Five Flags Center Fact SheetFIVE FLAGS CENTER
Dubuque, Iowa
FACT TSHEET
Goal
To provide a permanent, centrally located facility in the City of Dubuque in
observance and commemoration of the bicentennial of the birth of the United
States of America to serve the cultural, recreational, entertainment,
educational and business needs and requirements of Dubuqueland.
The Project
To restore an existing, architecturally significant theater as the basic building
block of the Five Flags Center composed of
1. The restored theater equipped and rigged to seat approximately
1,000 persons; _-
2. A new multi -purpose, two level, 20,000 square foot exhibition -arts
building;
3. A new promenade to connect the theater with the exhibition -arts
building;
4. A full scale multi -media and sound facility incorporated into the
exhibition -arts building to accommodate 100 to 200 persons; and
5. An off-street parking facility together with other appropriate site
improvements.
Significance of Name
Five Flags have flown over Dubuqueland since the period of the Joliet and
Marquette explorations of the Upper Mississippi commencing in 1673.
1. Fleur de Lis of France
2. Royal Flag of Spain
3. Union Jack of England
4. French Imperial Flag of Napoleon
5. Stars and Stripes of the United States of America
Location
Five Flags Center is located in Downtown Dubuque in an urban renewal project
area. The Town Clock Plaza (Main Street Pedestrianway) phase of the project
has received the Merit Award for its design in an urban environment from the
American Institute of Landscape Architects. A second unannounced national
award is to be presented the City of Dubuque in Washington, D. C. in the
spring of 1973.
Status of Project
1. Theater and necessary land purchased by the City of Dubuque to
implement the Downtown Urban Renewal Project, Iowa R-15.
2. Five Flags Center Fund with an Advisory Council of over 125 persons
incorporated as a non-profit organization and granted tax-exempt
status.
A. Has provided market studies and analysis to justify the project.
B. Has secured support from the City of Dubuque and State Liaison
Officer for the project.
C. Is soliciting private funds for matching purposes.
D. Has assembled work force of various specialities.
1) Historians
Dr. Adrian Anderson - Iowa State Liaison Officer
Peter T. Harsted, Superintendent, State Historical
Society of Iowa
Dr. Walter Peterson - President, University of Dubuque
William J. Peterson - Superintendent Emeritus, State
Historical Society of Iowa
2) Architectural Historian - Denys Peter Myers ,
.Washington, D.C.
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3) Dubuque Theater Historian - Charles Geroux, Bloomfield
Hills, Michigan
4) Theater Architectural Historian - Andrew Craig Morrison,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
5) Multi -Media Consultant - Multi -Media Division, Des Moines
Register and Tribune
6) Multi -Media Advisor - Professor William B. Oglesby,
University of Iowa
7) Architects and Engineers.
Cullen-Schiltz & Associates, Dubuque, Iowa
Bowen & Kanazawa, Madison, Wisconsin
E. Is securing support from Federal, State and city officials and '
agencies and from other public and private organizations and
individuals to designate the Five Flags Center as a Bicentennial
Center and the City of Dubuque as a Bicentennial City.
F. Is to purchase the real estate from the city, to restore the
theater
under an acceptable arrangement with the City and the Department
of Housing and Urban Development, to construct all improvements,
and to deed the completed Five Flags Center to the City.
3. The theater and theater site have been entered in the National Register of
Historic Places.
as a music hall represents one of
he
A. The theater built in earliest known theaters Ostill in operation designed by Rapp and
nd
Rapp, an architectural firm later to become well known for theater
design in the late teens and twenties.
B. Theater site represents the oldest known site in Iowa (and possibly
west of the Mississippi River) to continuously type house atheater,
opera house, vaudeville house and/or some public
entertainment facility.
4. A $1000 matching grant has been approved by the Iowa Arts Council to
sponsor a competition to secure an appropriate piece of sculpture to
highlight an exterior plaza area.
5. Documentation of evidence to confirm aat the only
known
Iowa
miner, Jean
ualty
of the American Revolutionary War
Marie Cardinal, who after being captured by the British at Dubuque
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during their march down the Mississippi River Valley, escaped to
warn the French at St. Louis. Cardinal was killed during the battle,
and the defeated British abandoned their campaign.
Historians suggest that had it not been for Cardinal's warning, the
exploits of George Rogers Clark might have well been in vain and the
Treaty of 1782 might have well fixed the western boundary of the
United States along the Allegheny Mountains instead of the Mississippi
River.
6. Designation of Five Flags Center as a State Bicentennial Site by the Iowa
American Revolution Bicentennial Commission.