Peace Finds a New Home in Muscatine, Iowa

Muscatine, Iowa is like a lot of Midwestern cities of its size, known by most for something it no longer does. It is known as the Pearl City because of its roots as a button making hub. Muscatine made its name by making mother-of-pearl buttons punched from the abundant clam shells found in the Mississippi River and by the 1898, Iowa turned out 138,615,696 buttons — most from Muscatine.

Today, the button business is gone. And up the hill from the Mississippi River, which forms the southeast edge of city and border with Illinois, the downtown includes many historic buildings from that era that now house restaurants, law offices and a smattering of retail stories.

Nestled among them is a building that isn’t quite like the others. The Stanley Center for Peace and Security is a modern, two story building that is the first in Iowa to achieve the rigorous Living Building Challenge certification — just the fourth renovated building and 35th in the world to receive the sustainable building design standard.

The primary goal of the center is to educate and inspire others to be mindful of the planet, the opportunities for action, and the importance of diverse perspectives. The organization champions sustainability and global peace, which is reflected in the Stanley Center, a building that is 100% self sufficient.

While Muscatine is known for its pearl buttons — and now, one of the most environmentally friendly peace centers in the world — it is also home to HNI Corp. and its HON and Allsteel brands. And while the Stanley Center for Peace and Security is not a HNI initiative, the company, its founder and its employees are closely tied to the center and its efforts. The company also supplied the furniture for the Stanley Center, which was a vacant 1970s-era public library. It was a project that pushed HON and Allsteel to rethink its own environmental efforts and review the green pedigree of its products.

None of this would have happened without the vision of Maxwell Stanley, an Iowa native and founder of the company that would become HNI. The story begins during World War II: While the war was still raging, Stanley teamed up with his brother-in-law to launch a kitchen cabinetry company called Home-O-Nize. They had big ideas but ran headlong into a wartime economy where metal was all but untouchable. Undeterred, Stanley did what all great entrepreneurs do. He pivoted. Instead of cabinets, they produced what they could: coasters, recipe books, small accessories — items that could keep the lights on and the dream alive.

And when steel finally returned to the market, Stanley was ready. Filing cabinets and office furniture began rolling off the line, and they sold as quickly as they were made. That company, Home-O-Nize, soon rebranded to HON, which grew into what we know today as HNI, one of the office furniture industry’s major players.

The war had left its mark, and Stanley was convinced there had to be better ways to resolve conflict than bullets and bombs. He believed in the power of diplomacy, of international cooperation, and the need to work across cultures and belief systems to build lasting peace. His wife, Betty, was right there beside him. Stanley dove headfirst into the world of peacebuilding. But when he realized the world might not be ready for the lofty ideals of a “world federation,” he decided to create something more tangible. In 1956, the Stanley Foundation was born. The Foundation became a way for Max and Betty to channel support to causes they believed in. Stanley wasn’t content with simply building furniture. He wanted to build a better world. And through HNI, the Stanley Foundation and the legacy of peace conferences he helped organize, the Stanley Center for Peace and Security was born and continues to thrive today, as exemplified in its Muscatine headquarters.

When it was time to furnish the building, Stanley Center turned to its hometown furniture company for help. Lisa Brunie-McDermott, HNI director of corporate social responsibility said the Stanley Center helped jumpstart the company’s effort of getting to 100% chemical transparency. The first step was to get a few products Declare labeled. Declare is a platform created by the International Living Future Institute to share and find healthy building products. Manufacturers voluntarily disclose product information on Declare labels, which are accessible on a free database used by designers, real estate owners and conscientious homeowners to specify products they know they can trust.

Finding a furniture solution that contributed to the overall mission of the Living Building certification was one the Allsteel team readily accepted. Sharing the desire to push the boundaries on sustainability, Allsteel made strategic engineering changes to products already in their portfolio, including architectural products, Beyond and Aspect as well as Silea Private Offices by Gunlocke, earning Allsteel’s first ever Declare labels. These furniture selections prioritize sustainable materials, manufacturing processes, and end-of-life considerations, aligning with the principles of the Living Building Challenge.

“We were truly honored to embark on this design journey alongside The Stanley Center,” said Jason Heredia, vice president, product design and marketing for Allsteel. “Being included and entrusted with furnishing the Stanley Center is a testament to our commitment to transforming workplaces for the better, and we share a common mission of advancing sustainability initiatives in our home state of Iowa. Every aspect of the space has been meticulously considered, and the dedication to sustainability and fostering innovation was evident throughout the entire process. It has been remarkable to be part of bringing the Stanley Center’s vision to life.”

The project changed HNI’s focus from simply creating environmentally friendly products to digging into its supply chain. The chemical information about the products used on the Stanley Center project went from 400 lines of chemical information to 5,000 lines.

“So we were really focused on (achieving needed environmental goals) before the Stanley Center project, making sure we removed the red line chemicals,” said Brunie-McDermott. “And then from there we’ve continued to work on HPDs (health product declarations) and have that as part of our overall continued effort of increasing transparency, increasing chemical elimination and removing chemicals from our products. So this project was not stress free, I would say. There was a time crunch and a real need to get that information from our suppliers, but it definitely jumpstarted our activity in a very focused way.”

Keith Porter, the president and chief executive officer of the Stanley Center for Peace and Security, said other building product manufacturers weren’t as eager or able as HNI to provide the information needed to achieve its Living Building Challenge goals. It also helped that HNI is literally just down the street from the center.

“We had a mandate to locally source materials,” he said. “It was really helpful to have a company right here in town that could play such a role in that, particularly on the architectural walls.”

The main floor of the Stanley Center is dedicated to education. On a recent visit, a kindergarten class was touring the facility, which was being used as a tool to teach the students the importance of recycling, reducing consumption and reusing things when possible. A courtyard has gardens with vegetables that the students can sample. And the mechanicals of the building — hidden in most facilities — are a teaching tool as well, showing how water can be captured and reused.

Upstairs are the offices for the center’s 26 staff members. The offices were built with equity in mind — each roughly 10 feet square. Everyone on staff received height adjustable workstations.

Local Muscatine architects, Neumann Monson, which designed the nearby HNI headquarters, also designed the Stanley Center.

The building officially opened in June 2023 and since that time, has hosted more than 10,000 visitors. In fact, it has become something of a tourist attraction in Muscatine. Tourists arriving by riverboats that run up and down the Mississippi River have the option of scheduling a visit to the Stanley Center.

Work on the Stanley Center continues to drive HNI toward sustainable products and components, said John Koch, who leads the product marketing and development teams at HNI. “It’s transformed the whole way in which we now develop product. We think differently about solving meaningful customer problems,” he said. “Where before it was pockets here and there (discussing sustainability), now it’s holistic.”

In many ways, the Stanley Center for Peace and Security has been better known nationally and internationally than it has been in its own community. Its offices were always tucked away on the upper floors of nondescript buildings around Muscatine. Now the Stanley Center is central to the community and a shining example of how a community like Muscatine can embrace the missions of peace and education.

The pearl buttons is gone, save for the National Pearl Button Museum on 2nd Street. Perhaps a better moniker for Muscatine today would be Peace City.