John Steely, a real estate broker, and Lewis Lichty, an attorney who owned the Waterloo Canning Company, bought the property known as sandhill in 1901, and opened an office for the Highland Land Company in the Century Building in 1905.

They are all frame construction with exteriors composed of wood, stucco, brick and stone.

Waterloo architect Mortimer B. Cleveland is responsible for designing at least 39 of the houses here.

Chicago landscape architect Howard Evarts Weed designed the Square and boulevard plantings.

[2] It became the enclave for the city's industrial and professional elite in the first half of the 20th century.