, p. [4].
44 One was headed by Ella Moore, the other by Charles and Lonnie Donnegan. The following discussion is derived from Carlson, “Addresses of
Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century,” and Carlson, “Black Students at SUI and their Addresses from Student
Directories.”
45 Charles Alberts had operated a rooming house at this address since the house was built in 1914, but he is not known to have r ented to university
students until 1920. The best known of Alberts’ successors were Elizabeth and Junious Tate, who operated the Tate Arms rooming house at this
address from about 1940 to the mid-1960s.
46 For more on Haywood Short and his shoe shine business, see Julia Davis, “Short’s Shoe Shine,” The Negro History Bulletin (January 1940), p.
54; Jean C. Florman, “Traces: Personal Accounts of a History Nearly Lost,” Iowa City Magazine (January 1995), pp. 14–18, available in Box 1,
folder 13, of the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers in the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.
47 The first black fraternity chapter formed at the University of Iowa was Delta Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi (named Kappa Alpha N u from its
founding at Indiana University in 1911 until the name was changed in 1915), wh ich was established on March 7, 1914; see “Iowa Negroes Organize
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began renting rooms to black university students. Finally, more white landlords appear to have begun renting to black
students during this decade, typically in racially segregated housing. In these ways, the supply of housing for black
university students appears largely to have kept up with the demand, although living conditions were often poor and
overcrowded.48
Charles Alberts
The building later known as the Tate Arms was built for an African American couple, Charles and Dorothy
Alberts, as a personal residence and rooming house. It was built in 1913–1914, near the onset of the period of increased
racial segregation in Iowa City described above. The house was the first house in the area occupied by an African
American family, but because black residents tended to live in close proximity to each other during this period, the house
was soon joined by others.49 Charles Alberts was a stone mason by profession, and also worked with concrete block
manufacturing. He may therefore have been the contractor and builder for his own house, which has a stone and brick
foundation and brick walls.
Little is known about the early years of Charles Alberts, who moved to Iowa City in 1908.50 Census records
from 1910 and later generally record that he was born in New York State in about 1864, but the earliest census in which
he has been located, 1900, states that he was born in Canada and came to the United States in 1867.51 He was probably
College Fraternity,” Iowa State Bystander, March 13, 1914, pp. 1 and 3. For Alpha Phi Alpha, see “Social Committee Limits the Senior Hop
Committee to Sixteen Members; Approves Alpha Phi Alph a Fraternity and 2 Clubs,” The Daily Iowan (Iowa City, Iowa), February 22, 1922, p. 1.
48 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century”; “Black Students at SUI and their Addresses from
Student Directories.” For the living conditions of rental housing occupied by African American students in Iowa City during this period, see
William Edwin Taylor, letter of November 2, 1921, to James Weldon Johnson, Secretary NAACP, New York, in NAACP Branch Files, Des
Moines, Iowa, 1916–1924, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; digital image available on the ProQuest History Vault web site, at
https://hv.proquest.com/historyvault/), and Jenkins, pp. 18–20. Taylor stated that “[c]onditions in this city are at present almost u nlivable for a
colored student. . . . No one will rent to colored fraternities and no one will sell in livable localities. It is almost impossible in the whole city to find
a decent room to live in.” Jenkins’ assessment a dozen years later was somewhat more positive, though he nonetheless observed that “in two
different dwellings a total of six men were staying in quarters which left much to be desired as to wholesome living conditions” (Jenkins, pp. 18–
19). The inadequacy of the living arrangements appears to have been largely the result of overcrowding. In some cases, three or four men were
staying in a single room designed for no more than two people. Distance from the university does not appear to have been a s ignificant issue, even
though most of the student housing nearest to the main campus was rented only to white students. Some black students lived downtown or just
south of downtown close to the campus, and many white students also lived far from campus. Distance was never raised as an i ssue by black
students at this time when they were calling attention to the inadequacy of the housing available to them.
49 The house to the south, 916 S. Dubuque Street, was leased by an African American tenant at about the same time as Charles Albe rts built his
house. Both houses were occupied by black families through at least the 1950s. Two other black households at 926 and 930 S. Dubuque Street
were started in the late 1940s or early 1950s in houses built in the late 1920s and occupied by white families for their first two decades. A block to
the north, the houses at 808, 818, and 824 S. Dubuque Street were occupied by African American families or the black fraterni ty Alpha Phi Alpha
for anywhere from one to three decades during this period. Two other houses (812 and 826 S. Dubuque Street) were rented by black families for at
least two years each. For details, see Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century.”
50 In November 1908, Alberts was said to have “been in the city only a short time, having come here from Michigan”; see “Alberts Found Guilty,”
The Iowa City Citizen (Iowa City, Iowa), November 4, 1908, p. [8].
51 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, Schedule No. 1—Population, Michigan, Arenac County, Standish Township,
Enumeration District 27, p. 2B (Charles Alberts entry); Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to M id-Twentieth
Century.” His marriage record to Emma Carter Holt in 1923 reportedly states that he was born in “Sarah Curse,” New York, presumably a
transcription error for Syracuse, New York; see transcription of information from marriage record of Charles Alberts and Emma Carter [sic], Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, March 28, 1923, in Iowa, Select Marriages Index, 1758–1996, database available on Ancestry.com, accessed April 6, 2018. A few
other clues suggest that Alberts had a connection with southwestern New York, which may be where he was born or where he or h is family later
moved. In the 1925 Iowa State census, his household in Iowa City included a 46-year-old widow, Bell Bliss, who was identified as Alberts’ niece.
While no family relationship has yet been discovered, Cora Bell (Gayton) Bliss was identified in the 1925 census as the daugh ter of Aaron Gayton
and Johanna (or Joanna) Dorsey. Census records show that Aaron Gayton lived in Ontario County, New York, in 1870. By 1880 h e had married
Johanna and had moved to Cattaraugus County, New York, three counties to the southwest of Ontario County. By 1892, they had moved one
county to the east, to Allegany County, New York. They lived in Allegany County until their deaths, Joanna in 1907 and Aaron in 1916 (U.S.
Bureau of the Census, 1870 Census, Schedule 1, New York, Ontario County, Town of Phelps, p. 124 [Almira Gayton entry]; U.S. Bureau of the
Census, 1880 Census, New York, Cattaraugus County, Portville, p. 16 [Aaron “Gayten” entry]; New York State Census, 1892, Alle gany County,
Town of Friendship, 1st Election District, p. 9 [Aaron Gayton entry]; Aaron D. Gayton and Johana Gayton entries in Maple Grove Cemetery,
Friendship, Allegany County, New York, on the Find A Grave web site, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/78207436, accessed A pril 9, 2018).
It should be noted that Cora Bell Bliss was almost certainly not the niece of Emma Carter Holt Alberts, since her father and mother were born
around 1840 in Kentucky and Missouri, respectively, and had no known connection to New York; see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of
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living in Corry, Erie County, Pennsylvania, in September 1891, when his son Harold was born there.52 In 1900, he was
living in Arenac County, Michigan, where he worked as a mason. He had been married for ten years to a woman named
Dorothy, and they had a single child, their son Harold. Charles Alberts was listed in Iowa City city directories starting in
1909, where he was typically identified as a mason. The 1910 census identified his occupation as stone mason for
foundations.53
He purchased the property at 914 S. Dubuque Street in October 1913, its first African American owner.54 It is
not clear whether a house was already present on the property at the time Alberts purchased it, but if there was, it was not
the present house. Based on the low sales price for Lot 34 in 1913 ($350), the much higher sales price for Lot 34 and
two apparently undeveloped lots in Sunnyside Addition a decade later in 1923 (approximately $2,500, based on transfer
tax stamp values), and Charles Alberts’ profession as a mason, it appears that the present house was built for, and
possibly even by, Charles Alberts.55
Alberts built the present house as a rooming house, which was completed in early 1914. He and his family
occupied part of the house, with the rest of the building rented out to tenants. The building may have been ready for
occupancy as early as January 1914, and it was certainly ready by April 1914, when a newspaper announcement of a
celebration for Charles Alberts’ fiftieth birthday stated that the celebration “took place at New Brick Rooming house,
which is now ready to receive roomers.”56
In 1915 or 1916, Charles Alberts and his wife Dorothy were divorced.57 At the time of the 1920 census, Charles
Alberts was listed as the manager of a rooming house rather than a mason. He lived at 914 S. Dubuque Street with a
housekeeper and five roomers, all black. Alberts also appears to have been active in political affairs. In 1919, an
advertisement was placed in a local newspaper calling for a “Mass Meeting of The Colored Voters of Iowa City,
Saturday[,] March 29, at 8:00 P.M., at 914 South Dubuque Street” (Figure 9). No additional information on this meeting
was discovered to explain its purpose, including in Iowa’s only African American newspaper, the Des Moines-based
Iowa Bystander.
In addition to working as a mason, Charles Alberts operated a cement block manufacturing business from his
home. A 1922 advertisement for this business listed the variety of block types available, and stated that Alberts had
operated a similar business in Michigan about 14 years earlier, in about 1908 (Figure 9).
the United States (1900), Schedule No. 1—Population, Iowa, Lee County, Montrose Township, Enumeration District 75, p. 7B (Bryant Carter
entry). As described below, the first and last verified events in Charles Alberts’ life also connect him with the region around southwestern New
York: Erie County, Pennsylvania (two counties west of Cattaraugus County), in 1891, and Cattaraugus County itself in 1926. It is not clear why no
census records for Charles Alberts prior to 1900 have been located. If he were born in New York in 1864, he should have been listed in federal and
state census records in 1865, 1870, 1875, and 1880, at least, yet he has not been located in a single one of these. Since he also has not been located
in the 1870 or 1880 census of any other state, the most likely explanation is that he went by a different name in his childhood and changed his name
as an adult.
52 The World War I draft registration card for Harold Harry Alberts of Iowa City, Iowa, states that he was born in “Cora Pa,” wh ile the record of his
second marriage to Lula R. Gilbert in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1921, states that he was born in “Cory Pa.”; see U.S., World W ar I Draft
Registration Cards, 1917–1918, database on Ancestry.com, and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Marriage Records and Indexes, 1810 –1973, database on
Ancestry.com, both accessed March 20, 2018. No town in Pennsylvania named “Cora” or “Cory” has been identified, but a city n amed “Corry” is
located in Erie County, in the northwest corner of the state. In 1890 it had a population of 5,67 7; see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census
of the United States Taken in the Year 1910: Statistics for Pennsylvania (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912), p. 583.
53 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to M id-Twentieth Century.”
54 From 1911 to 1913, Lots 33 and 34 of White’s Subdivision of Out Lot 4, County Seat Addition to Iowa City, where the present h ouse is located,
were owned by James McCollister. There appears to have been an earlier house on this property, but it was replaced by the present house in 1913–
1914. For more information on the earlier history of this property, see Carlson and Ingalls, Iowa Site Inventory Form for si te 52-05284.
55 Johnson County, Iowa, Recorder’s Office, Deed Book 112, p. 542; Deed Book 120, p. 577.
56 A newspaper announcement in December 1913 stated briefly: “We can afford accommodation by January 15, 1914.—Chas. Alberts, 914 South
Dubuque street, Iowa City, Iowa”; see “City News” column, Iowa State Bystander [Des Moines, Iowa], December 19, 1913, p. [5]. The 1914
quotation is from “Iowa City Notes,” Iowa State Bystander, April 17, 1914, p. [4]. The “New Brick Rooming house” was presumably the new
house at 914 S. Dubuque Street, although this was not specified in the newspaper account. A ca. 1913 construction date is also reportedly supported
by an appraisal of the property conducted in 1940, which reportedly states that the house was 27 years old at that time; see property appraisal cited
in Bassman, p. 8. Unfortunately, the location of this appraisal was not identified in Bassman’s research paper, and attempts to locate the document
for the present nomination were unsuccessful. At present Bassman’s research paper is the only known source of this information.
57 They were still married at the time the 1915 city directory was compiled. By December 1916, she was remarried to Sidney Sowa rd and had
moved to Buchanan County, Iowa; see Smith’s Directory of Iowa City and Johnson County, Ia., for 1915 (Dorchester, Massachusetts: Edgar Smith,
1915), p. 31; Johnson County, Iowa, Recorder’s Office (Iowa City, Iowa), Deed Book 119, p, 144.
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Within three years, Charles Alberts had lost everything. In March 1923, Alberts, then in his late 50s, was
charged with sexually assaulting the 17-year-old daughter of his housekeeper, Emma Carter Holt. The daughter, Blanche
Holt, was later determined by the court to be mentally incompetent and was sent to the state insane asylum in Mt.
Pleasant. In an apparent attempt to avoid the charges, Alberts married his housekeeper a week after his arrest.58 He
retained local attorney Edward F. Rate, who at the time was working in partnership with O. A. Byington, for his defense.
