New Carlisle Historical District

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New Carlisle Historic District History New Carlisle typifies the sort of trading center that served a thriving agricultural community such as existed in northwestern St. Joseph and northeastern LaPorte counties for over a hundred years. One might have found similar towns over many parts of Indiana and the Midwest from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Its commercial district survives remarkably intact, with an architectural identity that visually identifies and represents the town that is New Carlisle. Residents of such towns, particularly its merchants, professionals, and retired farmers from the surrounding area,built homes representative of the prevailing styles of the period. Many such houses survive in the New Carlisle Historic District. They encompass a remarkably full range of architectural styles that were popular and likely to be built in a small Midwestern town prospering in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the district embraces one of the best collections to be found in northern Indiana. In 1835 speculator Richard Carlisle purchased the land upon which New Carlisle now stands and platted the village that bears his name. Its main street,Michigan, was in fact the newly constructed Michigan Road platted one hundred feet wide, which in far northern Indiana ran west from South Bend to Michigan City along a route approximating present US 20. The house at 230 West Michigan, while altered, probably dates from this early period of the 1830s. The dwelling is also notable as the home and general store of George W. Matthews,New Carlisle's • first postmaster and stepfather of Schuyler Colfax(United States Vice-President under Grant), who is believed to have lived here from about 1836 to 1841. At least one other dwelling on Michigan Street probably dates to the pre-railroad period, the Abraham Pyle house at 102 West Michigan,built in the Greek Revival style about 1850. Along the Michigan Road a commercial center developed within Richard Carlisle's original plat, primarily in the 100 East block of Michigan Street. While most of the earliest business establishments were frame buildings, these soon gave way to more substantial brick structures, especially in the decades following the Civil War. Many of these very buildings survive in the downtown commercial block that forms the northeastern part of the district. Among them are the Warner Drug Store building (135 East Michigan), constructed in 1874, an excellent example as well of Italianate commercial architecture, and 133 East Michigan, a Queen Anne commercial structure probably built in 1882. The town's advantageous location on one of the few main improved roads across the state had been further enhanced in 1851 when the Lake Shore Railroad (later Lake Shore and Michigan Southern) laid down its tracks through New Carlisle at the bottom of the hill roughly paralleling the Michigan Road that was two to three blocks upwards to the south. In the late 1870s the line was absorbed by the New York Central system, and remained so until recent years, when it became Conrail. After the turn of the century, two interurban companies,the Chicago Lake Shore and South Bend Railway(later the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad) and the Northern Indiana Railway served New Carlisle, running alongside the New York Central tracks. The latter company failed during the Depression and its tracks were removed, but the venerable South Shore continues to this day. •