Bandshell Park is a small square in downtown Ames, on the east side of the historic district. Its centrepiece is a limestone-and-brick bandshell built in 1935 as a Works Progress Administration project — one of the few surviving Depression-era bandshells in Iowa, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
It still serves its original purpose. The Ames Municipal Band plays free Thursday-evening concerts here through the summer, a small-town tradition that has run almost continuously since 1936. Worth a wander even off-season for the architecture and the surrounding mature trees.