Two Houses and a Garden

The Salisbury House was our first stop of the day.  This is a 42-room mansion in South Des Moines built in the 1920's by Carl Weeks, a pharmacist who started a cosmetics company and made his fortune. 

He wanted it to look like a 16th century English castle, and it does - inside and out.  For instance, the vaulted ceiling in his Great Hall was brought over here from England piece by piece and reassembled.  Unfortunately, there were no pictures allowed inside the house.  It is estimated that today it would cost $25,000,000 to construct, and the furnishings are valued about the same amount.

Mr. Weeks was an avid collector of rare and first edition books which are on display in his library....of course, covered in glass.  I looked at two very big volumes which had a label of the Guttenberg Bible.  This room was locked with a security system.  Quite impressive.

Our next stop was at the Des Moines Botanical Center which contains only about 15,000 exotic plants.  It was pleasant just to walk around and get inspired.  There was a waterful in a pond and lots of fish and turtles.

Our last stop was at the State House, the Iowa capitol.  We have seen several other state houses on our trip, but we both agreed this one was the best.  Not only in its appearance, but also the tour we received blew us away.  On the outside it looked far different from other states in that it has one central dome covered in 23 karat gold leaf, with four smaller domes rising from the four corners of the building.

After getting though the metal detector and speaking with the security guards, we were greeted by a nice woman named Kae who proceeded to give us a private tour.....much more extensive than other states.  For instance, she checked to see that the Governor was out and took us straight past the outer office where people were working and into his private chambers where I could get a picture of his name plate.  Pretty cool, huh?

The ceilings and walls of this entire building were hand painted and quite lovely.  In the hall was a replica of the USS Iowa battleship.  (The original will be on display in California later this year.)

She also took us into the legal library which has four tiers of legal books from all different states and a spiral staircase in each corner to get to them.  Kae also took us straight into the Attorney General's office and showed us the walk-in vault where they keep sensitive documents.  With this kind of treatment, we felt as if we were VIPs instead of a couple of hicks from Carolina.

As we were walking away, we noticed the capitol reflected in a glass building across the street.  It looked great!