The case went to trial in October, and after nearly 12 hours of deliberation, the jury found Alberts guilty of criminal
assault. In January 1924, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Fort Madison, Iowa. His lawyers were victorious on
appeal, however, and in March 1925 the state supreme court reversed the lower court’s ruling and remanded the case
back to the district court. At that point, the prosecutors decided that further prosecution would be unlikely to succeed,
since the only prosecuting witnesses were the daughter, who was mentally incompetent, and her mother, who could not
be compelled to testify against her husband. As a result, Alberts either avoided prison entirely, or avoided serving the
remainder of his sentence (newspaper accounts are unclear on this point).59
This prolonged legal battle was expensive, however, as was the bail that Alberts had to post to avoid serving time
in jail pending trial. Although Alberts was, as one newspaper phrased it, “a negro of means,” his accumulated wealth
was exhausted by the lengthy legal proceedings.60 In May 1923, apparently in order to raise the $2,500 bail, he sold the
property at 914 S. Dubuque Street, as well as two lots in Sunnyside Addition (now the site of 1630 Crescent Street), to H.
H. Rate.61 Although recorded in deed books as an outright property transfer, this transfer appears to have been intended
more as collateral on a loan. H. H. Rate appears to have been attorney Edward F. Rate’s father, and served as trustee for
the property pending the conclusion of the lawsuit.62 In August 1925, two months after Alberts was freed, he was sued
by H. H. Rate, trustee, and his two lawyers for over $2,000 in attorney’s fees and other expenses. At about the same
time, Alberts’ wife Emma obtained a judgment against him for another $500, although the basis of this lawsuit was not
discovered during the research for the present nomination. As a result, in November 1925, first Alberts’ real estate at
914 S. Dubuque Street, and then much or all of his personal estate, including his cement block manufacturing equipment,
was sold at auction to satisfy the two judgments (Figure 10).63 Between 1925 and 1927, full title to the property at 914 S.
Dubuque Street was acquired from the various interested parties by Edward F. Rate, which evidently served as his
attorney’s fee for defending Alberts. Charles and Emma Alberts were divorced around July 1925.64 In January 1926,
when Charles Alberts quit-claimed his interest in the Dubuque Street property to Rate, he was listed as single and as a
resident of Cattaraugus County, New York.65 Alberts is listed in the 1926 Iowa City city directory as a resident of 914 S.
Dubuque Street, but he was no longer living in Iowa City by 1928. He has not been located in any subsequent census or
any other record.
Despite the transfer of this property to white lawyer Edward F. Rate in 1925, city directories and census records
indicate that Rate leased the house exclusively to black tenants during his period of ownership. The tenants included
Mrs. Emma Alberts in 1924 and Charles Alberts in 1926, then Joseph Williams, who operated the Williams Hotel at this
address for employees of his “auto laundry” (car wash) for a few years around 1930, as described in the following
section.
58 Transcription of information from marriage record of Charles Alberts and Emma Carter [sic], Cedar Rapids, Iowa, March 28, 1923; from Iowa,
Select Marriages Index, 1758–1996, database available on Ancestry.com, accessed April 6, 2018.
59 “Sensational Case Against Aging Negro,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, March 21, 1923, p. 3; “City Briefs” column, Iowa City Press-Citizen, April
12, 1923, p. 2; “City Briefs” column, Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 26, 1923, p. 7; “Criminality Alleged Here in Six Cases,” Iowa City Press-
Citizen, October 15, 1923, p. 3; “City Briefs” column, Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 20, 1923, p. [2?]; “Alberts Must Draw Term in
Penitentiary,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 24, 1923, p. 2; “To Ft. Madison For Long Term of C. Alberts,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, January 4,
1924, p. 7; “Gets Retrial,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, March 19, 1925, p. 4; “Alberts to Get Freedom,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 3, 1925, p. 2.
60 “Alberts Case May Be Ended in Wedding,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, March 28, 1923, p. 3.
61 Johnson County, Iowa, Recorder’s Office, Deed Book 120, p. 577.
62 “Alberts Sued By Attorneys,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 25, 1925, p. 5; “Edward Rate, 96,” “Deaths” column, Iowa City Press-Citizen,
November 30, 1994, p. 8A.
63 Advertisement: Sheriff’s sale of Charles Alberts’ real estate, Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 31, 1925, p. 8; Advertisement: Sheriff’s sale of
Charles Alberts’ personal property, Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 19, 1925, p. 11.
64 “City Briefs” column, Iowa City Press-Citizen, July 20, 1925, p. 10.
65 Johnson County, Iowa, Recorder’s Office, Deed Book 137, p. 321. He is not listed in Cattaraugus County in the 1925 New York State census or
1930 U.S. census, but people surnamed Gayton, Dorsey, and Bliss—possibly relatives of Charles Alberts’ reported niece, Bell Bliss, as mentioned
above—were recorded in those census records.
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Charles and Dorothy Alberts House/Williams Hotel
Little is known of the early operation of the rooming house under Charles (and originally also Dorothy) Alberts.
Information about some of the tenants in the rooming house is known from city directories and census records of the
period. Besides the Alberts family and a housekeeper, the earliest known occupants of the building were three tenants
who were listed in the 1918 city directory: John Brown, a laborer; Russell Leonard, a hotel porter; and Russell
Leonard’s wife Mary. Preston Peterson, also a porter, lived in the house in 1919.66
The house and its activities were mentioned in passing in The Bystander in January 1918, in a report on the visit
to Iowa City of the daughter of Mrs. W. M. Broadus. Mrs. Broadus was “manager of Chas. Albert’s [sic] up-to-date
rooming house at 914 South Dubuque street. The Xmas and New Year’s dinner was served in the large new dining
room, which seats about twenty people.”67 It is not clear whether the dining room was “new” because it was a new
addition on the house or just an existing space converted to a dining room or newly furnished.
A testimonial praising the house was published the same month in The Bystander. Mr. and Mrs. Edgar S.
Reescer of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, stated that they were in Iowa City for six or eight weeks, staying in Charles Alberts’
“up-to-date rooming house,” while caring for their sick daughter who was in the homeopathic hospital. According to the
testimonial, they “received the best treatment and hospitality that anyone would wish, as we have furnace heat, electric
lights, bath and all of the modern conveniences, and the most convenience [sic] of all is a modern kitchen upstairs for the
convenience of roomers, with hot and cold water and everything convenient for a kitchen, and it is conducted on a moral
system.”68
While none of the earliest known residents of the house were university students, that changed in 1920. In Fall
1920, seven or eight black male students at the University of Iowa were listed as living at 914 S. Dubuque Street, and in
1921 the number had risen to nine.69 This shift in clientele resulted from the rapid increase in the number of black male
students at the university after World War I, combined with their limited housing options in Iowa City. A chapter of one
black fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, had been established at the University of Iowa in 1914, and their chapter house housed
many of the university’s black male students. After the war, the Kappa Alpha Psi chapter found it difficult to rent a
chapter house, and a second black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, was established in 1922. The lack of any black fraternity
house on campus between 1918 and 1922 was likely a large part of the reason that Charles Alberts’ rooming house was
dominated by university students in 1920 and 1921. The Alpha Theta chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity was founded
in March 1922, and the majority of its members lived that fall at 318–320 E. Benton Street.70 The number of students
staying at the Alberts rooming house dropped to one in 1922, and between zero and three per year through 1926, the last
year included in the study.71
For the remainder of the 1920s and early 1930s, the typical resident of the Alberts rooming house was an
unmarried black man, although several married men stayed there as well. They held standard occupations for working
class black men at the time, including porters for downtown businesses, laborers, and the occasional shoe repairer, cook,
or oil station attendant. The only woman known to have stayed in the rooming house during this period who was not
married to one of the male residents was Mrs. Celia McKeen, a domestic servant in 1928. It is possible that she was the
housekeeper in the Williams Hotel, however, rather than a regular tenant.72
66 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.”
67 “Iowa City, Iowa,” The Bystander (Des Moines, Iowa), January 11, 1918, p. [4].
68 Mr. and Mrs. Edgar H. Reescer, “Statement to Public,” The Bystander, January 25, 1918, p. [4].
69 Carlson, “Black Students at SUI and their Addresses from Student Directories.” The number in 1920 was probably eight, but one student, Marion
Claude Colvin, was listed at “911” S. Dubuque Street. Street indexes in Iowa City c ity directories list only a single address on the west side of the
900 block of S. Dubuque Street in 1918, 1919, or 1922—903 S. Dubuque Street—so it is most likely that 911 was an error for 914 S. Dubuque
Street.
70 “Social Committee Limits the Senior Hop Committee to Sixteen Members; Approves Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and 2 Clubs,” The Daily Iowan,
p. 1; Carlson, “Black Students at SUI and their Addresses from Student Directories.” The location of the majority of Alpha P hi Alpha members in
1922 is known from comparing a list of charter members of the Alpha Theta chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha available on the chapter’s web site wi th the
database of students cited above; see “Alpha Theta Chapter History,” on the Alpha Theta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha web site, at
http://athetaalphas06.wixsite.com/iowa/chapter-history; accessed April 6, 2018.
71 Carlson, “Black Students at SUI and their Addresses from Student Directories.”
72 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.”
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From about 1928 to 1932, the house was known as the Williams Hotel. The original proprietor was Joseph
Williams, who also operated an “auto laundry” (car wash) at 12–16 E. College Street in the downtown commercial area.
In 1928 and 1930, all of the known residents of the Williams Hotel other than Celia McKeen were associated with the
auto laundry. Most were laborers, but one person each in 1928 and 1930 was identified as a foreman, and Joseph
Williams himself also lived there. By 1932, although the building was still identified as the Williams Hotel, its
proprietor was Louis Goodwin, who had been the auto laundry foreman in 1930. By this time, the tenants no longer
included employees of Joseph Williams’ auto laundry, which had evidently closed. Instead, the roomers included the
usual mix of porters, students, and an oil company attendant.
From 1934 to 1940, the house was again occupied by the family of Emma C. Holt, the former housekeeper and
briefly the wife of Charles Alberts, who had returned to the surname of her first husband. Also living in her household
was her son, Carter Holt, who worked as a shoe shiner and porter during this period. Between 1926 and 1932, Emma
Holt had lived at at least four other addresses in the area, eventually returning to 914 S. Dubuque Street by 1934. The
Holts appear to have been the primary occupants of the house, since the only other tenants identified in city directories
during this time were John H. Williams, identified in various years as a cook and a laborer, and Lonnie Harris—listed in
1936 only—for whom no occupation was identified. John H. Williams had been a tenant of the house back in 1924
when Charles and Emma Alberts lived there, and he lived at the same address as Emma Alberts (later Emma Holt) during
the span of nearly a decade when she did not live at 914 S. Dubuque Street.
It is possible that the building also housed university students at this time, but no student directories from the
period have yet been consulted to determine how many black students, if any, lived in the rooming house in the mid- to
late 1930s. The 1940 census lists three African American lodgers at this address in addition to the Holts, but only one
roomer—long-time tenant John Williams—was identified in city directories. It is therefore likely that the building
continued to serve as a rooming house for African Americans even in years when city directories list only the Holts and
at most one or two other people at this address.73
Elizabeth Crawford Tate and Junious Tate
The house built for Charles and Dorothy Alberts is best known in Iowa City today as the Tate Arms, the name
given to it by the next owners, Elizabeth (“Bettye”) Tate and her husband, Junious (“Bud”) Tate, who bought the
property in 1940. The Tates operated the house for approximately 21 years as a rooming house, primarily for black male
students at the University of Iowa. The Tates had started renting rooms to black tenants a few years earlier at a different
address, so by their move to what became the Tate Arms, they continued both their own practice of providing housing to
black university students as well as the historical use of the Alberts house as a rooming house that catered specifically to
black tenants.
Elizabeth “Bettye” Marie Crawford, later Elizabeth Saulsbury Tate, was born in Fairfield, Iowa, in 1906. She
graduated from Fairfield High School in 1926, then reportedly worked for three years in Cedar Rapids (Figure 11).74
Little is known of her years in Cedar Rapids, including her occupation.75 In July 1929, she married Aljoe Saulsbury,
73 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.”
74 “125 Receive Diplomas at High School,” The Fairfield Daily Ledger (Fairfield, Iowa), May 28, 1926, p. 1; “Former Fairfield Girl Is Married,” in
“Society” column, The Fairfield Daily Ledger, July 27, 1929, p. 2. She had completed the normal training class for teacher training while in high
school, and just before her graduation it was reported that she had “accepted a position in the [segregated black] Eureka High school at Hattiesburg,
Miss., for the coming school year,” but no evidence has been discovered to suggest that she ever taught school, either in Mis sissippi or elsewhere;
see “Normal Trainers to Rural Schools,” The Fairfield Daily Ledger, October 25, 1925, p. 7; and “Just Among Ourselves” column, The Fairfield
Daily Ledger, April 24, 1926, p. 5. Later sources state that after graduation from high school she worked for a summer at Lake Okoboji, a popular
recreation area in northwest Iowa; see Florman, p. 18. All contemporary sources from the early to mid -twentieth century give Elizabeth Crawford
Saulsbury Tate’s nickname as “Betty,” although in many later sources from the 1970s on she is identified as “Bettye,” which w as evidently her
preferred spelling.
