Plymouth Magazine-Fall26-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 28
Plymouth Place:
An Affordable Dream Come True
By David Elbert (he/him)
Plymouth Place, the retirement home at
4111 Ingersoll Avenue, has been a Des
Moines landmark for nearly six decades.
The 12-story, cylindrical tower was
completed in 1968. At 160-feet, it extends
far above nearby maple, walnut and other
shade trees planted more than a century
ago and can be seen from downtown highrise offices more than three miles to the
east, as well as from airplanes taking off
and landing at Des Moines International
Airport, four miles south.
The retirement home was the brainchild
of the Rev. Dr. James Lenhart, senior
minister of Plymouth Congregational
Church from 1960 until 1977. Lenhart
was among the first to recognize that
people born at the turn of the 20th
century — a generation that spanned
two world wars and a Great Depression
— were approaching retirement age and
would need services not widely available.
When a 20-room mansion directly
across Ingersoll Avenue from Plymouth
Church came up for sale in 1963, the
church bought it, stating that “a careful
study will be made regarding use of this
property as a retirement home.” The
church paid $176,500 – the equivalent
of nearly $2 million today – for the
mansion, which had been designed by
Mary King and built in 1902 by her
husband, George King, an early Polk
County bridge builder.
The King mansion occupied three acres
of the 100-plus acres where the Iowa State
Fair was held in Des Moines from 1879
to 1885, before moving to the eastside.
Legend holds that Mary King scattered
a handful of corn kernels, then planted
trees and shrubs where the kernels fell.
More than half a century later,
Des Moines Tribune writer Lillian
McLaughlin wrote that the trees in
Mary King’s private park “directed”
the architect who created a “startling
design” for Plymouth Place. The result
was a 12-story “big silo” with from 12
to 20 pie-shaped apartments that shared
a central living area on each floor. All
apartments had floor-to-ceiling views and
many came with balconies overlooking
Mary King’s private park.
Plymouth purchased the 1902 mansion
from the estate of Mary and George
King’s daughter, Edith Pearson, after she
died in 1963. It did not make economic
sense to convert the old mansion to a
retirement center, McLaughlin wrote.
“To preserve the trees, yet build a
structure with enough units to be a sound
business venture, the architects went up
rather than out,” McLaughlin wrote.
Making sure any project was sound and
made business sense were high priorities
for Lenhart and Plymouth’s Board of
Trustees. Lenhart wanted a retirement
center with roughly 200 affordable units
targeted to low- to moderate-income
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The ground breaking for Plymouth Place in June 1966 Rev. Lenhart second from the right.
