Two more historic buildings on downtown Burlington’s Jefferson Street are slated for major improvements. 

Cynthia and Lonnie Schuyler plan to invest between $1.75 million and $2 million in the Bookend Buildings spanning 512-522 Jefferson St. to create seven upper-story apartment units, a ground-floor cafe and retail space, and a rooftop garden.

It’s a plan that’s been in the making since June 2002, when Lonnie, a native of Oregon, first laid eyes on the properties while he and Cynthia were visiting her hometown from Los Angeles. 

“We stood in front of those buildings and he said to me, ‘We should change our lives. We should move here and we should become part of this community to change this downtown’, ” Cynthia recalled. “We stood right where Original Cyns is (now at 520 Jefferson St.) and he said, ‘Look at this architecture, look at these buildings, look at the possibility of this downtown. There's so much we could do here.’ “

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So they moved to Burlington and got married on Oct. 2, 2022. Now the general manager of Shottenkirk in Quincy, Illinois, Lonnie started selling cars at Shottenkirk Fort Madison. Cynthia set up shop above Nature's Corner, which was owned and operated by her parents at 423 Jefferson St., opening Original Cyns in the building's upper story in 2003.

The two immersed themselves in the downtown. Lonnie, who had been an actor and writer in L.A., founded the Snake Alley Festival of Film in 2011. Cynthia continued to run her business while participating in Downtown Partners, through which she met other business owners and downtown enthusiasts.

Meanwhile, the Bookend Buildings sat unused yet admired by passersby.

"Everybody loves those buildings. They're gorgeous, they're historic, they're just an icon for our downtown," Cynthia said. "They'd always been on my back burner."

The Bookend Buildings — also known as the Forey and Mellinger Buildings — were constructed in 1883 by brothers-in-law J.M. Forney and Samuel Mellinger. They wanted to build identical, three-story, brick business buildings to "bookend" the smaller two-story brick building estimated to have been constructed in 1856 in the middle of the half-block they had purchased in 1966 after retiring from the sawmill business, according to the State Historical Society of Iowa.

"Each owned a building," Cynthia said. "Those headers on the tops of the buildings were the things like, ‘my building’s taller, my building’s higher’."

Only 522 Jefferson has retained its header.

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The buildings have seen varied uses, including by Bell & Co. retail grocers, Flint Hill Overall Factory, Henry Foehlinger furniture store, A.F. Miller chemical works, People's Clothing Co., Tradehome Shoes, Independent Institute of Osteopathic and Magnetic Healing, Singer Sewing Machine Co., the first of Edward Stiles' six Nifti-Thrift stores, Spudnut Donut Shop, a lighting fixture company, a saloon, a bank, restaurants, candy manufacturing and upper-story apartments.

The buildings also have historic roots in the arts, with 512 Jefferson having housed Ostrander Dancing Academy in the 1890s, and 522 Jefferson seeing use by the Main School of Fine Arts in the early 1930s and the Hazelton Studio of Modern Arts in the second half of that decade.

Ownership of 512-522 Jefferson St. was transferred from the Forney family to Samuel Mellinger in July 1899.

His estate sold the properties in November 1917, with 512 Jefferson and the eastern half of the middle building being purchased by Bankers Block and Co. and 522 Jefferson and the western half of the middle building going to Burlington Railway and Light Co.

The buildings went neglected as vacancies grew more frequent, then constant, and Downtown Partners Inc. acquired 512-522 Jefferson St. in 2011.

Downtown Partners uncovered the Italianate facade of the middle building, which had been cladded over in the 1960s, and began to clean out the interiors of the buildings.

Cynthia and her father had talked about the possibility of buying the buildings when she first moved back to Burlington, but it wasn't until after Downtown Partners took it over that that became a reality.

"There were structural issues and they were going to fall over essentially," Cynthia recalled. "I remember saying to Becky Anderson (a local real estate developer), 'you should really buy those buildings,' and she said, 'no, you should buy those buildings'."

In 2012, the Schuylers met with Dennis Hinkle, who at the time was president of the Greater Burlington Partnership, which includes Downtown Partners. Hinkle informed her they could get a $75,000 grant to whitebox the middle building. The grant money wouldn't go far, but the Schuylers decided to seize on the opportunity regardless.

