HANCOCK COUNTY — The Hancock County Highway Department will have to repeat the design process for a new roundabout — at a cost of more than $300,000 — after officials learned a home at the planned location has been designated as historic.
The roundabout is planned to be located at the intersection of County Roads 500 North and Mt. Comfort Road, and it is significant because it is expected to see a heavy flow of traffic as future employees use the roads to access the planned Walmart distribution center to be located in the Mt. Comfort area.
“The historians have had a change of heart on the property on the southeastern corner,” county engineer Gary Pool said. The county had planned to purchase and demolish the property to make way for the roundabout.
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The county highway department will have to redo the work on design, surveying and historical assessment of the intersection, Pool said. It will cost about $373,000, to be paid out of the county Redevelopment Commission fund.
The roundabout will still be built, but its exact location will have to be shifted to the northwest to accommodate the home.
Because the county hopes to receive federal funding for work on renovations to Mt. Comfort Road, an environmental report on the roundabout project was prepared and submitted to the Indiana Department of Transportation and Department of Natural Resources. A spokesman for INDOT said DNR found the home to be of historical value.
Pool said he was told by a consultant when the project was initially considered in 2013 that the home would not be considered historic, but a consultant’s report submitted this year gave a different opinion.
Pool said the home is considered to belong to the architecturally significant Prairie style. Pioneered by Frank Lloyd Wright and more often seen in the Midwest, the style is characterized by simple geometric design, overhanging roofs, and brick or stucco walls. Prairie houses were often made with locally sourced materials.
Candace Hudziak, an architectural historian who prepared this year’s report on the property, said it was evaluated based on criteria used for the National Register of Historic Places. The home has both integrity — meaning it has not been changed much from its original form — and significance, meaning it has historical value.
The home, which Hudziak referred to as the “Steele farmstead,” was built by one of Hancock County’s most prominent families in the early 20th century. The Steele family, which also lent its name to the county’s Steele Cemetery, at one time owned more property in the county than any other landowner.
Hudziak said the home was an artifact of Indiana’s “golden age of farming,” from 1900-1925.
“It was a farmstead at a time in our state when farmers were at the forefront of a lot of innovative technologies,” she said.
It’s also significant for its architectural value, Hudziak said, with a brick structure, decorative windows and other traits of the Prairie style. The home is the only true example of the Prairie style in Hancock County, she said, and equal to examples of the style in Indianapolis.
A resident of Greenfield, Hudziak said she hoped to see the home preserved for future Hancock County generations.
“I wish I could pick that house up and move it next door to me, because I’d love to live there,” she said.
The home’s historical designation will not prevent it from being demolished privately in the future. Hudziak said the government will not prevent the owners from selling the house or tearing it down themselves, but won’t participate as a matter of policy in funding its destruction.
“The federal government doesn’t want to be in the business of tearing down historic houses,” she said.
It is unlikely that the Historic Preservation Office will change its mind, Pool said, although he is consulting with others in the government and even reached out to the office of Gov. Eric Holcomb.
“They don’t really have to listen to me,” Pool said.
Attorney D.J. Davis is representing the family that owns and currently lives in the home.
Davis said his clients retained a lawyer when they learned the county might be interested in buying their house, but they were not opposed to the sale.
The wrench thrown into the project is ironic, Pool said, because the home’s residents were interested in selling. Now, multiple homes will likely have to be demolished, and residents who were not interested in relocating will likely have to do so.
“I had a willing buyer and a willing seller,” he said.
Pool said INDOT is now doing a good job of accelerating the process for his new plans, but he believes there should be a reform of the process for historical designations, which is “completely subjective.”
Though historical value is important, Pool said, it’s also important that the county addresses the safety of an intersection that will see an increase it traffic.
“It’s an important infrastructure asset for the well-being of the county,” he said.