The Old Lighthouse Museum: A Guiding Light into the Past

150 years ago, Michigan City, Ind. was a bustling fishing and lumber port, second only to Chicago.  Tens of thousands of tourists and locals gathered on weekends to ride the roller coaster at Washington Park, wade in the cool waters of Lake Michigan and hike the giant Hoosier Slide sand dune.  Now, it’s an industrial town.  Giant pipes from the mills dot the skyline and the faint sound of whistling machinery echoes over the lakefront.  The Hoosier Slide has long disappeared, the tourists have dwindled significantly and one of the only living relics of the once busy port is the lighthouse.

The Michigan City lighthouse, which is still in use today, has been around nearly 200 years and withstood numerous occupants, blistering winters and even abandonment.  Though it began to deteriorate and was almost destroyed, the lighthouse was transformed into the Old Lighthouse Museum and remains a glimpse into Michigan City’s shining history.

“The lighthouse was built in 1837 and was a small, white building at the shoreline,” said Laura Shields, 64, director of the museum.  “In 1858, this building was built to replace the old one, which wasn’t sturdy and was built for only one keeper.”  In 1904 the lighthouse was renovated once more to accommodate the head keeper and their assistant.  It was lived in until 1940 when the lighthouse service was disbanded and the keepers vacated the property.  “At that time no one did anything to preserve the outside.  It was falling apart,” said Jackie Gliden, 82, assistant treasurer of the Michigan City Historical Society (MCHS). 

The lighthouse sat for years, slowly becoming dilapidated.  Seen as an eye sore, plans were made to tear it down and build a new attraction. However, in the mid 1960s the MCHS decided to fight to save and preserve the lighthouse, hoping to transform it into a museum. .  “A lot of people didn’t understand the importance of this building, especially to Lake Michigan history,” Gliden said. “ So the MCHS found people in the local government that felt the same way and they saw the advantages to leaving it up.”  History prevailed, and the MCHS received enough donations to reinstate and protect the lighthouse, eventually converting it into a museum in 1973.  “It took eight years to restore the building and $80,000, which was a fortune back then,” Gliden said. 

The Old Lighthouse Museum, open from November to April, is filled with incredible artifacts from Native American arrowheads to real Fresnel lenses used in the 1800s to objects from shipwrecks to home furnishings from the Victorian era and photos and objects from Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train.  “Everything in the museum has been donated.  It truly is a community depository,” Shields said.  “I would call this the people’s museum.  People go, oh, I have this cool thing and it’s important, what do I do with it? So they bring it here.” 

The Old Lighthouse Museum is a small inspiration that shows the past continues on to be part of the future and memories of the historical significance that once was is treasured.  “It’s all in the eye of the beholder,” Shields said.  “But it’s heartwarming sometimes to see how much people care about this place.”

Building a tomorrow for the House of Tomorrow

Tiny drops of rain fall over the five Century of Progress homes in Beverly Shores, Ind.  It’s a gray, gloomy day and though it’s only rain, the fog and water create the feeling of being stuck in a shaken snow globe.

 The House of Tomorrow sits high atop a hill overlooking Lake Michigan.  It looks far from the way it did in 1935, the year the homes were transported to Beverly Shores from the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.  It looks sad.  Its exterior is covered in torn white Tyrek paper, over grown weeds shoot out from its foundation and there is no sign of human presence.

 The other four homes look much different.

 The Cyprus Log Cabin is completely restored and lived in, the Florida Tropical House is once again painted bubblegum pink and has minimal work left before it can be inhabited and the Wienboldt-Rostone and Armco-Ferro houses are clearly in the process of restoration.  

 It is the lonesome House of Tomorrow, the most visually strange, that remains the only home vacant and virtually untouched for over a decade. 

Finding a new home

The 1933 Chicago World’s Fair was during a time of great loss.  To help repair national pride, the fair included an exhibit of model homes displaying the era’s architectural achievements entitled, “A Century of Progress.”  In 1934, when the fair ended, five of the homes were saved from demolition and moved to Beverly Shores to draw attention to the growing beach town.

 “The fact that the homes came from the Century of Progress fair was integral to the formation of the Beverly Shores community,” said Leo Firme, owner of Save the Dunes Gift Shop and long time resident of Beverly Shores. 

Although each of the homes has its own unique beauty, the House of Tomorrow’s design has made it one of the more intriguing since the homes settled on the shore 77 years ago. 