Hinkle also parceled out the buildings to separate the west Bookend Building from the eastern two and gave the Schuylers first right of refusal on 522 Jefferson St. Thanks to that parceling, along with revenue earned from Original Cyn's, they purchased 512-520 Jefferson St. in August 2012, transferred ownership to Sky and Sea Properties LLC in February 2013 and set about relocating Original Cyns to 520 Jefferson. The store saw its grand opening there in October 2014.

2013 was a busy year for the Schuylers. Cynthia also opened C-Sky Boutique in 417 Jefferson St., which she and Lonnie had purchased in 2003, and bought 522 Jefferson that October after another offer had been made on the property.

The Schyulers did work on the back of the Bookend Buildings to ensure their structural integrity, redid the facades of two of their buildings, and planned to continue with interior work to 522 and 512 Jefferson, but those plans were stalled when Cynthia got a phone call she'd been longing for.

"We were almost done with (520 Jefferson) and I was moving Original Cyns down the street from 421 1/2 Jefferson to 520 and then we get a call about the baby," Cynthia said. "There was a baby born at the hospital who needed parents, and that's who we are. We're Tyler Schuyler's parents."

It was early August 2014, and an expectant mother was looking for a family to adopt her child due to be born in October. The baby came early, and the Schuylers found themselves the proud parents of a 4-pound newborn son on Aug. 24.

"All of our plans got put on hold," Cynthia said. "We had these huge, lofty amazing plans when we purchased the buildings, and then there was a child the next year."

They adopted their daughter, Cassie, in 2016.

Cynthia's days were split between diapers, driving to construction sites so her son could see in real life the equipment he'd watched "Blippi" operate, and running her businesses, which grew to include Little Brown Duck, a children's boutique next to Original Cyns whose shelves are made from wood recovered from the building's basement, and Nature's Corner, which she took over from her parents in 2020.

With their children now in elementary school, the Schuylers are ready to pick back up where they left off with the Bookend Buildings.

Much of the work on 522 Jefferson's ground floor has been completed. The brick is exposed and wood framework for restroom and kitchen space spans from floor to ceiling, of which four layers had to be removed.

"The '60s and '70s did nothing for architecture for our downtown," Cynthia said Friday while surveying the work that's been completed on the future cafe area before climbing a newly installed set of stairs leading to what will be the entryway for the upper-story living space.

Marks on the entryway's north wall show where a set of stairs once was, replaced temporarily by a small ladder that Cynthia used to climb to the second floor, whose contents have been cleared, save for a large desk once used by a bank.

"Just to clear something out and see the next phase of it is so cool," she said after walking through the third floor's narrow hallway beneath 20-foot ceilings and into a room overlooking Jefferson Street. "Everything was here, all the desks, everything."

The upper story of 512 Jefferson is another story.

"It was a lighting company," Jon Hazell, another downtown enthusiast and developer who moved back to Burlington around the same time as the Schuylers told the Burlington City Council on Monday while presenting plans for the buildings on behalf of Sky and Sea Properties LLC. "It's almost a museum piece."

Wood shelves filled with light fixtures line the walls of the third floor.

"It looks like the people walked out of the office one day and that was it," Cynthia said. "It was almost like it stood still in time."

She plans to hire someone to go through the left-behind items to see if anything of historic value is there. Items that can be salvaged, reused or repurposed will be, as has been the case with the Schuylers' other properties.

"There are so many treasures," she said of discoveries made during remodeling.

One such discovery was a panel of Frank Lloyd Wright glass above Corked 101 and Little Brown Duck.

"We had to take that and send it to a specialty place to have it cleaned and redone," Cynthia said. "It’s the only thing that Frank Lloyd Wright did as glass. He designed a plate of glass. We had to find a specialty historic place to redo that. And all of this wood can be redone."

Cynthia expressed excitement over downtown Burlington's transformation over the past decade and attributed much of its progress to support from those who shop local.

"That is how community works. That is how these little towns work," she said. "You've invested in your downtown, and look what's happened. Your dollars that you spent in your downtown translate into the shifting and redoing of your downtown."