Dubuque, Iowa

I drove to Dubuque, Iowa Thursday evening for a Friday morning client meeting.

We had lunch at a new restaurant that has opened in the former Dubuque Star Brewery, on the bank of the Mississippi river.
The city seems to be investing heavily in renovations and enhancements in the riverfront and downtown areas, giving the area a younger and more exciting atmosphere.

Behind the brewery I noticed a building that appeared to be a stand-alone square smoke stack. After asking why there was a smoke stack without an attached building, I learned that it was a shot tower.

Dubuque Shot Tower History and photo courtesy of Wikipedia: The tower was built in 1856 to provide lead shot for the military. The concept of a shot tower solved the problem of how to produce many cheap, nearly perfect lead spheres of the right size to fit in a musket. To make lead shot, molten lead was poured into the top of the tower, where it passed through a grate. The droplets that fell from the grate were of relatively uniform size, and the fall provided enough time for the liquid-metal droplet to form into a sphere before landing in the water below. The water cooled the lead to its solid state, retaining the spherical shape.