75 Only one primary source other than the 1929 marriage announcement quoted above has been identified that locates her with cert ainty in Cedar
Rapids, and that source, an obituary of her father, was not published until March 1929; see “John Crawford Died Today at 2,” The Fairfield Daily
Ledger (Fairfield, Iowa), March 5, 1929, p. 1. She was probably the Elizabeth Crawford listed in the 1928 Cedar Rapids city directo ry; no Elizabeth
Crawford was listed in the directory of either adjacent year (1926 or 192 9). According to the 1928 city directory, Elizabeth Crawford was living at
1955 5th Avenue in Cedar Rapids, which was the home of Philip and Hattie Liebsohn. Philip Liebsohn was the owner of Philip L iebsohn & Son, a
department store; see McCoy’s Cedar Rapids City Directory, 1928 (Rockford, Illinois: The McCoy Directory Company, 1928), pp. 170, 306. No
occupation was given for Elizabeth Crawford in the city directory, so it is not clear what employment connection, if any, she had with the
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who was then living at 914 S. Dubuque Street in Iowa City, the property being nominated here.76 While their wedding
announcement stated that “[a]fter July 18th [1929] the couple will be at home at 914 South Dubuque, Iowa City,” they
did not live for long at that address. By the time of the 1930 federal census, taken in April 1930, they were living at 514
S. Linn Street in Iowa City. Aljoe Saulsbury worked as a car washer in 1930 and 1932, while Elizabeth worked as a
cook for a private family in 1930.77 They moved often during this period, renting homes at 216 S. Madison Street in
1932 and 9 E. Prentiss Street in 1934.78
In November 1933, Aljoe Saulsbury was convicted of assault with intent to commit manslaughter, and was
sentenced to five years imprisonment.79 He was released on parole two years later, but was sent back to prison in April
1936 after another altercation, this time with Elizabeth Saulsbury’s future husband, Junious Tate.80 Aljoe and Elizabeth
Saulsbury evidently separated or divorced around this time. In the 1936 city directory, Mrs. Betty C. Saulsbury, who
then worked as a maid, was listed as living at 9 E. Prentiss Street, but Aljoe was not listed with her.81
It was during her marriage to Aljoe Saulsbury that the future Elizabeth Tate first began renting out rooms in her
house to black male students at the University of Iowa. The first such student for whi ch there is a record is James A.
Tate, the younger brother of her future husband, who was listed in the Saulsbury household at 9 E. Prentiss Street in the
1934 city directory. By 1936, James Tate and his brother Junious were living in the adjacent house at 11 E. Prentiss
Street.82 The first known tenant of Elizabeth Saulsbury confirmed from University of Iowa student directories is Jesse D.
Hayes, a graduate student from Carbondale, Illinois, who is listed at 9 E. Prentiss Street in 1934–1935.83
Two events that occurred around 1935 appear to have influenced Elizabeth Saulsbury’s decision to open her
home to multiple black students rather than just one at a time, as she had apparently done for at least a year or two
previously. First was the removal of Aljoe Saulsbury from her household, which almost certainly led to a loss of income
that had to be made up elsewhere after 1933. The second was the financial struggles of one of the University of Iowa’s
two black fraternities, Kappa Alpha Psi. Kappa Alpha Psi members had lived in a building at 301 S. Dubuque Street that
the chapter had bought on contract in 1921, but their last year in this building was 1934–1935. While it is not known
why they sold their chapter house, it may have been that declining membership during the Great Depression did not
produce the revenues needed to maintain the house payments.84 Whatever the reason, they sold their building in 1935.
Liebsohns.
76 Their marriage record states that Aljoe Saulsbury was living at “1914 Dubuque S. St. Iowa City,” but the correct address is give n in “Former
Fairfield Girl Is Married,” p. 2. For the marriage record, see Iowa, Marriage Records, 1880–1940, database on Ancestry.com; accessed March 19,
2018 (Aljoe Saulsbury to Elizabeth “Crawfot,” Iowa City, Johnson County).
77 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population Schedule, Iowa, Johnson County, Iowa City, Ward 1,
Supervisor’s District 12, Enumeration District 52-16, Sheet 10B (Aljoe “Saulsbery” entry); Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in
the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century.”
78 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.”
79 “‘Not Guilty’ Plea of Negro Accused of Manslaughter,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 17, 1933, p. 2; “Al Joe Salisbury Gets Prison Term
for Stabbing Man,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 20, 1933, p. 2. At the time of his conviction, it was reported that he would be sent to the
men’s penitentiary in Fort Madison, Iowa, but by the time of his parole two years later (discussed below), he was at the refo rmatory in Anamosa,
Iowa.
80 “Hold Salisbury, Negro, At Hospital; Inquire Into Alleged Stabbing,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, March 30, 1936, p. 2; “Aljoe Salisbury is Returned
to Anamosa,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, April 21, 1936, p. 3. Although Junious Tate is identified in the March 30 article as “Julius” Tate, this was
clearly an error for “Junious,” since he was said to be living at 11 E. Prentiss Street, listed in the 1936 city directory as the address of Junious Tate,
and located next door to Aljoe and Elizabeth Saulsbury’s house.
81 It is not clear where Aljoe Saulsbury went after he was released from prison. The only other records of him discovered to date are his marriage to
Carlee Saulsbury in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1942, and their divorce five years later in Michigan; see Michigan, Divorce Reco rds, 1897–1952,
database on Ancestry.com, accessed April 7, 2018. Elizabeth Tate never mentioned her first marriage in interviews she gave in the 1990s, allowing
her interviewers to conclude that she came to Iowa City either with, or to be with, Junious Tate.
82 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century.” Oddly, James A. Tate is not listed in the
University of Iowa student directory in either 1933 or 1934, although he was listed in the Roster of Students in the universi ty catalog in both years;
see State University of Iowa, Catalog Number 1933–1934 (Iowa City, Iowa: The State University of Iowa, n.d. [ca. 1933]), p. 499; State University
of Iowa, Catalog Number 1934–1935 (Iowa City, Iowa: The State University of Iowa, n.d. [ca. 1934]), p. 501. James A. Tate and Junious A. Tate
are both listed as children of Alex and Emma Tate in the 1920 federal census of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; see U.S. Bureau of the Ce nsus, Fourteenth
Census of the United States: 1920—Population, Iowa, Linn County, Cedar Rapids, Precinct 18, Enumeration District 141, p. 16B (Alex Tate entry).
83 University of Iowa, University Directory, First Semester, 1934–1935 (Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa, n.d. [ca. 1934]), p. 63. Pre-1934
student directories have not been examined to see whether any students lived at 9 E. Prentiss Street or at any of the other addresses at which the
Saulsburys lived. Hayes is not listed in student directories in any other year between 1932–1933 and 1936–1937.
84 On the other hand, the fraternity chapter does not appear to have been hurting for members at the time they sold their property. During the 1934 –
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In the 1935–1936 university student directory, the address given for the Kappa Alpha Psi chapter house was 213½ S.
Clinton Street. However, of the 16 students listed at 301 S. Dubuque Street in 1934–1935, nine were also listed in 1935–
1936, but only two of the nine were listed at 213½ S. Clinton Street. Five were listed as living at 9 E. Prentiss Street,
Elizabeth Saulsbury’s address.85 Elizabeth Saulsbury therefore was able to provide housing for the majority of the Kappa
Alpha Psi members who had lost their chapter house, while earning additional money to make up for the loss of her
husband’s income.
It was evidently through her tenant and later neighbor, James Tate, that Bettye Saulsbury met her future husband,
Junious “Bud” Tate, James Tate’s older brother (Figure 12). Junious A. Tate was born in Buxton, Iowa, in 1908, where
his father worked as a coal miner. The family later moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 30 miles north of Iowa City. There
Junious Tate married his first wife, Louise Bragg, in 1927, although their marriage did not last long. She was not listed
as his wife in Cedar Rapids city directories from 1928 through 1931, and in 1932 she was likely the Mrs. Louise Tate
who was listed in the directory as living at a different address from Junious Tate.86 By 1936, Junious Tate was living in
Iowa City, and was listed in the city directory as living at 11 E. Prentiss Street with James Tate. At the time, Junious
Tate was a shoe shiner with Hawkeye Shoe Repair, and James Tate was still a university student.87
Bettye Crawford Saulsbury was listed as Junious Tate’s wife in the 1938 and 1940 city direct ories.88 They
continued to live at 9 E. Prentiss Street and to rent out their home to university students. At the time of the 1940 census,
the Tates were renting the house for $15 per month.89
By 1940, the Tates had saved sufficient funds to make a down payment on a house of their own, so they would
not need to continue renting. Edward F. Rate, who had owned the rooming house at 914 S. Dubuque Street since
acquiring it from Charles Alberts in the mid-1920s, was ready to sell the property at this point. He and Elizabeth Tate
knew each other since she had been his tenant briefly after her marriage to Aljoe Saulsbury in 1929. They may also have
begun discussing the sale of the house as a result of a much more recent connection: at the time of the 1940 census,
Elizabeth Tate’s mother, Elizabeth McIntyre, and her brother, George Crawford, were living at 914 S. Dubuque Street.90
Rate accepted an offer from the Tates to buy the house for $3,300, in the form of a $340 down payment and $30 monthly
installments starting in August 1940.91 Although Edward and Maude Rate did not complete the sale of the Tate Arms
1935 academic year, at least 15 students are listed at this address in the University of Iowa student directory.
85 University of Iowa, University Directory, 1935–1936 (Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa, n.d. [ca. 1935]), pp. 42, 52, 53, 62, 74, 91, 107, 112.
The final two of the nine lived at two different addresses in Iowa City. In addition, two first -year students were living at 9 E. Prentiss Street in
1935–1936 who had not been at the university the previous year. This brought to seven the total number of black male students rooming in
Elizabeth Saulsbury’s house in that year.
86 Marriage record of Junious Tate and Louise Bragg, Cedar Rapids, Linn County, Iowa, November 16, 1927, available in the Iowa, Marriage
Records, 1880–1940, database on Ancestry.com, accessed April 8, 2018; Cedar Rapids city directories, 1928 –1932, available in the All U.S. City
Directories, 1822–1995, database on Ancestry.com, accessed April 8, 2018.
87 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.” Junious’s name was misspelled “Julius” in 1936.
During the 1930s, 11 E. Prentiss Street was owned and occupied by Peter P. Frantz and his wife Apoll onia, who sometimes took on roomers, at least
through 1930; see Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.” The Frantzes are rare among Iowa
City’s white landlords in that they took in students from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Their tenants also included another black student, Morris
Peter McLaine, listed in the 1932–1933 university student directory, and the Chinese Students Club, listed at this address in the 1926 Iowa City city
directory; for McLaine, see State University of Iowa, University Directory, First Semester, 1932–1933 (Iowa City, Iowa: State University of Iowa,
n.d. [ca. 1932]), p. 76. Peter Frantz was an immigrant, born in either Germany or France depending on which census is consul ted, which may have
been a factor in his decision not to rent exclusively to white tenants; see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920–
Population, Iowa, Johnson County, Iowa City, Enumeration District 94, p. 1B (Peter P. Frantz e ntry); U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census
of the United States: 1930, Population Schedule, Iowa, Johnson County, Iowa City, Ward 1, Enumeration District 52 -16, p. 15B (Peter Frantz
entry).
88 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century.” Their marriage was apparently a common law
marriage at the outset, since their marriage was not solemnized until September 12, 1940; see Iowa Marriage Records, 1880–1940, database on
Ancestry.com; accessed March 19, 2018.
89 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.”
90 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century.” For the relationship between Elizabeth McIntyre,
George Crawford, and Elizabeth Crawford Tate, see the undated notebook containing family names and birth dates in cluded in Box 1, folder 11, of
the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers.
91 Johnson County, Iowa, Recorder’s Office, Miscellaneous Record Book 159, p. 459. In later years, Elizabeth Tate is quoted as recalling that they
paid only $10 down on the house, which is less than the $340 specified in the sale agreement; see Florman, p. 18, and many other sources.
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property to Junious and Elizabeth Tate until 1962, Junious Tate was listed in city directories as the owner of this property
from the time he is first listed at this address in 1942.92
From the outset, the Tates named their rooming house the “Tate Arms,” and marketed it specifically towards
black students at the university.93 While Elizabeth Tate ran the rooming house, her husband Junious (Bud) Tate operated
a janitorial service for department stores in downtown Iowa City. At least one student resident of the Tate Arms earned
extra money by working evenings and weekends for Bud Tate’s operation.94 In 1954, in addition to managing the Tate
Arms, Elizabeth Tate began working as a clinical technician at the University of Iowa Hospital’s cardiovascular lab. She
retired as supervisor from the lab 22 years later in 1976.95
The Tate Arms operated until the early 1960s, with its last documented tenant residing there in the summer of
1961 (Figure 13). The earliest available source, published in 1966, states that Elizabeth Tate served as “landlady” to a
succession of University of Iowa students between 1931 and 1961.96 Later sources state that Elizabeth Tate ran the
rooming house until 1963 or even later, but these sources do not appear to be accurate.97 Most likely the Tate Arms
ceased operating in 1961, shortly before Junious and Elizabeth Tate were divorced.98 By 1964, neither Junious nor
Elizabeth Tate remained in the house at 914 S. Dubuque Street. City directories list a succession of male students —
probably but not necessarily black students—living at this address between 1964 and 1967. In 1968 and 1969, the house
was occupied by Walter J. Manuel, who appears to have worked as a technician in the same cardiovascular lab at the
University of Iowa where Elizabeth Tate also worked. Starting in 1970, the house was listed as vacant.99 Elizabeth Tate
eventually sold the house in 1979.100
During their time at 914 S. Dubuque, the Tates raised one son, Dennis—apparently Elizabeth Tate’s son by her
first marriage to Aljoe Saulsbury—and one adopted daughter, Candace, whom they adopted as a baby in 1947 (Figures
14–15).101 Elizabeth Tate was an active member in the Iowa City community, particularly in the local theatre, a passion
92 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century”; Johnson County, Iowa, Recorder’s Office, Deed
Book 239, p. 267.
