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IU, City of Bloomington receive grant for historic building restoration
Aug. 30, 2001
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University and the City of Bloomington have jointly received a $27,000 grant from the State of Indiana to start the restoration process on the historic Legg House near the IU campus.
The Legg House, located at 324 S. Henderson St., represents construction from the 1850s and is one of the oldest homes in Bloomington. It is named after George M. Legg, an early resident of Bloomington.
The property history for the house began in 1820 as seminary lot #74. Later, IU President William Lowe Bryan visited his grandparents there when he was a boy. Bryan later returned to the house for meals around 1890, when the structure was a boarding house. The building, owned by IU, has been used over the years for student housing. It was vacated and boarded up in1993 because of a lack of funds for repairs and renovation.
Lynn Coyne, assistant vice president for administration at IU, and Bob Meadows, university architect, said the federal money is to finance basic exterior stabilization. Plans ultimately call for restoring the interior and using the structure as office space for the university. The grant application noted that "The house is an example of the pre-eminence of local craft, featuring hand-pressed brick and locally quarried limestone, as well as native poplar beams."
The house was nominated for listing with the National Register of Historic Places by the Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission, and the property was listed in the register earlier this year. Chris Sturbaum, chairman of the preservation commission, said the collaboration between IU and Bloomington represents the best interests or historic preservation.
"The city is excited to be a part of the rehabilitation of the historic Legg House," said Bloomington Mayor John Fernandez. "The high visibility of this project should provide a great boost to historic preservation throughout the community and encourage additional efforts by the university and the private sector to preserve and revitalize many of the historic structures surrounding the campus."
Coyne added that IU is pleased to have found a new, creative way to work with the city to meet local historic preservation needs. "The considerable expertise of city personnel and the city's stature in historic preservation were essential in the successful grant application," Coyne said.
The project has been funded in part by a National Park Service Historic Preservation Fund grant administered by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation and Archeology.
(Lynn Coyne, 812-855-4100, lyncoyne@indiana.edu or Nancy Hiestand, 812-349-3507, hiestann@city.bloomington.in.us)