The Grandview Tower

1905-1942

An excerpt from: 

PEORIA.COM

Legends of Grandview Drive

art & society - sep/oct 2017

Tale of Two Towers
The 200-foot water tower on Prospect Road near Grandview Drive is one of the Peoria area’s most recognizable landmarks. Erected in the late sixties, it’s known for offering spectacular views of the Illinois River Valley, as well as the idiosyncratic touch of a six-foot-tall woodpecker along its side. The cedar carving, created by Canadian chainsaw artist Henry Stadlbauer, was ordered for the tower by philanthropist Bill Rutherford of the Forest Park Foundation, which helped finance the project.

Tower Park was dedicated on September 20, 1970—a ceremony that also marked the unveiling of the bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln, cast from the original mold from Mount Rushmore, which remains a fixture of the park today.

But the current tower wasn’t the first to loom over Grandview Drive. In 1905, a 75-foot observation tower was constructed by A. Lucas & Sons near the intersection of Grandview and Glen Avenue, originally intended as a lookout for forest fires. In 1942, it was razed to provide 100 tons of scrap metal to Allied forces—but local historian Norm Kelly, who recalls watching the tower’s dismantling as a kid, says that may not actually have happened.

“According to the late Merle Yontz [businessman and community leader who lived on Grandview], the steel was never even picked up, nor was it used for the war effort,” Kelly declares. "He knows because… he saw that steel in a scrap yard." The Peoria Park District later spoke of structural damage to the steel, which would explain why it never made its way into U.S. military tanks or ships.

Spoiler alert: we won the war anyway… and got a new tower, twice as tall, with an outsized cedar woodpecker to boot!

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