93 As early as September 7, 1940, a classified advertisement in the University of Iowa student newspaper, The Daily Iowan, advertised rooms for
rent in a “MODERN, convenient home for Negro students. Tate Arms. 914 S. Dubuque”; see “Daily Iowan Want Ads” section, The Daily Iowan
(Iowa City, Iowa), September 7, 1940, p. 5. Advertisements of unknown origin, possibly from city directories, that appear to date to around the
1940s, are included on the “Tate Arms” storyboard, located in Box 2 of the Eliza beth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers.
94 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid -Twentieth Century”; Florman, p. 18; Linda Schreiber, “Housemother
Sets Rules,” Community News Advertiser (Coralville, Iowa), August 16, 1995, p. 2.
95 “Bettye Tate Retires After 22 Years of Service,” The Pacemaker (University of Iowa Hospitals, Iowa City), June 1976, no page specified.
Newspaper clipping available in Box 1, folder 13, of the Elizabeth (Bettye) Crawford Tate Papers.
96 Johanna Nelson Beers, “Have You Heard?” column, Iowa City Press-Citizen, July 2, 1966, p. 5. The beginning date of 1931 has not been
verified, and in any case it refers to a different building, but the end date appears to be accurate. Few University of Iowa students resided in the
Tate Arms during its final years. In 1957–1958, only three students were listed at this address in the university student directory (spring semester),
and in both 1959–1960 (fall semester) and 1960–1961 (both fall and spring semesters) not a single student was listed at this address. The last
known student was James Walter Terry, who lived at this address in the summer of 1961. No students were listed at this addre ss in 1962–1963 (fall
semester). Since 1961 is the date of the residence of the last known student at the Tate Arms—who is presumed but not confirmed to have been
black—and it is the same year identified in Beers’ 1966 article as the final year that Elizabeth Tate operated her rooming house, i t is taken here to be
the end date of the property’s period of significance.
97 For 1963, see, for example, Emily Gersema, “Dorms Off Limits,” The Sunday Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), September 26, 1999, p. 11A. For
1965, see Darain Metz, “Helping Black Students Was Tate’s Calling,” Iowa City Press-Citizen (Iowa City, Iowa), March 8, 1993, p. 1B. The Tate
Arms was last listed in Iowa City city directories in 1962, although the information for this directory was probably gathered in late 1961. No
directory was published in 1963, and by 1964, th e Tate Arms was no longer listed.
98 “Elizabeth Tate Files for Divorce Petition Here,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, March 14, 1962, p. 2; 1992 affidavit from Elizabeth Crawford Tate
stating that she and Junious Tate divorced in 1963, and that he died in Cedar Rapids in 1970, in Box 1, folder 1, of the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford
Tate Papers.
99 Iowa City, Iowa, city directories, 1964–1975, inclusive. The directories were published annually during this period.
100 Curt Seifert, “Remodeling Condemned House Raises Questions,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 3, 1980, p. 1A.
101 Her son, known in later years as Dennis Martin Tate, was born in August 1931; see California Death Index, 1940 –1997, on Ancestry.com,
accessed March 30, 2018. Based on his name, age, location, and relationship to Elizabeth Tate, he was almost certainly the same person as Dennis
Aljoe Saulsbury, who began attending kindergarten in September 1936 at Henry Sabin School in Iowa City, located two blocks ea st of 9 E. Prentiss
Street, where Elizabeth Saulsbury lived at the time; see “20 Children Open School Career in Kindergarten at Henry Sabin Last Monday,” Iowa City
Press-Citizen, September 22, 1936, p. 8. The last known mention of Dennis Saulsbury in the local newspapers was in June 1938, while the first
known mention of Dennis Tate was in July 1941; see “Memorial Day Reports Given,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 2, 1938, p. 5; “List Winners in
Pet Show,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, July 10, 1941, p. 13. Dennis Tate was also a student at Henry Sabin Sc hool, which was located four blocks
north of the Tate Arms; see “Playground Results,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 26, 1942, p. [7]. Henry Sabin School was demolished in 2015.
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she had had since at least high school.102 She was a charter member of the Iowa City Community Theatre and served on
the board of directors. She also performed in many community and University of Iowa theatrical productions during the
mid-twentieth century.103 After her retirement in 1976, she was an active volunteer with the Old Capitol gift shop and
University of Iowa Hospitals library.104 She died in 1999 at the age of 93.105 Five years after her death, the new
alternative high school in Iowa City was named the Elizabeth Tate High School in her honor. Lauren Reece, School
Board President at the time the building name was chosen, stated that the naming committee named the new building for
Elizabeth Tate because “‘[s]he was a model of the core values and mission of the alternative high school. . . . We found
out she was a well-rounded and humanistic person. She embodied the philosophy . . . and the spirit of the school.’”
Sharon Wiser, a special education teacher at the school, also praised the name choice because Tate “‘opened her arms to
people who were rejected. . . . She was a jack of all trades. She made a real impact on this community.’”106
Tate Arms, 1940–1961
Most of the information we have on the operation of the Tate Arms comes from a series of interviews conducted
with Elizabeth Tate in the mid-1990s that were published in local newspapers and magazines. The earliest, published in
1993, describes Tate’s memories of her boarding house as follows:
“I had this house with 12 rooms in it and I rented it out to them [black male students at the University of
Iowa]. All they had to do was live by my rules: Make up their beds, change the linen once a week—and
no girls. They had to listen to me because I was the boss.”
The boss did more than collect the $10 monthly rent fees. Tate was the cook and counselor to the 20
young men who were coping with being away from home. She listened to their problems, and
maintained a firm, yet gentle hand of authority. Her only request, which later became part of her rules,
was that no one eat at the table until she sat down at the head of it. Tate said she had great relationships
with all of the students.
Her trips around the world aside, Tate said watching the young men, her boarders, grow and mature
comprise her fondest memories. She still keeps in touch with many of them.107
Additional information on the Tate Arms was published in two profiles of Elizabeth Tate published in 1995.
One stated:
102 “Bettye Tate Retires After 22 Years of Service.” Much of the information from this 1976 article is reprinted in Johanna Nelson Beers, “Have
You Heard?” column, Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 6, 1976, p. 5A. For Elizabeth Crawford’s interest in theatre in high school, see various
Fairfield, Iowa, newspapers from 1925, such as “Junior Play Put On With Cleverness,” The Fairfield Daily Ledger (Fairfield, Iowa), May 2, 1925,
p. 1.
103 Biographical Note, Guide to the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers, The University of Iowa Libraries internet web site,
http://collguides.lib.uiowa.edu/?IWA0266, accessed April 8, 2018.
104 Meegan Burkart, “Bettye Tate Returns to the City She Visited as a Youngster,” Washington Journal (Washington, Iowa), no date of publication
or page number (ca. June 1996); newspaper clipping available in Box 1, folder 13, of the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers.
105 “Elizabeth Tate, 93,” obituary, Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 25, 1999, p. 4A. The obituary cited here is the third of three obituaries of
Elizabeth Tate published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Each is slightly different from the others, but all contain essentially the same biographical
information. The other two were published on September 16, 1999, p. 4A, and September 17, 1999, p. 4A.
106 Rob Daniel, “Tate Chosen for School Name,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, July 17, 2004, pp. 3A, 5A.
107 Metz, p. 1B. In an interview published two years later, she expanded the list of rules slightly: “‘The boys made their own beds, changed their
linens once a week, and picked up after themselves. And they couldn’t bring in any girls. No drinking in the house—ever. And when I raised my
voice, they knew to be quiet.’” In addition, while Mrs. Tate did all of the cooking, her boarders had to wash the dishes (Fl orman, p. 18). Later
interviews also specify that the $10 per month rent was only in the early years; see Florman, p. 18, and Schreiber, “Housemother Sets Rules,” p. 2.
The “no girls” rule had either been relaxed by 1954 or did not apply to married couples, since Gloria Wright lived there with her husband at that
time; see Linda Schreiber (misspelled “Schrieber”), “Tribute to Tate,” Community News Advertiser, no date (ca. June 1996). All of the newspaper
articles cited here can be found in Box 1, folder 13, of the Elizabeth (Bettye) Crawford Tate Papers.
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She [Elizabeth Tate] bought beds—including three “double-deckers”—two dozen desks, and 20
bookcases, and hung a sign over the front porch with the name “Tate Arms.”108
“There were all these boys coming to town needing a place to stay,” she says. “When they were
accepted into college, the university would send them a list of places where they were allowed to live. I
was on the list.”
. . . . A spacious backyard garden kept “the boys” in vegetables, although Tate says the boarders ate the
produce so quickly she never had the chance to can or preserve any of it. . . . The well delineated rows
of potatoes, green beans, lettuce, peas, and tomatoes stretched some 30 feet to the back property line.
“I was a mess,” Tate says, laughing, “but you know, I never got tired. I kept 20 boys for the fall and
spring semesters and over most of the summer. At holidays we usually had 12 or 14 people around the
dinner table because most of them couldn’t afford to go home. But for three weeks every summer, I’d
close up and go travel. . . .
Many of her boarders still write or call “Ma” Tate, and she recalls them with great affection. . . .
During all the years Tate welcomed students into her home, she only once had occasion to evict one. “I
can’t remember why,” she says, “but I do remember he was a loudmouth, and he kept telling me I
wouldn’t throw him out. One night I did just that. I got most of his things, threw them onto the side
porch, and locked the door. I wouldn’t even let him come back for his shoes. Last I heard, he was a
lawyer in St. Louis.”
Sadly, Tate has thrown away virtually any all [sic] mementos of her years as a “house mother.” She has
no old letters, no financial records, no photographs of the house whose large sign above [the] front porch
once welcomed so many young students to the “Tate Arms.”109
A slightly different characterization of Elizabeth Tate was made by Ted Wheeler, who attended the University of
Iowa in the 1950s, but did not live in the Tate Arms. Sixty years later, he still recalled the importance of Elizabeth Tate
and the other black families who rented rooms to black university students. Because of the small number of black
students at the University of Iowa at the time, he wrote:
In effect, no social life existed. Mrs. [Bettye] Tate and Mrs. [Helen] Lemme, two outstanding women
who kept houses where black students could board, made these difficulties easier to bear. Of the two,
Mrs. Tate exhibited a little more austerity. She was a very proud, disciplined woman, who did almost no
socializing with the people who lived with her. Although I didn’t stay there, I got to know her by
visiting my friends, the black football and black basketball players, who rented from her. . . . Without
segregation, there would not be either a Tate or a Lemme, but in difficult times, they made great
contributions to humanity by making it possible for black students to be more comfortable.110
One story sometimes told about the Tate Arms is that jazz great Duke Ellington performed afterhours shows
there while he was in town.111 This is at least possible. During the mid-twentieth century, many black performers stayed
in private residences rather than hotels while on tour, since most hotels operated by white managers routinely refused to
accommodate black lodgers. The story is most likely apocryphal, however. In the many interviews conducted with
108 Florman, p. 18.
109 Florman, pp, 18–19.
110 Wheeler, pp. 136–137. Bracketed words in original.
111 Karen Kubby, quoted in Sandra Stanar, “Commune Happy It Can Still Call House Its Home,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 11, 1981, p.
2A; Richard M. Breaux, “‘Tireless Partners and Skilled Competitors’: Seeing UI’s Black Male Athletes, 1934–1960,” Chapter 5 in Hill and Hill,
pp. 166–167. Breaux has identified five instances between 1949 and 1957 when Ellington’s band visited Iowa City.
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Elizabeth Tate during the 1990s, she never mentioned Duke Ellington or any other performer either lodging overnight or
performing at her house.112 On the contrary, the strict rules of conduct she emphasized for her boarders—no girls, no
alcohol—suggest that she would have been unlikely to host afterhours parties at her house. Only one first-hand account
of Ellington’s visits to Iowa City written by a black student who attended the University of Iowa in the 1950s was
identified during the research for the present nomination. This student, Ted Wheeler, mentions that Duke Ellington
performed at a different rooming house for black university students, one operated by Helen Lemme, but he does not
mention informal performances at any other location.113 Similarly, only one contemporary newspaper account of any
private performances by Duke Ellington in Iowa City was identified for the present nomination. In March 1949,
Ellington and his band played in two such sessions, both at the Lemmes’ house.114 While additional information may
substantiate the stories of Ellington having performed at the Tate Arms, it appears more likely that afterhours
performances by Ellington—and probably by other touring black musicians of the mid-twentieth century—were limited
to the Lemmes’ house.
Many of the former residents of the Tate Arms went on to successful careers. Former boarders Roy Bradshaw
and William Shoecraf Wood attributed the success rate among boarders at the Tate Arms to Bettye Tate’s discipline.
