Iowa City, Iowa: The Black Angel
RoadsideAmerica.com Team Field Report
Oakland Cemetery
- Address:
- 1000 Brown St., Iowa City, IA
- Directions:
- I-80 exit 246. South on Hwy 1/Dodge St. for about 1.5 miles. Turn left onto Summit St., then right onto Dewey St., then left onto Brown St. to the Oakland Cemetery entrance. The Black Angel is in a ways, but straight in from the entrance. Lot 1, Block 24.
- Hours:
- Daily 7:30 am - dusk. (Call to verify)
- Phone:
- 319-356-5105
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Go to the cemetery, kiss the angel statue, drop dead -- or so the legends say. The 1912 sculpture has spooked generations who prefer the supernatural over any scientific explanation of the statue's blackness. Roadsideamerica.com Report...
Visitor Tips and News About The Black Angel
Reports and tips from RoadsideAmerica.com visitors and Roadside America mobile tipsters. Some tips may not be verified. Submit your own tip.
The Black Angel I've been wanting to visit this for quite some time but never had the chance in the past. This time I made it and brought my video camera! Simple directions to the site: Turn east onto Brown Street from Dodge and it "dead-ends" into the cemetery.
[Scott, 02/18/2010]The Black Angel statue in Iowa City featured on your site is cool, but your tipsters seem to have missed its literary fame...In W.P. Kinsella's 1986 novel, "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy," the Black Angel comes to life and plays right field in a baseball game of Biblical proportions.
Kinsella is also the author of "Shoeless Joe," the book that was made into "Field of Dreams," also featured on your site for Dyersville, Iowa.
[David Williams, 09/11/2009]
Black Angel On an eerie summer night (midnight) in mid-August, I tempted fate when I kissed The Black Angel. The statue stands approximately 12 ft tall from ground level to tip of her wing, so I ended up kissing her waist. Visitors are not welcomed after 9 pm, so we had to make a hasty exit as we were tailed into the site by an Iowa City patrol car. We took refuge behind Mrs. Bruegger's gravestone to avoid being detected for what seemed an inordinate length of time.(Sorry Mrs. B.) We had set off some motion detector lights by the front entrance that I think alerted them to our presence in the cemetery. Use the Brown St. entrance because it is a huge facility and you'd likely get lost if you didn't.
[John Kershner, 09/22/2008]
Black Angel Grave - The Kiss I discovered the Black Angel of Iowa City right here on RoadsideAmerica.com. I took a trip out to Iowa a couple weeks ago and decided to check it out. It is beautiful AND spooky! It can be found in the back portion of Oakland Cemetery at the top of Brown St.
Legend has it that if you kiss the angel, you will die INSTANTLY. I debunked that myth! (...or maybe I just got lucky!)
The statue is made of bronze, and hence has turned black over the years. It is a European angel, not an American one, so its wings and head are lowered toward the grave above which it rests. It's gorgeous and worth checking out!
[theALTERNAtraveler, 12/31/2007]Page of 2 [Next 2 items]
Nearby Offbeat Places
- World's Largest Wooden Nickel, Iowa City, IA - 2 mi.
- Metal Corn Cob, Iowa City, IA - 3 mi.
- Lost Aviator's Lost Family Cemetery, Hills, IA - 8 mi.
- Neon Tree, Lone Tree, IA - 13 mi.
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