“In that time, people we very inventive, and this [the House of Tomorrow] is one of the interesting details,” Firme said.  “There’s not many of those places left.”

Inspiration and design for the House of Tomorrow

Chicago architect George Fred Keck designed the home in the early 30’s as an everyday house for people of the near future.  Though the home appears incredibly forward thinking, complete with an airplane hanger next to the garage, Keck got his idea from the 1800s. 

 “It was a forward design, yes, and backward,” said Judy Collins, architectural historian for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  “The design is based on a historic house in Wisconsin.  It’s an octagon shaped house and all the utilities in that house went up through the center.  It dates back to the 1860s and functioned extremely well.”

 When the House of Tomorrow was being built, it was thought that it would be freezing due to the high number of windows.  However, there was tremendous and unexpected heat gain because of the windows.

“Keck essentially rediscovered solar design,” Collins said.

 Unfortunately, the windows were inoperable, and during the summer months the house became so hot that the air conditioner of the time constantly broke down.

“His design was both a success and a bit of a failure at the same time,” Collins said.  “Rediscovering solar heat, but not having a way to get the extra heat out in the summer.”

Once the house was established in Beverly Shores, operable windows were put in to help with the temperature balance of the space.  It was still not enough to make the design sought after.

“Speaking as a designer, I think people relate to what they feel comfortable in and familiar with,” Collins explained.  “People just couldn’t yet see themselves living in modern architecture.”

The process of restoring what time has damaged

The House of Tomorrow was sold to its first private owner in 1938.  Soon after in 1940, it was sold again.  This pattern continued until 1970, when the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, a division of the National Parks Service (NPS) purchased it, along with the four other homes.

Currently, the NPS still owns the property as well as the homes themselves, but they lease them to the Indiana Landmarks organization as part of the Historic Landmarks Leasing Program.  Indiana Landmarks in turn subleases the homes in increments of 30 years to individuals who are financially capable of restoring the homes to their original grandeur. 

The last party who subleased the House of Tomorrow had their lease revoked and did little to start the restoration process on the home.

“The basic rule or approach is that there needs to progress being made and the individuals subleasing the homes need to follow the plan created by the National Parks Service,” said Todd Zeiger, director of the Indiana Landmark’s Northern Regional Office. “Unfortunately, we had to terminate the party’s sublease due to the lack of work underway and the lack of progress that was being made.  The party vacated in late 2006.”

No substantial work was completed and the home has not been subleased to another party since.

“The Structure is fine,” Zeiger said.  “Indiana Landmarks put a new roof on three years ago so it’s water tight.”

However, Collins still believes the House of Tomorrow is more of a ticking bomb and the sooner it can be subleased, the better.

“I’ve been holding my breath because we’ve gone through so many years of no work being done and it’s deteriorating so quickly,” she said.

“The building will likely be a challenging restoration both technically and financially,” said Paul Hayden, community preservation specialist for the Indiana Landmark’s Northern Regional Office.  “The hope would be to put this property into the hands of an individual who appreciates its unique character.”

The community is also waiting for the day the House of Tomorrow will begin its transformation back to its initial, ultramodern condition, bringing the historic lakefront district full circle. 

“It’d be nice to see the House of Tomorrow back to its original state,” Firme said.

Arisen Issues

Though everyone involved with the Century of Progress homes wants The House of Tomorrow to be subleased and rehabbed, getting to that point has been difficult.

“The challenge with the House of Tomorrow has been an ongoing association with the NPS over the terms that we can offer in a sublease,” Zeiger said.  “We’ve not been able to reach an agreement with them that will provide enough incentive as far as time in a sublease.”

The height of the disagreement stems from changes in the program’s regulations that were established in 2000. Both Zeiger and Collins are vague in their explanations on the exact issue the new regulations have uncovered.

“It’s a very sensitive situation,” Collins said.  “The NPS was fully in agreement with the program when it was first put in place, but there have been some questions about the legalities of the agreement that we have between the NPS and Indiana Landmarks after the new regulations were put in place.”

One large issue the NPS has is that the “lease” they have with Indiana Landmarks is in reality more of a contract than a valid lease.

“We’re looking to change it from an agreement to an actual lease,” Collins said.  “We’ve been going through a lot of consultations to make sure we get the correct language in this lease to protect everyone’s interests.”