“She was like a second mother to us,” Bradshaw was quoted as saying in 1995, “Many of us probably would not have
succeeded if not for her. . . . With her everything was not an obstacle. She saw that you got out there and went face-to-
face with the world.” Bradshaw earned a Master’s degree in health and physical education in 1950. He had retired by
1995, and his career before then was not recorded in the 1995 article. Wood earned a law degree in 1950 and became a
judge in the Chicago area.115
Residents of the Tate Arms
Although the Tate Arms was home to probably well over 100 students during its 20 years of operation, very few
residents of the Tate Arms have been identified. Iowa City city directories identify only twelve roomers between 1942
and 1959, and only five of the twelve were students. Although the Tate Arms was marketed specifically towards
university students, it also housed several black men employed in various working-class jobs in the 1940s and 1950s. In
addition to the five students identified from city directories, interviews conducted with Elizabeth Tate in the 1990s
identified another seven students who lived in the Tates’ rooming house while they were students in Iowa City. While
most of the seven appear to have lived at the Tate Arms, it is possible that some of the earlier roomers, such as Eugene
Skinner or Edward N. (Ed) Wiggins, were residents only of the Tates’ earlier house at 9 E. Prentiss Street.116 Finally,
university student directories for six years between 1949 and 1963 were consulted for Tate Arms residents.117 In these
six years (plus a few summers), an additional 16 students in 1949–1951 and one student in 1957–1963 were identified.
A further search of University of Iowa student directories would almost certainly identify many more residents of the
Tate Arms, but time limitations prevented a comprehensive search of these directories for the present nomination. The
following paragraphs describe the careers of some of the nearly 30 Tate Arms residents that have been identified.
The career of William Shoecraf Wood has been mentioned above. Residents of the Tate Arms in 1949–1950
included the following. Robert Leon Owens III, a graduate student at the University of Iowa in 1949–50, received his
112 See, for example, Metz, Florman, and Schreiber, “Housemother Sets Rules,” as well as an article published shortly after Elizabeth Tate’s death:
Gersema, “Dorms Off Limits,” p. 1A.
113 Wheeler, pp. 136–137, 138. Wheeler attended the university from 1950 to 1957, except for two years between 1951 and 1953 when he was
drafted into the military and served in the army.
114 In addition to their regular Iowa City performances in March 1949, Duke Ellington and his band performed one late night jam session and one
afternoon jam session, both at the Lemmes’ house; see Dick Kritzer, “Duke Plays in Jam Session,” The Daily Iowan, March 13, 1949, p. 8. The
Lemmes’ son, Paul Lemme, has also confirmed that Ellington played at their house; see Mark Siebert, “Helen Lemme: Her House Was Home for
Black Students,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 4, 1989, pp. 19E–20E. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Allyn and Helen Lemme lived at 603 S. Capitol
Street (non-extant), now the site of the University of Iowa’s University Services Building.
115 Schreiber, “Housemother Sets Rules,” p. 2.
116 For Roy Bradshaw and William Shoecraf Wood, see the previous section. The other former students identified in 1990s articles on Elizabeth
Tate include Gloria and Bruce Wright, Ed Wiggins, and Wendell Jones (Florman, p. 19), and E ugene Skinner (Emily Gersema, “Tate Had Real
Class in Era of Segregation,” newspaper clipping from The Gazette [Cedar Rapids, Iowa], no date [ca. September 11–18, 1999]; available on the
“Honoring a Legend” storyboard in Box 2 of the Elizabeth (Bettye) Crawford Tate Papers, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries,
Iowa City).
117 These years were 1949–1950, 1950–1951, and at least one semester each in 1957–1958, 1959–1960, 1960–1961, and 1962–1963.
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doctorate in Educational Psychology, and later became President of Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee, and
subsequently Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Howard University in Washington, D.C., both historically black
colleges or universities (HBCUs).118 After Blinzy Lee Gore received his law degree from the University of Iowa, he
taught at the South Carolina State College School of Law, then later became Vice President for Academic Affairs at
Claflin College, both HBCUs in Orangeburg, South Carolina.119 Otis Finney, a graduate student in 1949, later worked as
a physical education teacher, coach, and assistant principal in Chicago public schools.120 Lutrelle (“Lu”) Fleming
Palmer, Jr., was a graduate student in communications at the University of Iowa, but he is said not to have completed his
dissertation after he left his extensive notes on a train. Lu Palmer went on to become a journalist, radio commentator and
talk show host, and political activist in Chicago. He established Chicago Black United Communities (CBUC), which
was instrumental in organizing black voters to elect Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, in 1983.121
Later residents of the Tate Arms included Nathaniel Hunter, who lived at the Tate Arms from at least 1956 to
1958, based on both city and student directories. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering
from the University of Iowa in 1958. He was later employed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and now works as
a consulting engineer in Sacramento, California. He is currently president of the Northern California Council of Black
Professional Engineers.122
Although most of the boarders in the Tate Arms were unmarried men, at least one unmarried female student and
one married couple, both students, also lived at the Tate Arms in the 1950s. The female student was Jewel Limar (later
Jewel Limar Prestage), who was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science at an American
university. She earned her Master of Arts degree in 1952 and her Ph.D. in 1954, both at the University of Iowa. She
spent most of her career as a professor, departmental chair, and later dean, at Southern University and A&M College, a
historically black university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.123 The married couple, Bruce and Gloria Wright, lived at the
Tate Arms in 1954, at about the same time as Jewel Limar. Bruce Wright was a graduate student at the time. Gloria
Wright’s student status at the time has not been confirmed. No information about their later careers was discovered
during the research for the present nomination.124
History of 914 S. Dubuque Street since 1961
After the university’s dormitories were “officially” desegregated in 1946, the need for a separate home for black
male students waned. As described above, few specific enrollment numbers for the decades after 1946 have been
118 George E. Curry, “Spotlight on Campus: Prexy with a Mission,” Tuesday Magazine (June 1969), a supplement to The Courier-Journal and
Times (Louisville, Kentucky), June 1, 1969, p. 12; Robert L. Owens III, Oral History “Spoken Memories,” interviewed on September 1, 2009, by
interviewer Charles Johnson of the Zion Baptist Church [Washington, D.C.] Historical and Preservation Commission’s Oral History Committee;
transcript available on the Humanities DC web site, http://wdchumanities.org/docs/hrc/ZBC%20OFFICIALTranscribed%20Oral%20History2--
%2010%2009.pdf, accessed June 9, 2018.
119 “Claflin Trustees, Staff,’ The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, South Carolina), April 6, 1969, p. 7F; “Mrs. Gloria B. Gore,” obituary, The
Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, South Carolina), September 13, 2007, p. A4. The South Carolina State College School of Law was established
by the South Carolina state legislature in 1947 to prevent a black student from enrolling in the University of South Carolina School of Law; see
Alfred D. Moore III, “Turning the Tide of Segregation: The Legacy of the Law School at South Ca rolina State College,” The Journal of Blacks in
Higher Education, filed in “Features” on September 7, 2017, available at https://www.jbhe.com/2017/09/turning-the-tide-of-segregation-the-legacy-
of-the-law-school-at-south-carolina-state-college/, accessed June 9, 2018.
120 Kenan Heise, “Otis R. Finney, 64, Former Dunbar, Carver Coach,” Chicago [Illinois] Tribune, January 19, 1989; available on the Chicago
Tribune web site, at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-01-19/news/8902260714_1_mr-finney-football-coach-dunbar. accessed May 2, 2018.
121 H. Gregory Meyer, “Lu Palmer, 82,” Chicago [Illinois] Tribune, September 14, 2004, electronic document,
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-09-14/news/0409140126_1_mr-palmer-lu-palmer-conrad-worrill, accessed June 8, 2018; Dr. Conrad
Worrill, “A Great Black Hero Born in March: Lu Palmer,” The Chicago [Illinois] Crusader, March 7, 2016, electronic document,
https://chicagocrusader.com/great-black-hero-born-march-lu-palmer/, accessed June 8, 2018.
122 “Black Scientists Host Field Trip to Inspire Youth,” The Sacramento [California] Observer, April 11, 2013, available online at
http://sacobserver.com/2013/04/black-scientists-host-field-trip-to-inspire-youth/, accessed May 2, 2018; LinkedIn profile of Nathaniel Hunter, at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathaniel-hunter-935454b3/, accessed May 2, 2018; Buzzfile listing for the Northern California Council of Black
Professional Engineers, Buzzfile web site, at http://www.buzzfile.com/business/NCCBPE-510-893-6426, accessed May 2, 2018.
123 “Prestage, Jewel Limar (1931–2014),” in The Online Reference Guide to African American History, electronic document,
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/prestage-jewel-limar-1931-2014; accessed March 27, 2018.
124 Schreiber, “Tribute to Tate”; Florman, p. 19.
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discovered. It is therefore not known how many black male students attended the university, and how many lived in the
newly integrated dorms as opposed to off-campus.
As a result of the national civil rights movement that gained momentum during the 1950s and 1960s, an
increasing number of white landlords in Iowa City were willing to rent to black students. As late as 1960, however, it
was still common for white landlords to refuse to rent to black student tenants.125 In 1961, the university adopted an off-
campus housing policy that prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or religion. Landlords who rented to
undergraduate students had to agree to practice nondiscrimination in order to remain on the list of university-approved
undergraduate housing.126 Landlords were legally required to rent to tenants regardless of race only after the passage of a
fair housing amendment to the Iowa Civil Rights Act in 1967.127
Elizabeth Crawford Tate last operated the Tate Arms in 1961. By 1964, she was living at 18½ S. Clinton Street,
where her mother, Elizabeth McIntyre, was living. Elizabeth McIntyre died in 1965, and Elizabeth Tate continued to live
at 18½ S. Clinton Street until about 1969.128 Elizabeth Tate continued to lease the house at 914 S. Dubuque Street to
tenants for several years after she moved out, but she apparently no longer served as a house mother. When she finally
sold the property in 1979, it had reportedly been vacant since about 1973, although city directories had listed it as vacant
since 1970.129 The last tenant at this address while it was under Elizabeth Tate’s ownership identified during the research
for the present nomination was Lee Wood, who lived at this address in September 1970.130
The next owner, real estate agent and developer Bernard Campion, bought this property at the same time as
Richard Davin, another real estate agent and developer, bought the adjacent parcel at 912 S. Dubuque Street. They
originally planned to remove both buildings and replace them with a new commercial building and parking lot on the
site. After plans for the new building fell through, Campion invested $15,000 to repair the house and began leasing it to
tenants.131 The first tenants, who rented the house in 1979–1980, were a housing collective known as the Tate Arms
Intentional Family.132 The house was nearly demolished again in 1980–1981 when the city included removal of the
house as part of a Ralston Creek flood control project. In the end, the project was reduced in scope and the city no longer
needed the property, so the renovated house was spared.133 The house was threatened for a third time in 2014, when it
again appeared to be slated for demolition. After the historic preservation community in Iowa City raised the alarm, the
house, with the owner’s agreement, was designated an Iowa City Historic Landmark in 2014. In return, density bonuses
in the form of transfer of development rights allowed the owner to build an apartment building on the adjacent lot that
was larger than would otherwise have been allowed.134 The house has been converted to condominiums, its current use.
Iowa City Residents Important in the Area of Black Ethnic Heritage, 1910–1960
In order to support the significance of the Tate Arms under Criterion B for its association with individuals
important in Iowa City’s past, it is necessary to provide a historic context for evaluating the significance of individuals i n
the city’s history associated with Black Ethnic Heritage. The great majority of Iowa City’s black residents in the early to
mid-twentieth century were either university students or working-class laborers. With few exceptions, these individuals
lived in Iowa City for no more than a few years before moving on to a different location, and were not recognized as
community leaders during their brief stays in Iowa City. African Americans who were recognized as community leaders
or who otherwise served important roles in the community were those who remained in Iowa City long enough to have a
125 “Racial Problems in Housing Told,” The Daily Iowan (Iowa City, Iowa), December 7, 1960, p. 1.
126 Harold Hatfield, “SUI’s Discrimination Policy Revealed,” The Daily Iowan (Iowa City, Iowa), March 1, 1961, p. 1.
127 Acton and Acton, pp. 80–81. This was followed a year later at the national level by the passage of the Fair Housing Act, part of the Civil Rights
Act of 1968.
128 Iowa City, Iowa, city directories, 1964–1970; Elizabeth Cicel Crawford McIntyre autopsy report, in Box 1, folder 10, of the Elizabeth “Bettye”
Crawford Tate Papers.
129 Seifert, p. 1A.
130 “5 Charged in Mishaps,” Iowa City [Iowa] Press-Citizen, September 24, 1970, p. 8A.
131 Seifert, pp. 1A, 2A.
132 Stanar, p. 2A.
133 Sandi Wisenberg, “3 Houses Spared Near Dam Project,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 25, 1981, p. 1A.
134 Chase Castle, “Commission Names Tate Arms Building an Historic Landmark,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 15, 2014, pp. 3A, 5A; Andy
Davis, “City Council Sets Two Public Hearings, Grants Height Bonus,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, January 7, 2015, pp. 3A, 6A.
