Historic preservation efforts in Logansport are stepping up with plans for an interpretive center and the revival of a board responsible for protecting the area's past.
Logansport Mayor Dave Kitchell wants to bring an interpretive center to Eel River Avenue between Third and East Market streets. The neighborhood is known as Bankers Row, named after the city's early financial leaders who built the historic homes there.
Arrow Head Country Resource Conservation and Development Area Inc. gave the city a $1,000 matching grant to improve the area.
"We are glad to announce that this funding will be used to establish a public area that will enhance Bankers Row by providing background information on the architecture of the neighborhood and the people who lived there," Kitchell said in a press release.
Kitchell said in an interview that remaining funding and securing land for the center will have to be addressed next. He added it could go at 102 Eel River Ave. after the home on the property is torn down through the city's participation in the state's Blight Elimination Program.
Assisting the city with these decisions and more will be the Logansport Historic District Board of Review, which up until recently has remained inactive.
Valerie McCray, Barbara Stein, Paul Kroeger, Jan Newton, Vickie Lebo, Angie Burns and Tom Partridge will serve on the board.
"Historic preservation, done properly, adds value not only to property, but to the tax base and to older downtown areas such as Logansport's," Kitchell said in the release. "We've carefully selected a group of people who represent areas of the city that are historic, some of which have been designated."
Among the board's responsibilities will be finding ways to preserve and enhance Logansport's three historic districts and buildings.
Bankers Row; the area between Third and Sixth streets and East Melbourne Avenue and High Street; and the area between Eel River Avenue, Third Street and East Melbourne Avenue are all listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Eleven Logansport homes are also in the register.
The historic district board of review was started during the administration of Jone Wilson, who served as Logansport mayor in the 1980s.
McCray, an Indianapolis resident and psychiatrist at the Logansport Juvenile Correctional Facility, owns the home on Bankers Row known as the Tower House. She said she's looking forward to serving on the board.
"Logansport has some of the most beautiful historic homes that I've seen," she said. "These houses just need so much love, but the bones of the homes are just worth it, they're very much worth the effort that it's going to take to pull them together."
Kitchell hopes to see the board's efforts expand beyond what's listed in the register as well.
"Logansport currently has three neighborhoods listed on the National Register, but it's our hope that we can raise the bar for historic preservation locally and invest in properties that are truly some of the hidden treasures of Indiana architecture," he said in the release.