The Redstone Inn & Suites was built in 1894 by Augustine Cooper of Cooper Wagon Works, for his daughter, Elizabeth. At one time, Cooper Wagon Works took up approximately 27 acres in Dubuque, Iowa, hired one-third of the city’s workforce and produced 10,000 wagons a year. Today the Redstone Inn, the only remaining home from the Cooper family, is a 15-room inn that collectors who want to stay somewhere with a farm background will love. Robert Chu, the owner/innkeeper, said the family originally came from England to Pennsylvania before arriving in Davenport, Iowa, to take advantage of homesteading options. At age 17 in 1840, A.A. Cooper headed to St. Paul to find his fortune. Traveling the Mississippi on board a steamboat, during an argument his toe was hit by a stray bullet. As he required medical assistance, the captain unloaded him in Dubuque, which was a huge port at the time. Cooper quickly found work as an apprentice blacksmith at a wagon shop. After serving a four-year apprenticeship at Newman and Duffee, he was able to purchase the business. The company boomed and by 1875, Cooper was producing nearly 3,000 wagons annually. Over time, he built two wagon factories. The wagon success may have been because of his use of aged wood. Lumber was usually kiln-dried for 90 days, but Cooper kept his wood in special warehouses for at least five years. Cooper had a large family, with nine children. The Redstone, the third house built under him and the last remaining, was a 10-year-late wedding gift to his daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Dan Sullivan, although the deed never left the Cooper name. Redstone was originally built as a duplex so the back half could be rented out for extra income. It is a beautiful example of Queen Anne ornamentation. Stained glass, a Romanesque tower and carved sandstone add to the building's beauty. The house was built with all the modern conveniences of the time. “This house was a symbol of modernity; the house had all the essential elements, electricity from the ground up. They were the first residents with electricity and the first to have plumbing in the house with drinking water,” Robert noted. Around the turn into the 20th century, he said Cooper could see the changing times, in that wagons and buggies were going to be overrun by the automobile. He didn’t want to make this change and preferred it be headed by someone from the younger generation. Cooper had planned for the manager of his empire to be his son-in-law; however, when Elizabeth chose Irishman Dan Sullivan, he wasn’t pleased and didn’t have faith in the man’s abilities. “A.A. Cooper tried to impose and mold Dan Sullivan into something he was not. That made him feel diminished,” Robert explained. The website Encyclopedia Dubuque confirms this: “If Sullivan failed, as Cooper presumed, his daughter would have income property from half the building and a place to live in the other half. As things turned out, Sullivan (who was in business with Joseph Frederick Stampfer), died rather young while taking a lunch break walking the railroad tracks.” Many thought Sullivan’s death was a suicide, although Cooper convinced many in the community it was just an accident. The one person he couldn’t convince was his daughter, whom Robert said took her own 5-year-old daughter and abandoned the house to go East and cast off her father. This devastated Cooper. During this time, he was approached by entrepreneurs wanting to expand the wagon business into the auto business. Rumor is that even Henry Ford approached Cooper, and that he said no. Without an heir, and a number of devastating fires, the company closed one year after Cooper’s death in 1919. The legacy of the Wagon Works and Cooper’s story live on in the beautiful Redstone Inn & Suites. For more information, visit www.theredstoneinn.com/index.htm Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication. Learn more of Cindy’s finds and travel in her blog, “Traveling Adventures of a Farm Girl,” at http://travelingadventuresofafarmgirl.com |