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sustained influence and who also made important contributions that helped support the small but growing black
population of Iowa City.
Support of the black community could take a variety of forms, but among the most important were providing
employment and housing opportunities for African Americans at a time when the white majority significantly restricted
the opportunities available to African Americans in both areas. Very few black-owned businesses operated in Iowa City
between 1910 and 1960, but those that did were important for providing employment to the city’s black residents. By far
the most important and long-lived business was Short’s Shoe Shine at 18 S. Clinton Street, owned and operated by
Haywood D. Short from 1921 until his death in 1946, and continued by his sons until the 1970s. This business was
important both for providing numerous black men with steady jobs shining and repairing shoes (up to 26 men at one time
according to one 1940 article), and for renting rooms in the shoe shine building to the Short’s employees.135 According
to one 1940 discussion of this building, “The most significant feature of this shop is that by means of its existence young
colored men students at the University of Iowa are afforded a splendid opportunity to help educate themselves by
working here on a fifty per cent basis.”136
Other black-owned businesses in Iowa City during this period lasted for no more than a few years or were
smaller in scale. Most were located at 110 E. Burlington Street, which housed a shoe repair shop operated by Samuel A.
Richardson and then Wilton A. Scott from about 1924 to 1930, then from about 1930 to 1942 housed restaurants that
catered to black customers, including the Iowa Social Center around 1930 (see below) and Vivian’s Chicken Shack for a
few years in the late 1930s and early 1940s.137 Other than a small number of barbers who worked before 1910 and
Charles A. Gross, who worked as a barber from about 1934 to 1943, no other black business owners in Iowa City are
known to have operated businesses other than rooming houses long enough for them to appear in city directories.
The racially segregated rooming house was arguably the single most important type of business operated by
African Americans in Iowa City during the early to mid-twentieth century. At a time when black renters were denied
access to both university housing and most private rental housing in Iowa City, the ability of black residents to live in
Iowa City during this period—probably well over a thousand people between 1910 and 1960 when university students
are included—depended largely on the efforts of a very small number of black landlords who reliably provided racially
segregated housing to significant numbers of black tenants year after year. Of the many hundreds of black residents who
lived in Iowa City between 1910 and 1960, only nine individuals or couples maintained rooming houses for African
Americans for at least a decade during that period. Each of these landlords maintained segregated rooming houses that
provided accommodations to dozens or hundreds of black tenants over the years, enabling them to live in Iowa City and,
in many cases, to attend the University of Iowa. The efforts of these landlords were critical both in maintaining and
increasing the black population of Iowa City—which today ranks fifth among Iowa’s cities in its black population—and
in allowing hundreds more black students to attend the University of Iowa than would otherwise have been possible.
These nine landlords—Charles and Dorothy Alberts, Ella Moore, Charles and Lottie Donnegan, Haywood and Alice
Short, Junious and Elizabeth Tate, Steve and Estelle Ferguson, Allyn and Helen Lemme, Carl and Frances Culberson,
and LeRoy and Wilda Hester—were all considered important in Iowa City’s small black community for their
commitment to providing segregated housing in an era when that was the only type of housing reliably available to
African American renters in Iowa City.138
Black professionals, who have often assumed leadership positions in black communities, were even rarer than
black business owners in Iowa City. While the University of Iowa’s undergraduate and professional schools graduated
hundreds of African Americans in the early to mid-twentieth century, none of these graduates became a professional who
135 Florman, p. 16; Julia Davis, p. 54.
136 Julia Davis, p. 54. While the meaning of “fifty per cent basis” is not entirely clear, it appears to mean that the men were able to keep half of their
earnings from their work at Short’s Shoe Shine.
137 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century”; Breaux, “‘Maintaining a Home for Girls’,” pp.
245–246.
138 The last five of these landlords, who operated rooming houses in the 1940s or 1950s, are named repeatedly in the literature on African American
housing in Iowa City in the mid-twentieth century; see, for example, Breaux, “‘Tireless Partners and Skilled Competitors’: Seeing UI’s Black Male
Athletes, 1934–1960,” p. 146; Wheeler, pp. 136–137; and Philip G. Hubbard, pp. 41–42. Of the other four landlords, the first three operated
rooming houses primarily in the 1910s and 1920s, a period from which no historical accounts describing the importance of black l andlords in Iowa
City have been identified. The fourth, Haywood D. Short, appears to have provided housing primarily or exclusivel y to those who worked in his
shoe shine business, rather than to university students generally or the general population. As a result, he was often omitt ed from lists of the city’s
important black landlords of the early to mid-twentieth century compiled in later years.
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remained in Iowa City for any length of time until the 1950s. In 1954, Philip G. Hubbard, who had earned three degrees
at the University of Iowa between 1946 and 1954, joined the university faculty as a tenure-track assistant professor after
receiving his Ph.D. in 1954. He remained in Iowa City for the rest of his life, eventually retiring as the university’s Vice
President for Student Services.139 Only a handful of other African American professionals have been identified in Iowa
City’s history prior to 1960, and none are identified in any source as having worked in the city for more than a year or
two. These professionals include W. D. Kirk, identified as a doctor in the 1915 Iowa state census; Hal W. Short, a 1912
graduate of the University of Iowa’s College of Engineering, who was appointed assistant city engineer for Iowa City in
1917, but who does not appear to have returned to Iowa City after serving in World War I; and Clifford V. Smith, Jr.,
who was listed in the city directory of Iowa City as a sanitary engineer for the University of Iowa in 1954, the year he
graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering.140
No African Americans were elected to political office in Iowa City before the 1970s. William Hargrave worked
in Iowa City in the Johnson County Sheriff’s office from 1968 to 1972, first as a radio operator and then as deputy
sheriff. In 1972 Hargrave resigned to run for election to the Iowa House of Representatives, winning his race that
November to represent a district that included the west side of Iowa City. He served in the legislature from 1973 to
1978.141 Iowa City did not elect its first African American City Council member until 1983, with the election of George
Strait, the Director of the University of Iowa Law Library. The city’s first black mayor, Ross Wilburn, was not elected
until 2004.142 The first African American member of the Iowa City school board was Classie Hoyle, the University of
Iowa’s affirmative action director, who was elected in 1980.143
Importance and leadership in Iowa City’s African American community during the mid-twentieth century also
came through service on local or state government commissions or the boards of non-profit organizations. The African
American resident of Iowa City best known for her pre-1960 civic involvement was Helen Lemme. From the 1940s to
the 1960s, she served in leadership positions in a variety of organizations: president of the Henry Sabin School Parent-
Teacher Association, president of the Iowa City League of Women Voters, president of the Iowa City Area Council of
Churches, and original member of a State of Iowa Civil Rights Commission started in 1961 and an Iowa City Human
Relations Commission (predecessor of the city’s present Human Rights Commission) started in 1963. She also was
active in Democratic politics, serving as precinct president and frequently serving as delegate to county and state
Democratic conventions. In addition, she operated a rooming house for African American students at the University of
Iowa, and starting in 1950, she worked as research technician in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of
Iowa Hospital.144 Another black woman, Wilda Hester, was similarly involved in community affairs, serving as treasurer
of the Iowa City League of Women Voters in the early 1950s and serving on the Iowa City Human Relations
139 Philip G. Hubbard, My Iowa Journey: The Life Story of the University of Iowa’s First African American Professor (Iowa City, Iowa: University
of Iowa Press, 1999), pp. 55–56, 85–86, 163,
140 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century”; “Iowa City Notes,” The Bystander, April 13,
1917, p. 1; brief note on Hal W. Short’s military service in Iowa City Daily Citizen, April 16, 1919, p. 2; “University of Iowa Alumni to Be Honored
at Luncheon,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 30, 1992, p. 3B.
141 Ronald N. Langston, “The African-American Legacy in Iowa Politics,” in Silag, Koch-Bridgeford, and Chase (editors), p. 351; “Hargrave Seeks
Iowa House Seat,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 25, 1972, p. 1A; “Doderer, Hargrave, Small Win,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 8, 1972, p.
1A.
142 “UI Law Librarian Seeks Council Seat,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 15, 1983, p. 2A; John Campbell, “An Older, ‘Conservative’
Council?” Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 9, 1983, p. 1; Vanessa Miller, “Council Plans Historic Moment,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, February
17, 2004, p. 3A. Strait resigned from the City Council in 1988 to accept the position of law professor and director of the l aw library at the District
of Columbia School of Law in Washington, D.C.; see Martha Miller, “City Council Adds Balmer, Loses Strait,” Iowa City Press-Citizen,
September 7, 1988, p. 1A. Ross Wilburn, first elected to the City Council in 1999, was only the second black council member in the city’s history.
In his autobiography, Philip Hubbard mistakenly states that Helen Lemme’s community service included “membership on the Iowa City Council”;
see Philip G. Hubbard, p. 55. While Helen Lemme’s accomplishments were many, as described below, s ervice on the City Council was not among
them.
143 Diana Arman, “Voters Pick Hoyle, Karagan,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 10, 1980, p. 1A. The second was Orville Townsend, who was
elected in 1986; see Jerry Heth, “School Board Voter Turnout: Low, Lo w, Low,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 10, 1986, p. 1A.
144 Guide to the Lemme Family Papers, The University of Iowa Libraries, electronic document, http://collguides.lib.uiowa.edu/?IWA0260, accessed
June 7, 2019; “Rights Group Chief Named,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, July 11, 1961, p. 2; “7 Members Named to City’s First Rights Commission,”
Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 4, 1963, p. 1; “Community Service Is Hobby for First ‘Woman of the Year,’” Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 28,
1964, p. 5; Rob Daniel, “Lemme Opened Doors for Community,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 8, 2004, pp. 1A, 4A.
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Commission from 1970 to 1973. Like Allyn and Helen Lemme, Wilda Hester and her husband LeRoy rented rooms in
their house to black tenants, especially University of Iowa students.145
Finally, one type of community leader often found in African American communities—the religious leader—
does not appear to have had a significant influence in Iowa City before the 1950s. Iowa City had one historically black
church, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church (NRHP), established in 1868. Because Iowa City’s black
population was small before the mid- to late twentieth century, the church’s membership was historically low and the
church often struggled financially. As the black university population grew during the early to mid-twentieth century,
the church’s pastors made repeated attempts to encourage black university students to attend the church, but these efforts
were largely unsuccessful. Until the 1940s, the church typically was assigned a new pastor roughly every two years,
with terms of service that were often shorter, and almost never more than three years. As a result, few pastors remained
in Iowa City for long enough to have a significant influence on the community. Indeed, for some periods in the early to
mid-twentieth century, the congregation had no resident pastor at all, instead sharing a circuit pastor with two or three
other cities in southeastern Iowa. This changed in 1947 with the appointment of Rev. Christina R. McDonald, who
served as pastor until 1958. The next pastor, Rev. Fred L. Penny, served from 1958 until his death in 1994.146 Before
1947, the Bethel A.M.E. pastor who may have had the greatest influence in Iowa City’s larger African American
community was Rev. Edward F. Fuller, who served briefly as pastor for six months in 1929. By September 1929, he had
established the Carey Social Center in downtown Iowa City as an outreach center to black university students. The goal
of the center was to offer religious services, inexpensive meals, and employment to students who needed assistance. It
appears that the Bethel A.M.E. congregation was reluctant to use the church’s limited resources for this endeavor, so in
November 1929 Rev. Fuller resigned as pastor of the church to devote himself full-time to the Carey Social Center. The
Carey Social Center operated in its original location only briefly, moving to 110 E. Burlington Street by October 1930
and changing its name to the Iowa Social Center. Probably at least in part a casualty of the Great Depression, the Iowa
Social Center does not appear to have continued beyond 1931 or 1932, at which time it was identified in the city
directory simply as a restaurant.147
Significance
It is difficult to overstate the importance of racially segregated rooming houses and other types of
accommodations catering specifically to black tenants in Iowa City during the period of heightened racial segregation in
the early to mid-twentieth century. Without such houses, Iowa City’s black population would have been much smaller
than it was, and the University of Iowa’s black student population almost non-existent. University-owned housing was
not made available to black students until 1946, and the Iowa Federation Home for black female students could house at
most about 20 students per year. When the two black fraternities, Kappa Alpha Psi and Alpha Phi Alpha, were able to
secure chapter houses, they could house up to another 30 or 40 students, but a combination of white prejudice and
financial struggles prevented those fraternities from purchasing or renting chapter houses during much of the early to
mid-twentieth century.
At the same time, the ability of black people to use white-owned rental housing was dependent entirely on the
decisions of white landowners. If even one white tenant objected to sharing a rooming house with a black person, the
black person was typically refused accommodation. Such objections were common enough in the mid-twentieth century
145 “Three Appointed to Rights Unit,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, January 8, 1970, p. 2A; “Council Fills Commission Vacancies,” Iowa City Press-
Citizen, January 10, 1973, p. 3A; Philip G. Hubbard, p. 55.
146 Nash, pp. 3, 18–19; Philip G. Hubbard, pp. 42–43. Hubbard characterized Bethel AME church as “moribund” at the time he arrived in Iowa City
as a student in 1940; see Philip G. Hubbard, p. 42. Information on the pastors of Bethel A.M.E. Church between 1892 and 1958 was compiled by
the present author in 2019 from contemporary newspaper articles, primarily those published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen and its predecessor
newspapers, available on Newspapers.com.
