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1946 - 2001 - The Modern Era

• 1945—Rockingham School reopens as a primary school for children in kindergarten through 3^rd grade.  Students go on to Hayes School for grades 4 through 6.

• 1945—WOC Radio rejoins the National Broadcasting Company

• 1946—The Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) builds a new rolling mill east of Davenport.  ALCOA Davenport Works becomes the world’s largest aluminum rolling plant.

• 1946—The J. B. Quinlan riverboat is condemned by the U.S. Coastguard, and is retired to the Kahlke Boatyards in Rock Island.

• 1949—Philip Adler, son of Emanuel P. Adler, becomes publisher of the Davenport Daily Times

• October 1949—WOC-TV, the first television station in the Quad-City area, goes on the air.

• 1950—St. Paul’s Lutheran Church moves to 2136 North Brady Street

• 1953—Temple Emmanuel moves into a new building at 12^th and Mississippi Streets.

• 1954—Marycrest College breaks away from St. Ambrose College and operates independently.

• 1955—Rockingham School is renamed Roosevelt School

• 1955—Construction is completed on the new $1.4 million Scott County Courthouse at 416 West 4^th Street in Davenport, the exact spot of the original courthouse built in 1842.

• March 1, 1956—The Village Shopping Center, the first shopping center in Iowa, opens on Kimberly Road and Harrison Street in Davenport.

• March 10, 1957—Hickey Brothers go bankrupt and close operations

• 1957—The first McDonald’s restaurant in Davenport, a drive-in, opens at 3303 Brady Street.

• 1959—Assumption High School, a Catholic school, opens on 1020 West Central Park Avenue, causing the Academy of Immaculate Conception to close soon after.

• 1959—The Unitarian Church moves to 3707 Eastern Avenue in Davenport.

• 1959—Philip Adler becomes president of Lee Enterprises

• 1960—The western span of the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge (later part of I-74) is finished.

• 1960—West High School opens at 3505 West Locust Street

• January 15, 1962—Fire destroys Clark’s Appliance Store at 317 West 2^nd Street.

• September 1963—The children’s wing of the Davenport Public Library is completed on the east side of the Main Street building.

• 1963—Construction is completed on WOC-TV’s new broadcasting center at 805 North Brady Street

• 1963—The Davenport Public Museum, later renamed the Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science, opens at 1717 West 12^th Street.

• 1964—The Davenport Democrat and Leader and the Davenport Daily Times merge to become the Times-Democrat

• 1964—The Davenport YMCA and the YWCA merge, and the newly named Family Y moves to 606 West 2^nd Street.

• 1965—The Mississippi River crests at a record 22.48 feet, in what will afterwards be called the Great Flood.

• October 27, 1966—The I-80 Bridge, spanning the Mississippi River south of LeClaire, Iowa, is dedicated.

• 1966—The old Carnegie building of the Davenport Public Library at 321 Main Street, which had been built on unstable ground, is torn down.  Construction is begun on a new building, designed by Edward Durell Stone.  Library services and books are moved to the old Hills Department Store at 223-229 West 2^nd Street.

• 1966—The Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, later renamed the Davenport Museum of Art, which had been housed for several years in the old Armory Building on West 5^th Street, moves to its new building at 1737 West 12^th Street.

• 1967—The J. B. Quinlan, retired and dry docked at Kahlke Boatyard in Rock Island, is torched by vandals.

• October 6, 1968—The new Davenport Public Library building, completed at a cost of $1,445,000 at 321 Main Street, opens to patrons. 

• 1969—The clubhouse of the Davenport Country Club burns in a fire.

• 1969—Marycrest College begins accepting male students.

• 1970—Davenport Municipal Stadium is renamed John O’Donnell Stadium after the recently departed, nationally famous sports editor and journalist of the Times-Democrat.

