Black’s Gaslight Village – Iowa City, Iowa.
Not more than 75 tenants live in this writers workshop center of talent, but the stories are endless!
This group of houses was built in the 1940’s and has been used for housing by the hippie community of the 70’s. It was the Greenwich Village of Iowa. The talented and artistic of every year since the 40’s that have attended the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa has graced this area with their impressions and it still goes forward today.
The site is on the National Register of Historic Places.
This most unusual sprawling complex is made up of large old homes and 1940’s and 50’s random evolutionary architecture. The place is small but the real treat is seeing the inside of the most unusual apartments. Home made rooms of found materials. One has a waterfall in it and a full size tree! Another has a wall made of tombstones, another has bowling balls in the middle of it. Whatever the "artists" interpretation of the space they wanted to live has been incorporated into the spaces.
Location: 414 Brown St. , Iowa City, Iowa
Tours: Available by contacting: jdeethATmchsi.com
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About Travel Writer
I no longer live at Gaslight Village, the owner is Richard Wayne but I don’t have contact info handy
I spent a lot of time at Black’s Gaslight from 1976 – 1980. I was a member of the Undergraduate Fiction Writer’s Workshop and had friends in the writing community who lived there, including good friend Scott Anderson, relative of Garrison Keillor. My brother lived with Scott and Wes Kooistra there for a few crazy years.
This was a really funky place and I’d love to visit again. Maybe sometime on my way back from my home in Racine, WI to my parent’s home in Leon, Iowa I’ll drop by.
I also heard that my old fraternity, Kappa Sigma, had been shut down, which doesn’t surprise me. We had a very enterprising group of guys who operated “under the radar”, most of the time!