147 “New Pastor to Take Charge of Bethel A.M.E.,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 18, 1929, p. 12; advertisement for Carey Social Center, Iowa City
Press-Citizen, September 28, 1929, p. 7; “Fuller Resigns as Pastor of Bethel Church,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 16, 1929, p. 4; “Minister
Leads Religious Activities University Iowa,” The Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] Courier, February 1, 1930, p. 2; Carlson, “Addresses of Black
Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century.” The last known reference to the Iowa Social Center was in the 1932 city directory
of Iowa City, which was compiled in 1931. No newspaper references to the Center were discovered after October 1930. Rev. Fu ller appears not to
have been associated with the Iowa Social Center by the time the 1932 city directory was compiled, since the directory lists Jasper Byrd as the
manager.
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that most white landlords, whatever their own racial views, simplified life for themselves by renting only to white
tenants.148 The ability of black tenants to obtain housing was therefore always difficult, and their ability to continue
renting in the same location was often uncertain. Not only was a white landlord much less likely to rent to a black tenant
if their other tenants were white, but living subject to the whims of white landlords could result in eviction. Attempts by
black university students to find permanent accommodations in the late 1910s and early 1920s—an all-female dormitory
for women and a fraternity house for men—were met with strong resistance from Iowa City’s white community.149 As
late as 1957, two black university students were nearly evicted after their landlord heard complaints from white
neighbors that the black tenants were depreciating their property values. Only after two white housemates of the black
students circulated a petition in the neighborhood asking that the black students be allowed to remain in the house, with
the result that only two out of 17 neighbors objected to the presence of the black students, did the landlord withdraw his
eviction order.150
The only reliable long-term housing option for African Americans in Iowa City during this period was housing in
racially segregated rooming houses operated by black landlords. The Tate Arms represents a rare surviving example in
Iowa City of such housing. As described above, the great majority of housing for black owners and tenants during this
period was located in the 1st Ward, which today retains few buildings that are more than 50 years old. The north end of
the 1st Ward near the city center began to be redeveloped in the mid-twentieth century. Significant redevelopment began
to occur in the late 1940s and 1950s as the economy recovered from the Great Depression and World War II, and it
accelerated dramatically as a result of the urban renewal movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. As a result, many of
the residences in that area once occupied by African Americans were demolished between the 1940s and 1970s. Most of
the houses further to the south in the 1st Ward that were occupied by African Americans during the mid-twentieth
century continued to stand until the late twentieth century, but nearly all of these have been demolished in successive
waves of development since the 1970s. Of more than 40 houses located within the historical boundaries of the 1st Ward
that are known to have been occupied by African Americans at some point during the twentieth century, only the Tate
Arms remains standing.151
148 Richard M. Breaux, “Facing Hostility, Finding Housing: African American Students at the University of Iowa, 1920s –1950s,” Iowa Heritage
Illustrated, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Spring 2002), pp. 14–15; Jenkins, pp. 34–35. In general, potential black customers in any type of business in Iowa City
were constrained in their abilities to purchase goods and services by the attitudes of white business owners and white customers, whose wishes were
almost invariably placed above those of black customers. Iowa civil rights law since the nineteenth century has specified th at a variety of
businesses, including restaurants and barber shops, must serve all clients regardless of race. This law was rarely enforced during the mid-twentieth
century, and many people may not even have been aware that it was a law. A 1946 newspaper editorial regarding recent protests over instances of
white-owned businesses refusing to serve black customers, for example, mentioned refusal of service at barber shops and restaurants specifically,
but framed these decisions as the prerogative of the business owner rather than as violations of state law; see “The Negro and Prejudice,” p. 6.
Racial discrimination in housing was legal in Iowa until a fair-housing amendment was added to the Iowa Civil Rights Act in 1967; see Richard,
Lord Acton, and Patricia Nassif Acton, “A Legal History of African -Americans,” in Silag, et al. (eds.), pp. 80–81.
149 Breaux, “‘Maintaining a Home for Girls’,” pp. 242–243.
150 “Withdraw Notice Asking Negro Students to Leave Rooms in House Here,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 2, 1957, p. 1.
151 The locations of these houses are known from Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of I owa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century.”
The earliest redevelopment of this area can be seen by comparing the 1933 and 1948 Sanborn fire insurance maps, and comparing United States
Department of Agriculture aerial photographs taken between the 1950s and 1970s (Sanborn Map Company, 1933, pp. 2, 4, 13–14; Sanborn Map
Company, 1933, with updates through 1948, pp. 2, 4, 13–14; Iowa State University Geographic Information Systems Support and Research Facility
[ISUGISSRF], Iowa Geographic Map Server, web site at http://ortho.gis.iastate.edu, accessed April 9, 2018). Urban renewal is discussed in
numerous sources, including City of Iowa City planning documents and newspaper articles. One early source showing a map of u rban renewal
properties slated for demolition is Fred E. Karnes, “Urban Renewal: Involved, Costly—But Underway,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, July 31, 1970, p.
3A. Since the great majority of African American households in Iowa City between 1900 and 1950 were located in the 1st Ward, the
redevelopment of this area has meant the removal of nearly all of the housing historically associated with the city’s African American population.
Only three known examples of pre-1950 African American housing remain extant outside the 1st Ward: the Iowa Federation Home at 942 Iowa
Avenue, occupied by black University of Iowa students, most of them female, from 1919 to 1951; 18 S. Dubuque Street, formerly Short’s Shoe
Shine, owned by black businessman Haywood D. Short, which rented rooms to black roomers who wo rked at the shoe shine parlor from the mid-
1920s to the mid-1940s; and a building at 630 S. Johnson Street that was used for a single year (1919–1920) as a chapter house for the black
fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi. The only other extant building in Iowa City historically associated with African Americans before 1950 is the Bethel A.
M. E. Church (NRHP) at 411 South Governor Street. After 1950, the next known extant building associated with a black owner o r tenant is 1226
2nd Avenue, a ranch-style house built in a residential subdivision in 1957 for its first known owners and occupants, Leroy and Wilda Hester; see
Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century”; Johnson County, Iowa, Recorder’s Office, Deed
Book 232, p. 391. Aside from the Tate Arms and the three other residential buildings located outside the 1st Ward mentioned above, all other
buildings that are known to have housed African American families anywhere in Iowa City before 1950 have been removed.
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In addition to its eligibility under Criterion A for its importance in illustrating African American responses to
racial segregation in housing, including university student housing, in Iowa City during the early to mid-twentieth
century, the Tate Arms is also eligible under Criterion B in the areas of Black Ethnic Heritage and Social History for its
association with its original owner and probable builder, Charles Alberts, and for its later association with Elizabeth
“Bettye” Crawford Tate. As described above, Iowa City provided few opportunities for African Americans to
demonstrate leadership or influence in either the black community or the wider community during the early to mid-
twentieth century. One exception was in the operation of racially segregated rooming houses for black tenants.
Although rooming houses for African Americans were critical to the black community for the reasons stated above, not
every resident of Iowa City who rented rooms to black tenants during the early to mid-twentieth century is sufficiently
important to meet Criterion B. Many individuals rented to black tenants only occasionally or for brief periods, or rented
to only a small number of black tenants. The important exceptions are the nine landlords listed above, who maintained
rooming houses for black tenants for at least a decade each between 1910 and 1960. Because of their important
contributions towards the building up of both Iowa City’s African American community and black student enrollment at
the University of Iowa, these nine landlords are sufficiently important at the local level that extant properties
significantly associated with them are eligible under Criterion B in the areas of Black Ethnic Heritage and Social History.
Not only is the Tate Arms associated with two of these landlords—Charles and Dorothy Alberts and Elizabeth and
Junious Tate—it is also the only extant building significantly associated with either landlord.
Charles Alberts was one of only a handful of African American landowners in Iowa City in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, and he also operated a successful masonry contracting and concrete block manufacturing
business from this property for several years. More importantly for the significance of this property under Criterion B,
he built and operated what was almost certainly the only rooming house in Iowa City built expressly to provide housing
for Iowa City’s black residents during a time of increasing racial segregation in housing in the early twentieth century.
While other buildings in Iowa City also served as lodgings for black roomers during the early twentieth century, none is
known to have been built specifically for that purpose. In any case, other than the three buildings mentioned above—942
Iowa Avenue, 18 S. Clinton Street, and 630 S. Johnson Street—no other extant building in Iowa City is known to have
housed African American owners or tenants during the first half of the twentieth century. The Tate Arms is the only
extant building in Iowa City associated with Charles Alberts. Before he built the house at 914 S. Dubuque Street, he
lived briefly at three other known addresses: one on S. Madison Street and two on S. Governor Street near the A. M. E.
Church. All of these buildings have been removed. Alberts also worked from his home, so no other building in Iowa
City is associated with his occupation of mason. The Tate Arms is therefore the only building in Iowa City significantly
associated with Charles Alberts.
The building is also significant under Criterion B for its association with Elizabeth Tate. She, with her husband
Junious (Bud) Tate, operated a rooming house for black male students at the University of Iowa from the 1930s to the
1960s. She is significant under Criterion B because of her importance, over a period of nearly three decades, in
providing room and board to black university students who would otherwise have found it difficult or impossible to
secure lodgings in Iowa City at a time when most white landlords would not rent to black tenants and when the
University of Iowa prohibited black students from staying in university dormitories. While she started this rooming
house at a different address in the 1930s, she and her husband operated the Tate Arms at 914 S. Dubuque Street from
1940 until 1961. Elizabeth Tate was also well known locally for her work in the University of Iowa Hospital’s
cardiovascular lab, Iowa City community theatre, and other areas, but no Criterion B significance on the basis of those
activities is claimed in the present nomination. In 2004, five years after her death, Iowa City’s new alternative high
school was named after her to honor her community leadership activities.
As described above, several other black residents of Iowa City, usually married couples, operated rooming
houses for black tenants in Iowa City in the early to mid-twentieth century, before the Iowa legislature passed a fair
housing act in 1967. None of these houses survive.152 In nearly all of these cases, the houses or rooming houses
associated with these families were located in or just north of the 1st Ward. With the exception of the Tate Arms and the
three buildings identified above that are located outside the 1st Ward, all have been demolished. The Tate Arms is
therefore the only surviving rooming house in Iowa City associated not only with Charles Alberts and Elizabeth Tate, but
with any of the black families who opened their houses to black tenants in the early to mid -twentieth century. The only
152 Carlson, “Addresses of Black Residents of Iowa City in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century.”
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other residence associated with Elizabeth Tate during the period when she is known to have rented rooms to tenants, 9 E.
Prentiss Street, is non-extant, so the Tate Arms is the only surviving building in Iowa City that is significantly associated
with her.
Archaeological Assessment. No archaeological remains within or beyond the footprint of the property were
assessed as part of this nomination.
Acknowledgements. This nomination was funded by an African American Civil Rights Grant administered by
the National Park Service. This material was produced with assistance from the Historic Preservation Fund,
administered by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
Department of the Interior.
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9. Major Bibliographical References
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Breaux, Richard M. “Facing Hostility, Finding Housing: African American Students at the University of Iowa, 1920s–
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––––––. “Just Among Ourselves” column. April 24, 1926.
––––––. “125 Receive Diplomas at High School.” May 28, 1926.
––––––. “John Crawford Died Today at 2.” March 5, 1929.
––––––. “Former Fairfield Girl Is Married.” “Society” column. July 27, 1929.
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––––––. “Dorms Off Limits.” The Sunday Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa). September 26, 1999. Available in Box 1,
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Sections 9 – 11 page 38
––––––. Advertisement: “Mass Meeting of the Colored Voters of Iowa City.” March 26, 1919.
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––––––. “Sensational Case Against Aging Negro.” March 21, 1923.
––––––. “Alberts Case May Be Ended in Wedding.” March 28, 1923.
––––––. “City Briefs” column. April 12, 1923.
––––––. “City Briefs” column. May 26, 1923.
––––––. “Criminality Alleged Here in Six Cases.” October 15, 1923.
––––––. “City Briefs” column. October 20, 1923.
––––––. “Alberts Must Draw Term in Penitentiary.” October 24, 1923.
––––––. “To Ft. Madison For Long Term of C. Alberts.” January 4, 1924.
––––––. “Gets Retrial.” March 19, 1925.
––––––. “Alberts to Get Freedom.” June 3, 1925.
––––––. “City Briefs” column. July 20, 1925.
––––––. “Alberts Sued By Attorneys.” August 25, 1925.
––––––. Advertisement: Sheriff’s sale of Charles Alberts’ real estate. October 31, 1925.
––––––. Advertisement: Sheriff’s sale of Charles Alberts’ personal property. November 19, 1925.
––––––. “New Pastor to Take Charge of Bethel A.M.E.” May 18, 1929.
––––––. Advertisement: Carey Social Center. September 28, 1929.
––––––. “Fuller Resigns as Pastor of Bethel Church.” November 16, 1929.
––––––. “‘Not Guilty’ Plea of Negro Accused of Manslaughter.” November 17, 1933.
––––––. “Al Joe Salisbury Gets Prison Term for Stabbing Man.” November 20, 1933.
