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The town of Cumberland, in Marion County, is one of Indiana's "10 Most Endangered" places.

Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana's "Ten Most Endangered List"

The people of Indiana are proud of their heritage, and are some of the most active in the country at working to preserve historic landmarks. Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana is the largest preservations group in the country. Around 7,200 members work year-round to raise public awareness and preserve significant sites. Each year they publish a “10 Most Endangered” list of Hoosier landmarks in danger of extinction. Below is this year’s list, followed by an update on what’s happened to the endangered landmarks on the 1999 list.

A free brochure published by Historic Landmarks includes photos and information on what can be done to save the 10 landmarks. To request a copy of the brochure, contact Historic Landmarks Foundation, 340 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202; 317-639-4534 or 800-450-4534; www.historiclandmarks.org.

"The 10 Most Endangered list has generated 27 saves since we introduced it ten years ago, and has seen only five losses," said J. Reid Williamson Jr., president of the nonprofit historic preservation group. "We like those odds." Three of the ten entries are new to the list. "The list doesn't turn over completely every year because finding solutions to challenging properties can sometimes take years," Williamson added. "They remain on the list because they remain our top priorities." Historic Landmarks Foundation works with individuals - including owners who often welcome the help - and local groups to save the properties on the most endangered list.

Indiana's historic bridges were built to last - but they are being tested by ignorance and bureaucracy. Iron and steel spans have been especially hard-hit; since 1987, Indiana has lost nearly 65 percent of the iron and steel spans built in the state between 1860 and 1930. Historic concrete bridges and even rarer, picturesque covered bridges are not safe, either. Decision-making processes, interests vested in bridge replacement, and lack of information - not bridges' structural integrity - combine to doom historic spans. Experts point out that upgrading a historic bridge to meet current needs and standards is usually cheaper - and much more aesthetically and culturally rewarding - than demolition and new construction, but the opportunity to convey this message usually comes too late, long after alternatives could be considered.

The Switzerland County Commissioners want to make room for a new jail by bulldozing the Vevay Roller Mill, a three-story, brick structure whose earliest section dates to 1819 and which still contains nearly all of the original grain-milling equipment. The fast-moving nature of industrial change means that very few places remain to show us the manufacturing methods and environment of the 1950s, let alone the 1850s. But the Vevay Roller Mill, believed to be the first steam-driven mill in the state, remains a picture of the state of 19th-century industrial art. The Federal-style flour mill - built in 1819 with additions in 1826 and 1858 - still contains milling equipment that spans the continuum from steam-powered machinery to World War II. The county owns this treasure, and so far the mill's supporters have not swayed the commissioners' resolve to tear it down. And with a new casino opening in 2001, determination to build a new jail is only growing.

Sprawl - the land-gobbling expansion of highways, strip centers and superstores in formerly rural areas - threatens Cumberland, a historic town that straddles the old National Road (U.S. 40) on the eastern edge of Marion County. Named after the town in Maryland where the National Road began in 1806, the charming Indiana village prospered with the nation's westward migration during the nineteenth century. But Cumberland's small-town scale and distinctive historic character, which transportation helped create, soon may be erased by the Indiana Department of Transportation's plans to widen U.S. 40. Convincing INDOT to stick with the current width of U.S. 40 would spare the historic buildings and trees that are the heart of old Cumberland. Preservation and conservation easements and land use controls would also help protect Cumberland's historic properties from the sprawl that surrounds it.

U.S. Quartermaster Depot, bounded by 10th, 12th, Watt and Mechanic Streets, Jeffersonville, Clark County

The City of Jeffersonville bought a year's reprieve for the threatened U.S. Quartermaster Depot, an immense 1874 complex on a busy state highway in the Ohio River town of Jeffersonville. The City has secured a one-year lease on the property from the investor group that had been marketing the site as cleared land, but development pressure has made finding a solution for the massive property even more urgent. Outfitting an army takes lots of space, four square blocks of 250,000 square feet, to be exact. From 1871 through World War II, the former U.S. Army Quartermaster Depot stored, repaired, invented, manufactured and distributed Army necessities - from saddles to cook stoves, uniforms to medical supplies. The brick quadrangle and center buildings were designed in the Greek Revival style by noted architect General Montgomery Meigs. Since its auction by the government more than 40 years ago, the complex has housed retail, commercial and manufacturing businesses - with plenty of empty space to spare. The deteriorating Quartermaster Depot appeared on the 10 Most Endangered list in 1996 before it was sold to local investors. The landmark needs a master developer who can capitalize on the distinctive character of the depot to recruit a viable mix of uses.

More than just a stopping place for travelers, the Terre Haute House was the grand hotel in town, the social center of the city, and a symbol of the downtown. Built in 1927 on a site occupied by hotels since 1837, the nine-story Terre Haute House still looms large in the city's landscape and consciousness. Sadly, recent proposals for reuse have fallen short on financing and vision. Meanwhile, the landmark - vacant for 30 years - continues to deteriorate, undergoing slow demolition by neglect. Though it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, razing the structure has been proposed by those who see its vacant and deteriorated state as an impediment to downtown revitalization. The building is structurally sound and could be restored to its original use or adapted to a new purpose. A visionary developer with a solid plan for reuse could save the Terre Haute House - and enjoy the support of a majority of the public who keep hoping for a solution that will restore downtown's signature building.

T.C. Steele Boyhood Home, 110 South Cross Street, Waveland, Montgomery County

One of Indiana's most important artists, Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926) first started painting and drawing at age five, thanks to an uncle's gift of a paint set. Steele grew up perfecting his craft in a Greek Revival-style cottage in Waveland, Indiana, where he lived from 1852 to 1870. When Steele was 13, his prep school hired him to teach drawing to his fellow students. Steele completed 40 portraits before leaving Waveland in 1870.

