Iowa City Railway Station

Roughly 60 miles from where the first railroad bridge was built across the Mississippi River, in 1856, at Rock Island and Davenport, stands the Rock Island Lines passenger station in Iowa City. Thousands upon thousands of young people, through the years, have disembarked here to continue their education at the University of Iowa. Many of the nation’s great contributors to science, to the arts, and to teaching have passed through its doors and "waiting room."
The artist’s ink and water color of the old structure is more than a visual presentation. It symbolically portrays a declining segment of a prospering industry whose shining new box cars dramatize where it believes its future lies – and so the traveling American public decreasingly uses railroad passenger stations as it takes more and more to the highways and the skies.
Wagners Printers, Typographers, and Lithographers chose my pen and ink watercolor of the Iowa City Station, for its Midwestern Landmarks Series No. 35 in 1966. It was indeed a great honor for me.

Erwin Weber

May, 1997