––––––. “Hold Salisbury, Negro, At Hospital; Inquire Into Alleged Stabbing.” March 30, 1936.
––––––. “Aljoe Salisbury is Returned to Anamosa.” April 21, 1936.
––––––. “Iowa City’s New Sewage Disposal Plant, Seen From the Air.” June 29, 1936.
––––––. “20 Children Open School Career in Kindergarten at Henry Sabin Last Monday.” September 22, 1936.
––––––. “More Than $400,000 Spent on Construction Work in City in 1937.” December 31, 1937.
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––––––. “Rights Group Chief Named.” July 11, 1961.
––––––. “Elizabeth Tate Files for Divorce Petition Here.” March 14, 1962.
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United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 39
––––––. “Doderer, Hargrave, Small Win.” November 8, 1972.
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National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 40
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National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 41
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National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 42
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of Iowa Libraries internet web site, http://collguides.lib.uiowa.edu/?IWA0266, accessed April 8, 2018.
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United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 43
Previous documentation on file (NPS):
preliminary determination of individual listing (36 CFR 67) has been requested
previously listed in the National Register
previously determined eligible by the National Register
designated a National Historic Landmark
recorded by Historic American Buildings Survey #
recorded by Historic American Engineering Record #
recorded by Historic American Landscape Survey #
Primary location of additional data:
X State Historic Preservation Office
X Other State Agency
Federal Agency
X Local Government
X University
Other
Name of repository:
Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City; Office of the
State Archaeologist at the University of Iowa, Iowa City; City of Iowa City Urban
Planning Office
Historic Resources Survey Number (if assigned):
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 44
10. Geographical Data
Acreage of Property F less than one
(Do not include previously listed resource acreage; enter “Less than one” if the acreage is .99 or less)
Latitude/Longitude Coordinates
Datum if other than WGS84: F
(enter coordinates to 6 decimal places)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Verbal Boundary Description (Describe the boundaries of the property.)
The nominated property comprises Lot 34 of White’s Subdivision of Out Lot 4, County Seat Addition to Iowa City. The
parcel measures 130 feet east-west by 60 feet north-south.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Boundary Justification (Explain why the boundaries were selected.)
The nominated property includes all of the land that has been associated with the house at 914 S. Dubuque Street since the
house was completed in 1914. The historical rather than the current legal location of the parcel has been used as the
boundary because the current legal location is limited to the building itself and does not appear to include any of the lot
surrounding the building. The current legal location of this parcel is 912–914 S. Dubuque Condominiums Unit A, and
912–914 S. Dubuque Condominiums Unit B.
11. Form Prepared By
name/title Richard J. Carlson/Architectural Historian date March 15, 2018
organization Office of the State Archaeologist telephone (319) 384-0732
street & number 700 Clinton Street Building email richard-j-carlson@uiowa.edu
city or town Iowa City state IA zip code 52242-1030
1 41.650585 N 91.532910 W 3
Latitude Longitude Latitude
Longitude
2 4
Latitude
Longitude
Latitude Longitude
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 45
Additional Documentation
Submit the following items with the completed form:
• GIS Location Map (Google Earth or BING)
• Local Location Map
• Site Plan
• Floor Plans (As Applicable)
• Photo Location Map (Key all photographs to this map and insert immediately after the photo log and before the list of figures).
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 46
Photographs:
Submit clear and descriptive photographs. The size of each image must be 3000x2000 pixels, at 300 ppi (pixels per inch) or larger. Key all photographs
to the sketch map. Each photograph must be numbered and that number must correspond to the photograph number on the photo log. For simplicity,
the name of the photographer, photo date, etc. may be listed once on the photograph log and doesn’t need to be labeled on every photograph.
Photo Log
Name of Property: Tate Arms
City or Vicinity: Iowa City
County: Johnson State: Iowa
Photographer: Richard J. Carlson
Date Photographed: March 27 and April 12, 2018
Description of Photograph(s) and number, include description of view indicating direction of camera:
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0001
General view, east side of S. Dubuque Street showing Tate Arms as middle building in row of three, camera facing
northeast. Photograph taken March 27, 2018.
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0002
North side (left) and front (west) side (right), camera facing southeast. Photograph taken March 27, 2018.
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0003
Front (west) side, camera facing east. Photograph taken March 27, 2018.
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0004
Front (west) side (left) and south facade (right), camera facing northeast. Photograph taken March 27, 2018.
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0005
Rear (east) side (left) and north facade (right), camera facing southwest. Photograph taken March 27, 2018.
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0006
Rear (east) side (left) and north side (right), camera facing southwest. Photograph taken March 27, 2018.
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0007
Detail of front porch posts flanking front entrance, camera facing east. Both piers are original masonry, but post on
left is modern reconstruction in wood of the type of masonry post seen on the right. Photograph taken April 12, 2018.
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0008
Interior, front door showing lack of sidelights and transom from interior, camera facing northwest. Photograph taken
June 11, 2018.
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0009
Interior, staircase along north wall of house showing diamond -shaped window, camera facing east-northeast.
Photograph taken June 11, 2018.
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0010
Interior, second-story condominium from near northwest corner, camera facing east-southeast. Photograph taken June
11, 2018.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 47
IA_JohnsonCounty_TateArms_0011
Interior, second-story condominium from near northwest corner, camera facing east-southeast. Photograph taken June
11, 2018.
List of Figures
Figure 1. South part of Iowa City, Johnson County, Iowa. Small-scale view showing location of the Tate Arms.
Figure 2. Location of the Tate Arms. Medium-scale view showing relation of Tate Arms to surrounding neighborhood
and railroad tracks.
Figure 3. Location of the Tate Arms. Large-scale view.
Figure 4. Key to photos 1–7 of the Tate Arms.
Figure 5. Key to photos 8–11 of the Tate Arms.
Figure 6. Historic view of the Tate Arms in December 2014, facing southwest.
Figure 7. Locations of households headed by an African American listed in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 U.S. census of
Iowa City.
Figure 8. Locations of households headed by an African American listed in the 1925 Iowa state census and the 1930
and 1940 U.S. census of Iowa City.
Figure 9. Top: 1919 advertisement for a “Mass Meeting of the Colored Voters of Iowa City” at the Alberts house.
Bottom: 1922 advertisement for Charles Alberts’ cement block manufacturing business at 914 S. Dubuque
Street.
Figure 10. Advertisement for Sheriff’s sale of Charles Alberts’ personal property, November 23, 1925.
Figure 11. Photograph of Elizabeth Crawford (later Elizabeth Tate), reportedly taken in 1926.
Figure 12. Undated photograph of Junious A. (“Bud”) Tate.
Figure 13. Undated photograph of the Tate Arms, probably taken between the 1940s and 1960s.
Figure 14. Photograph of a woman who appears to be Elizabeth Tate holding her newly adopted baby Candace Tate
under the carport on the north side of the Tate Arms, facing southeast.
Figure 15. Photograph of a man who appears to be Junious Tate holding his newly adopted baby Candace Tate under the
carport on the north side of the Tate Arms, facing southeast.
Paperwork Reduction Act Statement: This information is being collected for applications to the National Register of Historic Places to nominate
properties for listing or determine eligibility for listing, to list properties, and to amend existing listings. Response to this request is required to obtain a
benefit in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended (16 U.S.C.460 et seq.).
Estimated Burden Statement: Public reporting burden for this form is estimated to average 100 hours per response including time for reviewing
instructions, gathering and maintaining data, and completing and reviewing the form. Direct comments regarding this burden e stimate or any aspect of
this form to the Office of Planning and Performance Management. U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1849 C. Street, NW, Washington, DC.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 48
Figure 1. South part of Iowa City, Johnson County, Iowa. Small-scale view showing location of the Tate Arms, 914
S. Dubuque Street. Source: U.S.G.S. Iowa City West, Iowa, 1994, 7.5 Series Quadrangle Map (ISUGISSRF).
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 49
Figure 2. Location of the Tate Arms, 914 S. Dubuque Street. Medium-scale view showing relation of Tate Arms to
surrounding neighborhood and railroad tracks. Base aerial photograph: 2016 aerial photograph (ISUGISSRF).
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 50
Figure 3. Location of the Tate Arms, 914 S. Dubuque Street. Large-scale view. Dashed line shows historical
property boundary, which is also the boundary of the nominated property. Base aerial photograph: 2016 aerial
photograph (ISUGISSRF).
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 51
Figure 4. Key to photos 1–7 of the Tate Arms, 914 S. Dubuque Street. Base aerial photograph: 2016 aerial
photograph (ISUGISSRF).
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 52
Figure 5. Key to photos 8–11 of the Tate Arms, 914 S. Dubuque Street. Top: first-story floor plan. Bottom: second-
story floor plan. Note that north is down in these floor plans. Base floor plans: Untrauer Drafting Service, “914 S.
Dubuque Duplex,” prepared for Apartments at U of I, LC (Coralville, Iowa: Untrauer Drafting Service, Inc., 2015).
Copy on file, City of Iowa City.
8
9
11
10
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 53
Figure 6. View of the Tate Arms in December 2014, facing southwest. This photograph shows the house before its
most recent renovation. The second story had been stuccoed by this time. Older features that have been replaced
since 2014 include the roof, which is similar but not identical to the hipped roof shown here, and the fenestration on
the rear wall, shown at the left side of this photograph. Photograph by Marlin Ingalls, Office of the State
Archaeologist, Iowa City, December 31, 2014. Included in electronic files associated with Carlson and Ingalls, Phase
I Intensive Historic Architectural Survey of the Sabin School and Southside Iowa City Neighborhood, Johnson
County, Iowa; on file, Office of the State Archaeologist, University of Iowa, Iowa City.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 54
Figure 7. Locations of households headed by an African American listed in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 U.S. census of
Iowa City. First Ward boundaries (as of 1900) and floodplains shown. Figures 7 and 8 were prepared by Luke
Foelsch, City of Iowa City, based on a list of addresses compiled by Richard Carlson.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 55
Figure 8. Locations of households headed by an African American listed in the 1925 Iowa state census and the 1930
and 1940 U.S. census of Iowa City. By 1940, the city limits had expanded beyond the 1900 limits to the east, west,
and north—beyond the area shown in this figure—but no black householders lived in the newly annexed areas.
Instead, by 1940, African American households were increasingly concentrated in the 1st Ward.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 56
Figure 9. Top: 1919 advertisement for a “Mass Meeting of the Colored Voters of Iowa City” at the Alberts house
(Iowa City Citizen, March 26, 1919, p. 2). No further information about this meeting was discovered. Bottom: 1922
advertisement for Charles Alberts’ cement block manufacturing business at 914 S. Dubuque Street (Iowa City Press-
Citizen May 19, 1922, p. 12).
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 57
Figure 10. Advertisement for Sheriff’s sale of Charles Alberts’ personal property, November 23, 1925. The inclusion
of seven beds and seven commodes in this list suggests that there were four or possibly five furnished rooms in the
Alberts rooming house. This assumes that Charles Alberts had one bed and one commode and his housekeeper had a
second set. It is not clear whether the housekeeper’s daughter had a third set, but it is likely that each of the
remaining sets corresponded to one of the furnished rooms that Alberts leased to tenants. Source: Iowa City Press-
Citizen, November 19, 1925, p. 11.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 58
Figure 11. Photograph of Elizabeth Crawford (later Elizabeth Tate), reportedly taken in 1926. Based on the
reported date, this was likely a high school graduation photograph. Source: “Family” storyboard, located in Box 2
of the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 59
Figure 12. Undated photograph of Junious A. (“Bud”) Tate. Source: “Family” storyboard, located in Box 2 of the
Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 60
Figure 13. Undated photograph of the Tate Arms, probably taken between the 1940s and 1960s. This is the only
photograph of the building discovered during the research for the present nomination that appears to show the house
during the time it operated as the Tate Arms. The gate posts shown along the street in front of the building are no
longer extant. Source: “Tate Arms” storyboard, located in Box 2 of the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers,
Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 61
Figure 14. Photograph of a woman who appears to be Elizabeth Tate holding her newly adopted baby Candace Tate
under the carport on the north side of the Tate Arms, facing southeast. This photograph is one of a series of
photographs of people, probably all members of Junious and Elizabeth Tate’s family, shown holding the newly
adopted baby. Based on the baby’s age (nine weeks) and birth date shown in a label on one of the photographs, this
photograph was probably taken in early June 1947. Shown in the background of this photograph is the north face of
the rear wing before it was stuccoed. Source: Box 1, folder 14, of the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford Tate Papers,
Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
Tate Arms Johnson County, Iowa
Name of Property County and State
Sections 9 – 11 page 62
Figure 15. Photograph of a man who appears to be Junious Tate holding his newly adopted baby Candace Tate
under the carport on the north side of the Tate Arms, facing southeast. This photograph is one of a series of
photographs of people, probably all members of Junious and Elizabeth Tate’s family, shown holding the newly
adopted baby. Based on the baby’s age (nine weeks) and birth date shown in a label on one of the photographs, this
photograph was probably taken in early June 1947. On the right edge of this photograph is one of the posts and piers
supporting the Tate Arms’ veranda and carport roof. Source: Box 1, folder 14, of the Elizabeth “Bettye” Crawford
Tate Papers, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.