J.H.C. Petersen's Sons' Store
commercial building in Davenport, Iowa, US
The J.H.C. Petersen's Sons' Store also known as the Petersen Harned-Von Maur Store Building and the Redstone Building, is a historic building in Davenport, Iowa, United States. It was individually listed on the Davenport Register of Historic Properties and on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2020 it was included as a contributing property in the Davenport Downtown Commercial Historic District. The former department store building was modeled on the Rookery Building in Chicago.
History
J.H.C. Petersen was an immigrant from Schleswig in present-day Germany where he was educated until he was 16. After settling in Scott County, Iowa he worked in farming and at a match-factory. He and his three sons Max, Henry, and William opened a dry goods store in 1872. By 1875 they were handling both wholesale and retail lines of merchandise from Chicago. Branch stores were opened in Clinton, Iowa and Geneseo, Illinois in the 1880s. The J.H.C. Petersen's Sons' Store was built in Downtown Davenport in 1892.
The public source identifies “J.H.C. Petersen's Sons' Store” as commercial building in Davenport, Iowa, US. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Petersen's, Sons' and Store.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “J.H.C. Petersen's Sons' Store”, the useful work is to connect “commercial building in Davenport, Iowa, US” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6104086. Authority coordinates are 41.521, -90.575. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1872, 1875 and 1892.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “J.H.C. Petersen's Sons' Store” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.