LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Neighbors who live along the hill that includes Cathedral of St. Mary, in a neighborhood just up from downtown Lafayette that takes its name from the 152-year-old church, tell about the day in February 2017 when church officials invited them to sit down and see drawings of the congregation’s future.
The pictures, marked as a master plan and snapped into cellphones by St. Mary’s Neighborhood residents, showed a future parish office near the corner of Columbia and 11th streets; an addition to St. Mary School on the other side of the cathedral, along one full block of 13th Street; and a circle drive that would feed what is now the back of the elementary building, leading from Columbia Street.
Ivy Meyer, who lives across from the church on McGrath Street and who works at Northside Music Co. a block away, said several people asked about the house the church had owned since 2000 at 1014 South St. The two-story, red brick Italianate building was on the master plan drawings, too.
Meyer said she and others came away with the understanding that the church planned to keep it and restore it, as the sketches showed, for a rectory. She said she asked about the wrought iron fence that surrounded the property and was just as old as the house. That, too, she said she was told, would stay.
“It sounded great,” Meyer said, noting how odd it had been to meet with church leaders about building plans and architecture, given the rocky relationship in recent years over those very two things.
On Tuesday morning, Cathedral of St. Mary representatives will ask the city to start the clock on a 60-day waiting period for a demolition of the house and the accompanying carriage house at 1014 South St.
Joe Bumbleburg, St. Mary’s attorney, said he and Mike Gibson, the church’s building committee chairman, will bring revised pictures of what the church – the home parish for Lafayette Bishop Timothy Doherty – hopes to build in the coming years.
The demolition permit filed with the city’s economic development office indicates the church intends to clear the lot to build a new rectory – a plan touched off an online petition that had more than 1,000 signatures within 24 hours and a social media call to arms to save a house marked as “notable” in the inventory of structures in the St. Mary Historic District.
And if someone wants the house, as it is? “It’s my guess that we’d go for that,” Bumbleburg said.
Matthew Weller, vice president of the Wabash Valley Trust for Historic Preservation, said he has serious doubts about the one-for-one, new-for-old guarantee on the replacement being proposed.
But Weller said he understands that as far as the city goes, Tuesday’s meeting is more of a formality than a genuine opportunity to stop the demolition permit.
The St. Mary Historic District is one of Lafayette’s 10 National Historic Districts, which offer recognition for the housing stock but very little actual protection from demolition. John Collier, Lafayette’s assistant director of economic development, said the 60-day wait – “more or less enough time to think through whether there are other options,” he said – is the only restriction the city may impose on private property. In local historic districts, such as in the Lafayette’s Downtown and Upper Main historic districts, the city’s Historic Preservation Commission has authority to give a thumbs down to any significant change to the outside of a structure. Not so in national historic districts.
Weller said the petition was more aimed at the conscience of church leaders, to get their attention in hopes of getting St. Mary leaders to back away this time.
Weller, whose group promotes preserving Greater Lafayette’s oldest housing stock and assembles annual lists of endangered, significant structures, called the house at 1014 South St. one of Lafayette’s best examples of Italianate architecture.
According to its listing in the National Register of Historic Places, 1014 South St. was building in 1884 for Meyer Rose, a partner in a cigar factory and an early leader in Lafayette’s Jewish community. The house is brick with a limestone foundation, sills and accents, including limestone crown window hoods. The wrought iron fence was handmade on site when the house was built, according to the National Register of Historic Places.
The house changed hands a number of times in more than a century. The house and the carriage house have been converted into apartments in recent decades.
This would be the fourth 19th century building on St. Mary property to come down since 2011.
Starting in 2010, though, the church went through a protracted fight with its St. Mary Historic District neighbors up and down South and Columbia streets when it announced plans to raze houses at 1211 and 1213 Columbia St.
Neighbors responded by pushing for a local historic district that would have given the city more control over demolition plans. After a year of discussions, the Lafayette City Council rejected the idea, with council members saying they hadn’t heard complete buy-in among neighbors for the tougher regulations.
That was in August 2011. St. Mary offered the houses at no charge – along with cash equal to what it would take to demolish the homes – to anyone who was willing to move them. Estimates at the time ranged in the $200,000 range to get a lot and move the structures. As neighbors tried to work out details, the church eventually pulled the plug and razed the houses to make way for what was going to be a school playground. That was in October 2011.
Weller said moving the building would be difficult and expensive – probably more difficult and so expensive that no one without deep pockets will be in a position to do.
Weller said the Trust is trying to meet with St. Mary leaders. (Gibson did not immediately respond to messages from the J&C this week.) Names keep adding to the online petition at Change.org. And the Trust will be there Tuesday to make its pitch, no matter how futile, to the Lafayette Board of Works, so the concerns are spoken into the record.
The clock starts ticking Tuesday for 1014 South St.
IF YOU GO: A hearing for the Cathedral of St. Mary’s proposed demolition permit for 1014 South St. will be 9 a.m. Tuesday on the first floor of Lafayette City Hall, 20 N. Sixth St.