Canary Lofts presents · a field guide
A guide to the blocks around the Blue Oval, from the building named for Amelia Earhart’s first airplane — a bright-yellow biplane she called the Canary. She lived up this avenue once. We kept the color.
Est. 1881·First flight seen 1908·41.601° N, 93.654° W
Scroll ↓Log one · 1881
Drake University opens west of a young Des Moines, and a neighborhood starts growing around it the way neighborhoods do around colleges — porches, professors, corner taverns, and a steady supply of twenty-year-olds convinced the world is about to change. Around here, occasionally, it actually was.
Log two · 1908
The Earharts move to Des Moines for a railroad job, and a ten-year-old named Amelia sees her first aeroplane at the Iowa State Fair. She is completely unmoved.
“A thing of rusty wire and wood, and not at all interesting.”Amelia Earhart, age 10, wrong for the only time on the subject
The family kept five addresses in six Des Moines years — two of them on this side of town: one on University Avenue, one on Cottage Grove. She lived up this street. That is not marketing; it’s the city directory.
Log three · 1910
On April 23, 1910, Drake holds its first Relays — eighty-two athletes, a hundred spectators, and no reason yet to think it would become anything. It became one of the great track meets on earth, run every April since on a stadium oval painted the most famous blue in the sport.
Log four · 1921
Grown up and in California, Earhart buys her first airplane: a Kinner Airster, bright chrome yellow, which she names the Canary. Within a year she flies it higher than any woman had flown before. The unimpressed girl from the fairgrounds had revised her opinion.
Log five · 1932
Fourteen hours and fifty-six minutes after leaving Newfoundland, she lands in an Irish pasture — the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo, and the most famous aviator alive. Every logbook has to start somewhere. Hers started, in part, on this side of Des Moines.
Log six · now
Canary Lofts sits directly across from campus — rooftop skydeck, sky lounge, a pet spa for the muddy season, and apartments priced like a first apartment should be. It is named for her airplane, and the color is not a coincidence.
The rest of this guide is the neighborhood, charted.
The neighborhood as an aeronautical chart — every place real and open as of September 2026, walk-timed from the lobby. Switch to Relays Week to see late April coming.
Pinch or double-tap to zoom · drag to pan · tap a marker
Thirteen hours in the neighborhood, logged like a flight plan. No car until dinner, and only if you want one.
Drag sideways →
The Drake Relays — the 117th running in 2027. For one week the whole city funnels into the stadium eight minutes from your door, and the neighborhood becomes the center of American track. Book nothing else that week.
The Beautiful Bulldog Contest crowns the year’s mascot — the most Iowa event in Iowa, and completely serious.
Graduation weekend: porches, families, and every table at the diner spoken for by nine.
The students thin out and the neighborhood exhales — patio season at the tavern, evening shows at xBk, the campus lawns all yours.
The Iowa State Fair — go see what a ten-year-old saw in 1908, minus the rusty wire. The east side, but it’s the law around here.
Move-in energy, first home games, and the diner’s neon looking its best at dusk.
Bulldogs basketball tips off at the Knapp Center, a seven-minute walk. Winter’s best indoor habit.
Basketball at Knapp, shows at xBk, booths at the tavern — the neighborhood runs indoors and doesn’t apologize.
The sky lounge upstairs faces the weather so you don’t have to. Watch the snow land on the avenue Amelia lived on.
Getting downtownTen minutes east on University — by bus, bike, or car — and you’re at everything the other two guides cover. The commute is a straight line with a skyline at the end.
The campus effectLiving across from a university means free lectures, cheap concerts, a gallery, big-time track and Division I basketball in walking distance — without owing anyone a tuition check.
The buildingIn-home washer and dryer, a demonstration kitchen for the ambitious, DirecTV sports packages in the lounges — Sunday Ticket included — and a pet spa, because Iowa has a mud season.
Groceries & errandsThe big-store runs are a five-minute drive in any direction; the corner-store runs are corners. Budget accordingly, which here means: barely.
The airportTwenty minutes, against traffic that mostly doesn’t exist. Amelia would have appreciated the on-time departures.