Mason House Guests Watch Moon on River

KURTZ

Posted By: Volunteer - Rich Lowe
Date: 7/25/2004 at 12:41:59

Van Buren Record [Bonaparte, IA]
Thursday, July 15, 1937

MASON HOUSE GUESTS
WATCH MOON ON RIVER.

(The following was clipped from the “Front Row” column in the Des Moines Tribune of Thursday, July 8.)

Lucky are friends of Mrs. Schiller Kurtz of Des Moines, because they are sometimes invited to visit at Mrs. Kurtz’ unusual summer home in Bentonport, down in southern Iowa.

The home is an old hotel which was built in about 1852 and which Mrs. Kurtz inherited a few years ago. Built of brick, all of its windows are green-shuttered. The hotel has 12 bedrooms.

Guests at the hotel (Marian Cowper was the most recent visitor from Des Moines) seek their bedrooms with lighted candles, as the inn has no lighting system. It has, in fact, no modern conveniences.
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Bentonsport used to be a thriving little city of 1500 persons. Flour milling, paper milling and pottery making kept the town humming in the old days. But now Bentonsport is a sleepy little village. And the last time Mrs. Kurtz counted its inhabitants they added up to 102 persons, including the children.
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Bentonsport was incorporated in 1839 and its present citizenry will observe the town’s 100th anniversary year after next.
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Things may liven up then if a centennial celebration is held. But to show you how quiet life is in the little southern Iowa town now:

One night last week Mrs. Kurtz and her guests took their chairs out on to the bridge that spans the Des Moines river right in front of the hotel.

This bridge is the main thoroughfare between Bentonsport and her sister city, Vernon, just across the river, but Mrs. Kurtz and her friends sat in the and watched the moon on the river all evening, and had to move their chairs just once to let a car go by.