Back in 1903 the city built the Old Downtown Des Moines Library, the historic building you are looking at here in downtown Des Moines. It was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and later became a contributing property in the Civic Center Historic District in 1988. The building stopped functioning as a library in 2006 and today houses the Norman E. Borlaug | World Food Prize Hall of Laureates for the World Food Prize.
But its story began long before these honors: the Des Moines Library Association formed in 1866 in the basement of a Methodist church, sustained by private contributions and public charity until 1882 when the city took over because of precarious finances. The city bought property on the Des Moines River in 1898 for $35,000; the cornerstone here was laid in 1900 and the doors opened in October 1903. In the 1920s the building became home to the Cumming School of Art, and in 1938, under director Forrest Spaulding, it was the birthplace of the Library Bill of Rights, meant to fight against "growing intolerance, suppression of free speech and censorship affecting the rights of minorities...
Picture this façade meeting the Des Moines River property the city bought back in 1898.