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NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86) • United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 7 Page 1 Dille/Probst House, St. Joseph County, Indiana Narrative Description The Dille/Probst House is a two -and -one-half story Queen Anne style house with wood balloon frame construction and a yellow "Notre Dame" brick veneer (photos 1 - 5). The house has a "T" -shaped plan with the front or main section of the house as the body of the "T" and the rear one-third of the house as the wider top of the "T." There is a hipped roof covering the front two-thirds and a flat roof on the rear section. Fenestration is mostly consistent throughout the building, with all windows of a similar style and proportion. The Queen Anne style features are modest and include: an asymmetrical facade and silhouette, a corner polygonal tower, a steeply pitched hipped roof and texture contrasts between the brick facade and the pressed metal string course. What makes the house outstanding however, are the strong Eastlake influences it exhibits. The house faces north onto Colfax Avenue, in a mixed residential/business area, where other buildings of the same period still stand. The Dille/Probst House originally stood at 334 North Hill Street, one-half block east and two blocks north of its current location at 520 East Colfax Avenue (photo 11). The owners sold the house to a nearby hospital in 1986, who planned to demolish the house for a parking lot. Local preservation groups launched an effort to save the building, led by the local Main Street group, Center City Associates (CCA). This group took great pains to retain the historic integrity of the house and relocated it in 1987 within the same neighborhood on a block that resembled its original surroundings. A turn -of -the -century brick commercial building stood next door on Hill Street, as one does on Colfax Avenue. CCA consulted with David Kroll, State Historical Architect with the Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, and followed his guidelines for the design of a new foundation for the building. This foundation consists of a poured concrete floor, textured concrete block walls, and recessed glass block windows to form a basement the length and width of the house. On the east side, a steel basement door leads out to a concrete stairwell to ground level. Despite CCA's painstaking efforts, the house was not an easy sell as they had anticipated, and stood vacant for five years. In 1992, Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana purchased, renovated and adapted the house for use as their Northern Regional Office. • The house sits on a lot in a dense urban area, similar to its original surroundings. The house fills most of the lot, but surrounding grounds were landscaped with sod, trees and perennial flowers. In order to accommodate the house's adapted use as office space, a