National Register: What it means

GREENCASTLE -- There will be a meeting about what a National Register listing means and does not mean at the First Christian Church at 6 p.m. on May 25 presented by the Heritage Preservation Society of Greencastle.

Speaker for the evening will be Paul Diebold with the Division of Historic Preservation and Archeology (DHPA).

The Heritage Preservation Society is looking at a project that would nominate three Greencastle neighborhoods as historic districts. These are the Eastern Enlargement, Old Greencastle and Northwood Residential Districts.

The largest of the proposed districts is the Eastern Enlargement Historic District that contains approximately 243 resources. Locust and College Streets on the west, Washington Street on the north, Wood Street roughly bound it on the east and Anderson Street on the south.

This historic district was identified in the 1982 Putnam County Interim Report. The area currently proposed includes a few additional blocks adjacent to and northwest of the area that has been traditionally referred as the Eastern Enlargement.

This neighborhood consists of late nineteenth to early twentieth century residential homes and buildings of prominent professional, business and academic citizens of Greencastle.

This area basically encompasses a four-block wide and five-block long stretch of housing that lies between the center of DePauw University campus on the west and the university president's home "the Elms" on the east.

Many of the homes are large with high ceilings, large porches, iron fences and carriage houses.

National Register is a rigorous process that clearly demonstrates that the neighborhood is historically significant. Hopefully it encourages both current residents and future residents to preserve the historic fabric of the neighborhood.

National Register status makes tax credits available to owners of contributing properties and makes it easier to market the neighborhood to people who want to invest in a historic community.

Additionally, the research and documentation that goes into the nomination helps preserve and interpret the neighborhood for the future.

A second area also identified in the 1982 Putnam County Interim Report is the Old Greencastle Historic District. This proposed historic area contains approximately 130 buildings. Madison and Gillespie Streets on the west, Liberty Street on the north, Market and Jackson Streets to the east and Popular Street to the south, roughly bound it.

This area lies adjacent to and immediately to the west of the National Register listed Court House Square Historic District.

"It was only natural that as businesses expanded, the residences of early Greencastle citizens spread in this district," said Phil Gick, president of the Heritage Preservation Society of Putnam County.

This district represents the modest, but comfortable dwellings of Greencastle's workers and business people during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The neighborhood consists mainly of mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century residential resources of a more modest scale and style.

The last of the three districts is the Northwood Historic District, which contains approximately 163 resources and is roughly bounded by Hillsdale Avenue and Northwood Blvd on the west, Shadowlawn Ave on the north, North Arlington Street to the east and East Franklin Street to the south.

"This district was not identified in the 1982 Putnam County Interim Report, but several individual homes were noted as "scattered sites" eligible for listing," said Gick.

"During a site visit by the Division of Historic Preservation and Archeology (DHPA) it was noted that this area retained an extremely high degree of integrity and bore resemblance to the Fall Creek area in Indianapolis," noted Gick.

This neighborhood consists primarily of early to mid-twentieth century residential resources of various period-revival styles.

Putnam County is one of the counties identified by DHPA as being "under-represented in the National Register: and all three proposed districts in this project are "Historic Districts Targeted for National Register Nomination" by DHPA.

First Christian Church is located at 110 S. Indiana St (corner of Indiana and Popular)

This project is funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service's Historic Preservation Fund administered by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology."