A nearly century-old Fox Lake property has made Indiana Landmarks’ 10 Most Endangered, an annual list of Hoosier landmarks in jeopardy, thanks in part to a former Indiana Landmarks board member and a willingness of property owners to work toward preserving the home.
Pryor’s Country Place on Fox Lake near Angola is one of the 10 sites.
Built in 1927 as a vacation home and later converted to an inn, Pryor’s Country Place provided lakeside accommodation and recreation to black vacationers at a time when blacks couldn’t vacation at the popular resorts that attracted whites.
The long-vacant Pryor home occupies a five-acre lakefront site that’s for sale, and land is now at a premium on the lake — an equation that puts the landmark in jeopardy. The home was owned by Albert Pryor, a retired railroad porter.
Carol Karst-Watson, an Angola native and Fox Lake cottage owner who now lives in Noblesville, started working on getting attention for the Pryor home with the hope that it could be restored.
“I’ve seen what’s happened around Angola with the lake homes and became immediately involved” when the property went on the market, Karst-Watson said.
Karst-Watson, a member of the Fox Lake Association, said she contacted the property owners, heirs Hal and Joy Parker, who agreed to allow Indiana Landmarks to promote the possible sale of the property to someone who might restore it.
Karst-Watson herself is in the process of restoring a mid-century cottage west of the Pryor property that hasn’t been altered since its original construction.
“That’s the reason I bought it, because it’s original,” said Karst-Watson, a former Indiana Landmarks board member.
“Places that land on the 10 Most Endangered often face a combination of problems rather than a single threat,” says Marsh Davis, president of Indiana Landmarks, a nonprofit preservation organization. “A bid for demolition is a loud signal, of course, but many of these sites suffer abandonment, neglect, dilapidation, obsolete use, unreasonable above-market sale price, sympathetic owners who simply lack money for repairs, an out-of-the-way location — or its opposite, encroaching sprawl that makes the land more valuable without the landmark.”
Indiana Landmarks populates the 10 Most list with important structures that have reached a dire point.
“Calling attention helps,” says Davis. “These places are not lost causes. All have the potential for revival and reuse.”
“These landmarks preserve connections to community heritage. Time and again, we find that restoring one important place spurs broader revitalization in a community,” Davis adds. Indiana Landmarks uses the Most Endangered list to bring attention to the imperiled sites and find solutions that will ensure their preservation.
For much of the 19th century and well into the 20th, blacks couldn’t vacation at popular resorts that attracted whites. Segregation limited their opportunities to enjoy lakeside summers. In Indiana, white Fort Wayne businessmen in the 1920s saw a financial opportunity in this inequality and bought land around Fox Lake near Angola. They marketed Fox Lake as a resort destination for affluent blacks.
Built in 1927 as a vacation home and later converted to an inn, Pryor’s Country Place provided lakeside accommodation and recreation to black vacationers. The rustic charm of the cobblestone-and-clapboard exterior conveyed a connection to nature.
Rumor and physical evidence suggest that liquor flowed from a lakeside still through a pipe into the inn/speakeasy during prohibition.