The Italian-American Cultural Center of Iowa is now open in its new location at the historic Butler Mansion in Des Moines.
The chair of the Center’s board, Jeff Lamberti, says the organization has been around for 45 years. “And for at least 25 of that, the goal or the dream was to try to find a permanent home that was large enough for us to do things like a museum, an education center, and those kind of things,” Lamberti says.
They ended up purchasing the Butler Mansion, which has seven floors and additions that gives them 42,000 square feet of space. Lamberti says a national magazine called the mansion the most modern home in America when it opened in 1937. It had things like three garages with automatic door openers on each one. “And you activated them with your headlights. So you would flash your lights one, two, or three times, depending on which door you wanted to open. Imagine that in 1937, the home had central air, central heat, had an intercom system throughout the home,” he says.
Lamberti says many of the key features of the mansion remain with some modern updates. They use the space for several different things. “And about half the space we envision telling the story, the Iowa Italian story. So why did Italians immigrate to Iowa? What did they do? Jobs like coal mines, railroad, and then tell the story of what they became, how they become, you know, civic leaders, business leaders and the impact they made on Iowa,” he says.
The hope to bring in traveling exhibits for the other half of the mansion space. “We built this to what I call Smithsonian standards with climate control, humidity control, light control, at a standard that we can get certified so that other museums are willing to share their exhibits. We want to keep it fresh,” he says.
The other space at the property will be used as an events center. “You can take a language class, you can take a dance class, the kids can come to us summer camp that we put on. We also have events related to significant dates and events in Italian history,” Lamberti says.
He says there are other things they’ll do to tell the story. “We’ll have a unique store that’ll also tell our story. We are going to be offering unique Italian goods that you can’t really find in Iowa,” he says. “We’ll have a cooking classroom, and I always say because everybody wants to cook Italian, but we hope to also open that up to other nationalities.”
They will also have space for weddings and other events. There are suites that will serve as an AirBNB when not in use for weddings. You can find out more details about what they have to offer at their website: www.iaccofia.org.