However, the setting that fostered Steele's artistic talent has not fared as well as his much-visited home and studio in Brown County, Indiana. Vacancy, deterioration and a proposed highway project threaten the cottage. Simple recognition of its importance could save it.

Drexel Hall, U.S. 421 at entrance to St. Joseph's College, Rensselaer, Jasper County

Built in 1888 as St. Joseph's Indian Normal School and later part of St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, which still owns the building, Drexel Hall is threatened by modern-age sprawl, which crouches within a few hundred feet of the landmark. Philadelphia banking heiress and nun Katharine Drexel, recently canonized by the Catholic Church, funded the construction of St. Joseph's Indian Normal School to educate American Indians for assimilation into the white culture. Believing that such schools were a way to "civilize" the West, the U.S. government funded the school's operation until it closed in 1896. The building then became Drexel Hall, one of the first structures of the new St. Joseph's College. Drexel Hall's location across from the entrance to the College and at the entrance to the town give added visibility to what is widely regarded as the most historic structure in the community after the county courthouse. The vacant and deteriorating Drexel Hall needs immediate repairs, but the good news is that the college administration has created a task force to consider Historic Landmarks' recommendation to adapt the Hall as hotel, restaurant and office space in the center of a larger residential development.

Fairmount High School, South Vine and East Jefferson streets, Fairmount, Grant County

Screen icon James Dean did his first acting in the third-floor auditorium of Fairmount High School, built in 1898 with two additions in later years. Before his death in 1955, Dean often returned to the school to visit his former drama teacher. Closed as a school in 1986, Fairmount High occupies an entire city block in the heart of a historic neighborhood. A youth basketball league owns the property now, but uses only the separate gymnasium building, while the high school itself continues to deteriorate. Other famous graduates of Fairmount High include CBS correspondent Phil Jones and Garfield creator Jim Davis. The school desperately needs stabilization while a buyer can be found who has the means and vision to make the Romanesque Revival and Neoclassical structure useful again.

An obsolete original use has left the handsome Neoclassical Union Station in Gary stranded in the river of time, but a new use could revive the 1910 landmark, which has been vacant since the 1950s.Union Station appears near the top of every list of significant landmarks in Gary. It's hard to miss. Thousands of daily travelers on the Indiana Toll Road notice both its architectural grandeur and its dire condition - most of the windows are gone and large sections of the roof as well. Built as a proud symbol of Gary's core industry, the steel-reinforced Union Station boasts the traditional Neoclassical vocabulary - keystones, quoins, dentils, lozenges and garlands - all executed in poured-in-place concrete. In the hunt for a new use for Union Station, its very visible location and distinguished architecture are valuable pluses. A $25,000 Efroymson Fund grant to Historic Landmarks Foundation and a $600,000 federal grant to the city for restoration of the station as a visitors center and museum of the city's steel heritage have provided reason for hope, but plans must move quickly before escalating deterioration dooms the effort.

Simpson and Beecher Halls, Indiana School for the Deaf, 1200 East 42nd Street, Indianapolis, Marion County

When the two grand Neoclassical buildings on the National Register-listed campus of the Indiana School for the Deaf were threatened with demolition in 1998, supporters of reusing the structures managed to slow the decision-making process. But the buildings - built between 1907-1911 and significant for Indiana's pioneering role in educating deaf students, as well as for their aesthetic value - aren't out of the woods yet. The state's allocation of $1.7 million to demolish the buildings still stands, though Historic Landmarks spent $30,000 to stabilize the structures and conduct a structural and reuse study, buying the halls some time.

The esteemed firm of Rubush and Hunter designed the Indiana school's second campus starting in 1907, and six of the seven buildings in Rubush and Hunter's plan remain, including Simpson and Beecher Halls. The school owes its listing in the National Register of Historic Places in part to the intact and relatively unaltered condition of the original structures. (Rubush and Hunter also designed the Circle, Indiana, and Walker theatres, Circle Tower, Columbia Club, and Indiana State Museum - originally City Hall.) Simpson and Beecher Halls are vacant, but the Indiana School for the Deaf's Advisory Board favors renovation to meet the school's need for more space, a position supported by a majority of ISD's students, parents and alumni.

Long Beach Town Center, Long Beach (LaPorte County): Pro-preservation forces and a grant from Historic Landmarks Foundation proved to skeptics on the town council that the 1931 building could be expanded to remain in use as town offices.

Stinesville Main Street, Stinesville (Monroe County): Weaving together several sources of funding allowed the Town of Stinesville to complete its purchase of the row of nineteenth-century limestone buildings. Stabilization work and a reuse plan for the rescued buildings are in progress now.

Snow Hill Covered Bridge, north of Rockdale (Franklin County): Franklin County Commissioners educated themselves and secured the funding necessary to upgrade the 1895 bridge so it can support increased weight loads, and continue to serve people traveling around the area and to and from Cincinnati.

Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, the largest statewide preservation group in the U.S., saves and protects buildings and places of architectural and historical significance. From its network of eight offices across the state, Historic Landmarks leads and assists individuals, organizations and communities in preserving and revitalizing endangered landmarks through education, advocacy, and financial support. A private, not-for-profit organization, Historic Landmarks seeks to enrich contemporary life and leave a legacy of landmarks. For more information, call Historic Landmarks at 317-639-4534 or 800-450-4534; www.historiclandmarks.org. Photographs and text provided by Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana. Used with permission.