This weekend’s Sweet Corn Festival in Adel will also serve as a celebration of William “Bill” Wagner.

Wagner, a former Dallas Center resident, helped refurbish the Dallas County Courthouse as well as other notable buildings in Iowa, including Terrace Hill in Des Moines.

“All of the beauty of the courthouse on the inside, is all because of this man and how he lovingly restored it,” Dallas County Supervisor Mark Hanson said of Wagner.

The courthouse will be open to the public during the Sweet Corn Festival on Saturday, along with a pop-up exhibit of Wagner's pen and ink drawings and other historic memorabilia.

More:Adel to celebrate 175 years with 7 tons of free sweet corn during Sweet Corn Festival

Hanson knew what Wagner did for the courthouse and started looking into him by visiting the Wagner Gallery at the Forest Park Museum in Perry.

“I’m going through his presidential books and I open this one up, signed by Theodore Roosevelt,” Hanson said. “When I found the Teddy Roosevelt book I said ‘what else do we have?’”

The Wagner Gallery houses around 900 of Wagner’s collection of books on Iowa and county history, historical preservation and more. The gallery also houses Wagner’s pen and ink drawings of landmarks from all over Iowa, the United States and around the world. The Wagner family donated the drawings as well as historical memorabilia and more to the Dallas County Conservation Board after Wagner’s death in 2001.

The city of Adel is celebrating its 175th anniversary during this year’s Sweet Corn Festival and Hanson said the supervisors decided it would be a good opportunity to also open the courthouse and honor Wagner.

The courthouse will be open for tours from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday. The William Wagner Display will also be open during that time at 818 Court St. 

In addition to the courthouse and exhibit being open during the festival on Saturday, a sword ceremony will be held at 4 p.m. on Friday.

A proclamation about Wagner, recently passed by the Dallas County Supervisors, will be rolled up in the sword along with one of his paint brushes. The sword, which fell in 2021 from the south statue, will be returned to the Lady of Justice’s hand during the 4 p.m. ceremony on the south lawn.

“We’re intent on maintaining this building for the benefit of future generations and I’m just hoping in my heart that Bill Wagner is up there looking down and saying that is pretty cool, that his brush is going to go in the hand of Lady Liberty,” Hanson said.

Local city officials will then present the Wagner sketch of their city on loan to the county during a ceremony at 5 p.m. Friday in the Courthouse Rotunda.

Hanson encourages local residents and Sweet Corn Festival visitors to check out the various items in the pop-up Wagner exhibit. Some of those items include pen and ink sketches of various landmarks in 81 of Iowa’s 99 counties that Wagner created for a calendar company, presidential correspondence and more.

“I want to let people know who William Wagner was and what a great man he was for the state of Iowa and what a great ambassador he was for every single one of these towns that he sketched in,” Hanson said.