“We have a save.”
That’s the news that Peaceful Valley Heritage member Jim Schultz delivered this evening about the Dennis Calvin house in downtown Nashville.
The 100-plus-year-old home on East Main Street was set to be demolished on Monday unless a plan could come together to save it.
At about 5:30 p.m. Friday, Schultz got the email he was waiting for: A donation of about $29,000 was coming — more than what was needed to cover the cost of moving the house, plus some to restore the outside to the way it once looked. So far, the donor is anonymous, Schultz said.
The group now has about six weeks to move the two-story, four-room house, Schultz said. It’ll be placed next door to where it currently sits at 169 E. Main, sharing a parcel with another home of about the same age.
Tonya Figg and Ted Deckard own the yellow tourist home at the corner of East Main and Schoolhouse Lane, and they plan to use the blue house as additional lodging, said Bruce Gould, who had planned to have the blue house torn down if another solution wasn’t found this weekend.
Fleetwood Excavating will go ahead and remove the newer, non-historic additions early next week, possibly Monday, Schultz said.
The Goulds bought the blue house at 169 E. Main St. in the spring. Due to the house’s condition and the taxable value of the land, their plan is to put a pay parking lot on the land until they can form a plan to build a new structure.
An excavator arrived in the driveway this afternoon. Gould said he didn’t want to demolish the home, but keeping it there didn’t make financial sense.
Nashville’s current ordinances do not protect structures from demolition, even if they are historic.
The Dennis Calvin house had been sitting unused for about 15 years before the Goulds bought it and the office building/condo next door.
Since Gould received a demolition permit from the town last month, a movement had been afoot to not only try to save the house, but also others in town that could be sold and demolished at any time.
Several members of local preservation group Peaceful Valley Heritage attended a Nashville Development Review Commission public hearing on Tuesday night, and Schultz spoke with the town council Thursday night.
Speakers asked town leaders to consider instituting a stricter ordinance that would offer some protection to historic buildings, with the aim of preserving Nashville’s heritage.
The town council supported that idea. They unanimously voted this week to take Schultz’s suggestion and form a committee to study a model ordinance from Indiana Landmarks.
Now is the time to look at protecting the rest of Nashville’s structures, many of which could come up for sale within the next few years, Schultz said. The town has no historic district, and its current law only allows for up to a 45-day waiting period before an owner can demolish any building.
“It is our responsibility and privilege to honor the memory of those whose lives made Brown County what it has become today,” Peaceful Valley Heritage member Dorothy Babcock told the DRC.
“Brown County’s historical story is valuable, because without it, we become like so many other places on the map. … The truth is, if we choose to stand by and watch as historic sites are erased from the land, we lose some sense of who we are and where we came from.”
The history
The blue house on East Main Street used to be the home of the John “Dennis” Calvin family.
Dennis Calvin’s grandfather, Timothy Downing Calvin, was among the early settlers of Nashville, coming from southern Ohio in 1854.
T.D. Calvin was appointed postmaster in 1885 — coincidentally, the job Gould held a century later for 27 years.
One of T.D. Calvin’s sons, T.D. Calvin Jr., owned a dry goods store in Nashville. He built an ornate home at Van Buren and Franklin streets in 1875, which still stands.
The middle son, John B. Calvin, built a popular hardware and furniture store on East Main Street opposite the Brown County courthouse. When he died at age 40, the business passed to his sons, 14-year-old John “Dennis” Calvin and 12-year-old William “Duard” Calvin.
Both brothers lived within walking distance of the store, which no longer exists. Duard’s house stood where Peter Grant’s gallery is now, and Dennis’ was the blue house on East Main.
Dennis was elected county sheriff twice before World War I. Both brothers continued to run their hardware business until their deaths in the 1938 and 1944.