The disagreement between the two parties has caused a major delay in finding someone to sublease the House of Tomorrow.  Fortunately, Collins said there have been many people interested in subleasing the home and luckily, one person in particular has remained involved for years and is still pursuing the project.   However, until an agreement is reached between the NPS and Indiana Landmarks, all developments are on the back burner. 

“Until we can get this all nailed down with the parks service, we’re not going to be able to find someone to lease the house,” Zeiger said.  “There’s nothing wrong with the property that’s scaring people away, it’s really about the terms we can offer in a sublease.”

The Importance of The House of Tomorrow

While the different departments and organizations may not agree on terms for a new lease quite yet, they all do believe the preservation and restoration of the House of Tomorrow is the highest priority. 

“It has such an important structural style,” Zeiger said.  “It shows innovation, especially for that time, it was so radical.  It’s important for the public to see that storyline of architecture.”

The House of Tomorrow has a special magnetism to it.  After nearly eight decades of harsh weather, several owners and hardly any work done, the home is still hanging on, waiting for the day it can again share its history.

“To restore a building from the past is a gift to the future,” Hayden said.  “It ensures that the best examples of older structures are around for the next generation to enjoy and appreciate.” 

 

Porter County holds on to history

As I walk into the Porter County Museum of History in Valparaiso, Ind., my breath is taken away by how frigid it is inside.  Almost as much as outside, which is a particularly blistering, snowy day.  But I’m prepared. 

Kevin Pazour, 27, executive director of the museum kindly called me a few days earlier to apologize and explain that the museum’s boiler had broke down. 

What takes my breath away even more is the array of artifacts and oddities the building contains, and I’m just in the foyer. 

To my left is a plum colored room, a red velvet chair sits in the corner adorned with real cattle horns.  “Everyone calls that the devil’s chair,” Pazour joked.  A taxidermy dog named Daisy hides under an antique mahogany table and for a second I could swear she blinked.  There’s a mannequin dressed in civil war garb at the top of the stairs, creepily starring out through empty eyes.  On the wall next to the staircase hang three gigantic tribal masks made of woods and grasses from New Guinea.

The museum, which is located in Valparaiso’s old jail and sheriff’s residence, is not only a place for the past of Porter County, Ind., but for history from all over the world.

Since 1916 the Porter County Historical Society has been receiving donations and collecting artifacts to put on display. Unfortunately, due to space constraints many are kept in an overcrowded basement for storage. But now, the pieces are getting a new museum to call home that will carry on their legacies.

“We have a collection of objects, and there’s nothing terrific about objects,” Pazour said, “unless you can put into someone’s mind that these were something important in people’s lives.  That’s the goal with the new museum.”

“History is the story of people. We hope that when we put these new displays together people will see that,” said Paul Bartholomew, 79, chairman of the board of trustees for the museum and one of the primary donators of artifacts.

I can already see that as I’m guided through narrow hallways filled with archaic dolls and photographs into the freezing basement where unused pieces are kept.

 Statues of ancient gods, a seven-foot Mastodon tusk and an odd skeleton of a being that sits eerily hunched over in its faux rock cage greet me in the cellar.  “We don’t know what that thing is yet,” Pazour mischievously said, leaving me wondering whether he’s joking or if I am in fact in the presence of some sort of unknown creature. 

The idea to move the museum to the old police station, which is significantly larger, came about in 2010 and has had its hiccups.

“When we first made plans to move forward the county said absolutely not you don’t have the authority.  And we said, well, we do— we own the contents,” Pazour said.  “But it’s cleared and we’re moving forward.”

The new museum will hopefully be completed by the fall of 2014 and include new additions. “We also want art and sciences to be part of the museum,” Bartholomew said.

With so much to move and an old police station to remodel Pazour, Bartholomew and their teams will be incredibly busy for the next couple years.  But they are happy to do it for the sake of preserving history.  “There are so many incredible discoveries from this area [Porter County] and I think that any time you can illustrate the bigger picture that’s important,” Pazour said, looking to Bartholomew, the veteran history buff, for a retort.  “History is the bigger picture,” Bartholomew said with a coy smile.

I walk out of the museum, passing Daisy, who I could swear moved from when I first arrived, take a last look at the ghostly masks and pull the ancient steel door closed behind me.

The hometown and historical pride from Pazour and Bartholomew is contagious, and I walk away with my head held a little higher.