• August 6, 1971—a small group of jazz aficionados gather to honor the fortieth anniversary of Bix Beiderbecke’s death.  Two thousand people arrive to listen to a memorial jam session held at the Davenport Holiday Inn.  The festival is adopted as an annual event, and the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society is formed to assist in its organization.

• 1971—Kathy Kirchbaum, a Democrat, is elected Davenport’s first woman mayor.

• May 1972—School Number 9, which stood at 53^rd and Brady Streets in Davenport, is moved to the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds to be used as an art gallery for the Mississippi Valley Fair.

• 1972—Wood Intermediate School opens at 5701 North Division.

• 1972—The M. L. Parker Store closes.  The building is used by Petersen Harned Von Maur for their discount store until 1974.

• July 11, 1973—Northpark Mall opens for business at 320 West Kimberly Road in Davenport.

• September 11, 1973—The RKO Orpheum Theater closes as a movie house.  The last movie shown is Cleopatra Jones.

• 1973—Montgomery Ward Department Store moves from 105-107 East 2^nd Street in Davenport to Northpark Mall.

• 1974—The Interstate 280 bridge, connecting Davenport and Rock Island, opens to traffic.

• May 23, 1975—The International Milling Company plant (which processed Robin Hood Flour) on East River Drive is destroyed in a fire ignited by spontaneous combustion, possibly of the flour the plant produced.

• 1975—The Cornbelt Running Club holds the first Bix 7 Mile Run, a race meant to coincide with the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival.

• 1979—Truman School opens at 5506 North Pine Street.

• 1979—Taylor Elementary School closes.

• 1981—The Municipal Natatorium is razed.

• 1981—The Junior League of the Quad-Cities is formed when the former Junior Board of the Davenport Visiting Nurses Association joins the National Association of Junior Leagues.

• 1981-- The Davenport Chamber of Commerce purchases the RKO Orpheum Theater and donates it to RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, Inc., which was established to restore the theater through private donations and run it as a center for the performing arts.  In honor of a $1.3 million donation from Lee Enterprises, the Orpheum is renamed the Adler Theatre, in memory of former publishers Emanuel P. Adler and Phillip D. Adler.

• 1982—An addition is completed to Northpark Mall, making it the largest shopping center in Iowa.

• December 1983—The Davenport civic center opens on East 3^rd Street.  After a public contest, the facility in renamed the RiverCenter.

• 1984—The restoration of the Adler Theatre begins. More than $4.25 million has been donated by Davenport citizens and businesses for the renovations.

• August 17, 1985--The Sainte Genevieve, the last steam powered sternwheeler dredge employed on the Mississippi River, arrives at its new home at the Port of Davenport shortly after its official retirement by the U.S. Corps of Engineers.  The ‘Genny’, measuring 48 by 267 feet and weighing 981 tons, is tentatively planned to hold a river museum and a restaurant.

• 1985—The Davenport TransitCenter opens as the central headquarters of the Davenport bus system and the depot of commercial bus transportation lines, and also as the administrative offices and classrooms of the Eastern Iowa Community College.  The building takes up the whole of the 300 block of West River Drive.

• 1985—The Tri-City Symphony is renamed the Quad-Cities Symphony Orchestra

• January 9, 1986—The Adler Theatre opens. The first performance is “Mozart on Fifth.”

• June-July, 1993—The Mississippi River floods, finally cresting at 22.63 feet on July 9.  This flood was ranked a class 5 disaster, and losses were never fully assessed.

• July 26, 1997—Bix Beiderbecke’s cornet, for which he paid $400 dollars in the 1920s, is donated to the Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science by Bob and Eva Christiansen, jazz lovers from Los Gatos, California

• 1999—Statues of world-class runners Joan Benoit Samuelson and Bill Rodgers, who helped to make the Bix 7 Run one of the top road races in the country, are placed at the corner of River Drive and Fourth Street, which was renamed ‘Bix 7 Plaza’.

• 2001—A statue of Bix Beiderbecke, holding his cornet is added to Bix 7 Plaza, at the corner of River Drive and Fourth Street.