The Waverly East Bremer Avenue Commercial Historic District is a nationally recognized

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

located in

Waverly, Iowa Waverly is a city in Bremer County, Iowa, United States. The population was 10,394 at the time of the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Bremer County and is part of the Waterloo– Cedar Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The sister cit ...

, United States. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2014. At the time of its nomination it contained 53 resources, which included 41

contributing buildings In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

, and 12 non-contributing buildings. The historic district covers a portion of the city's

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

between the Cedar River on the west and the former

right-of-way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

for the

Chicago Great Western Railway The Chicago Great Western Railway was a Class I railroad that linked Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, and Kansas City. It was founded by Alpheus Beede Stickney in 1885 as a regional line between St. Paul and the Iowa state line called the Minnesota a ...

on the east. The buildings are generally brick and two stories in height, but there are one- and three-story buildings as well. The first floors continue to house commercial retail stores, while the upper floors house offices, apartments or are vacant. The exceptions are the Chicago Great Western Railway Depot (1904), the Waverly Municipal Hydroelectric Powerhouse (1909), the US Post Office building (1936), and the Lutheran Mutual Aid Society Home Office Building (1932, with later additions). The powerhouse is individually listed on the National Register. The period of significance is from 1855 to 1964, and the buildings are constructed during that time frame. Most of the buildings are second generation structures that replaced single-story frame structures. Architectural influence came from the commercial

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

, Queen Anne and Neoclassical styles. Most of the buildings line both sides of East Bremer Avenue, with a few on First Avenue SE.

References

Italianate architecture in Iowa Queen Anne architecture in Iowa Waverly, Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Bremer County, Iowa Historic districts in Bremer County, Iowa Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa {{BremerCountyIA-NRHP-stub