2015: A year of dreams realized

2015 was truly a year of dreams realized for us. After years of searching, we finally found "The One". It had been a  long journey with many twists and turns along the way. But it looks as if we finally got it right. We found the perfect building that combines our need for shop space with a grand residence.

It has been a long road. In fact our first attempt at finding "The One" led us to St Joe Missouri years ago and a falling down beast of building that we bought only to have to fight tooth and nail with the city to save it.  In the end and from several hundred miles of commute from Indianapolis, it proved to be an insurmountable task. Right kind of building, wrong place.

While it had great potential and needed someone like us we moved on. But we managed to save a nearby house from destruction, but it was lesson learned.

In the interim we have restored several homes, help turn around a couple of neighborhoods in Indy and met some incredibly dedicated fellow preservationists.

We even kicked started a neighborhood in Cincinnati that had been down on its luck for years and we kept a piece of Cincinnati history the Nagele Merz house from its fate with a bulldozer.

We did a home tour and we proved that you can change things if you just try. We hope 2016 will be the year we find someone to complete the work we started with that home and make sure the home stands for another 145 years.

Lots of things have happened, lots of preservation battles fought, some won, some lost, but Greg and I both understand that if you do not try, you do not accomplish.

The Burgman Building may turn out to be our greatest preservation accomplishment, time will tell, but I know we have realized our Preservation Dream, we found "The One".

Small Buildings should be preserved too.

Grand style in a small package

Some preservation organization seem to only care about grand mansions built by famous local architects. However, Indiana Landmarks is different, they apparently believe that good things come in small packages and while they do help save "grand mansions' a lot of their efforts are on saving the everyday workers cottages, small homes and in this case a unique but small commercial building, the Frasier and Isham Law Office in the small town of Fowler Indiana .



Window seats in the bays

The building is a example of the design skills of the firm of J. F. Alexander & Son . The style might best be described as Eclectic in my opinion but the round turreted bays of brick and stone shown "Romanesque'  influence . The Romanesque style is generally reserved for large mansions and government buildings. Its use in a small structure like this is rare.

Can't get more secure than your personal vault

The building is on the registry and Indiana Landmarks has attached protective covenants that will insure its future protection. The property is for sale at 45,000.00. It even has its own vault!
You can see the landmarks listing here. Landmark for sale

Encaustic tile floor

This property has great encaustic tile and woodwork too and perfectly illustrates that our "built history" often comes in small packages.