Indiana Landmarks awards rural communities for restoration efforts
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Indiana Landmarks is recognizing two organizations in rural Indiana communities for their work in historic preservation.
The not-for-profit is awarding its 2023 Sandi Servaas Memorial Awards to the Flora Community Club in Carroll County and the Montpelier History Club in Blackford County.
The annual award is named for a former Indiana Landmarks employee and preservation advocate who died in 1975. It recognizes two winners, one in an organizational category and another for service to youth.
The Flora Community Club, this year’s organizational winner, worked to repurpose a 1908 railroad depot for use as a local history museum in the town 25 miles northeast of Lafayette.
The Vandalia Railroad Depot served daily passenger and freight trains for 50 years before closing. The depot was moved from its original location in 1969 and served as a laundromat until 2003 when a customer’s gas-soaked clothes caused a damaging fire.
With grants from Indiana Landmarks and the local Carroll County Community Foundation, the Flora Community Club hired architect Dann Keiser to help restore the building, which had been considered for demolition. The depot reopened in September after the club raised $400,000 for reconstruction.
Melissa Bishop, who served as project chairman, said in an Indiana Landmarks news release that the building holds special significance for a town that’s lost other historic buildings over the years.
“That the Flora Community Club had no idea what it was doing when it committed to saving the depot is an understatement,” Bishop said. “We may have gone into it not having any idea how it was going to turn out, but we did try very hard to make sure we were doing the right thing.”
Indiana Landmarks recognized the Montpelier History Club as its youth-serving winner this year for the work of educator Ryan Ingram. Ingram formed the club in 2017 to share his love of history with students of all ages in the city 45 miles south of Fort Wayne.
Students have taken field trips to local landmarks, like a bank robbed by John Dillinger in 1933, and have worked on community projects, like cleaning the headstones in a local cemetery. They’ve also engaged in projects, including transcribing writings for the publication of a book called The Letter of B.G. Shinn Correspondence of a Civil War Solider from Montpelier, Indiana, and creating a series of history videos tracing lost landmarks.
“I want the kids to know where all of this was, to see Montpelier the way I saw it as a kid and instill a desire to protect what we have left,” Ingram said in the news release. “We have a saying that History Club is not just about being better historians but becoming better people. They learn etiquette and community pride, what it means to take care of each other and our community.”
For their work, the Flora Community Club was awarded $2,000 and the Montpelier History Club was given $1,000. Both will receive a a sculpture called “No Doors to Lock Out the Past” by the late Evansville artist John McNaughton.