Shot Tower (Dubuque) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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George W. Rogers Company Shot Tower
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 Location in Iowa
Location in the United States
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| Location | Commercial St. and River Front, Dubuque, Iowa |
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| Area | less than one acre |
| Built | 1856 |
| Architect | C. H. Rogers & Co. |
| Architectural style | Mid-19th century Exotic Revival |
| NRHP reference No. | 76000767 |
| Added to NRHP | November 07, 1976 |
The Shot Tower in Dubuque, Iowa, is a really old and important building. It's one of the very few shot towers left in the United States. This tall tower is a special symbol of Dubuque. You can see it from the riverwalk near the Mississippi River. It's currently being fixed up to keep it safe and looking good. The tower stands about 120 feet (36.6 meters) tall!
How Shot Towers Work
Shot towers were invented to make small, round lead balls called lead shot. These tiny balls were used in shotguns. Before shot towers, making these perfect little spheres was very hard and expensive.
Here's how it worked:
- First, lead was melted until it was liquid.
- Then, this hot, liquid lead was poured through a special grate at the very top of the tower.
- As the lead fell, it broke into tiny droplets. The long fall gave these droplets enough time to form into perfect spheres because of how liquids behave.
- At the bottom of the tower, there was a pool of water. The lead spheres would land in the water, which cooled them down quickly. This made them solid and kept their round shape.
This clever method made it much easier and cheaper to produce lots of lead shot!
A Look Back in Time
The Dubuque Shot Tower was built in 1856. But soon after it was finished, the country faced a tough economic time called the Panic of 1857. This made it hard for the tower to succeed.
A company from St. Louis bought the tower, but they didn't use it for making shot. Later, after the Civil War, a company called Standard Lumber Company used the tall tower as a lookout spot to watch for fires.
The tower was left empty after 1911. That year, several fires badly damaged the local lumber businesses and even hurt the inside of the tower. Investigators believed someone started the fires on purpose, which is called arson, but no one was ever caught.
In 1976, the Shot Tower was added to the National Register of Historic Places. This means it's recognized as an important historical site. After that, workers began making repairs, like fixing the brickwork (this is called Tuckpointing). In 2004, the Shot Tower became part of a big project to fix up the riverfront area in Dubuque.
