Greenfield Residential Historic District Window Treatment From Greenfield Window Treatments

Local Window Treatment Experience in Greenfield Residential Historic District

523 contributing buildings between Riley Park and the Square

The 2011 nomination counts 523 contributing buildings, one contributing site and fifteen contributing structures across a period of significance running about 1880 to 1947. Eight named styles appear: Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Neoclassical, Mission Revival and Craftsman bungalow. The district is predominantly two story with a substantial bungalow and cottage component, though that ratio is not published as a figure. Neither are lot sizes or a district price band. Greenfield's citywide median home value is $216,400 and owner occupancy is 64.9 percent, the lowest of the four Hancock County places in this batch, which is what a county seat with a nineteenth century rental stock looks like on paper.

Two houses of about 1947 in this district are Lustrons, and they need naming separately. A Lustron is a prefabricated house whose walls, inside and out, are porcelain enameled steel panels. There is no wood in the wall to take a fastener anywhere. Owners hang pictures with magnets. That is a mounting problem that exists nowhere else in Hancock County, and it is not solved by showing up with a longer screw. Beyond those two, the district's fabric is real wood jambs with molded casing and plaster returns in the oldest houses, which is a different mounting decision again from the 6,755 Greenfield houses built since 1980 with drywall returns and no applied casing at all.

18 to 28 openings, and almost no two of them alike

A two story Queen Anne or Italianate in this district runs 18 to 28 openings once basement and attic are counted; a Craftsman bungalow runs 12 to 18. Those figures are inference from the district's sourced styles and dates rather than from a survey, and we say so on the estimate. What is not inference is the variety. High head heights on tall narrow openings, transoms over front doors, Queen Anne bays and the occasional angled or turret opening, leaded or stained panels in the stair opening, and Craftsman multi light upper panels over a single light below. A house on Walnut Street can carry six different opening sizes on one elevation.

Depth is the second problem and it hides well. Real wood jambs with molded casing normally give you plenty of room, but a very high share of these houses carry an added storm panel build up on the outside that removes about an inch and a half of usable inside mount depth. You do not see it from inside the room. You find it with a tape at the stop. Squareness is the third problem: 79 to 146 year old frame on Hancock County clay, and openings that were true in 1905 are not true now. Lutron's 1/16 inch per side factory deduction is calculated for a square opening, and on a 1 inch out of square opening it produces a light gap on one side and a bind on the other.

What works on an 1880 to 1947 house on West Main

Because nothing repeats in this district, the productive move is picking treatments that tolerate an out of square opening rather than fighting it. Anything that mounts on the wall above and outside the opening is forgiving. Anything that must fit inside a 120 year old opening to a sixteenth of an inch is not. National pricing ranges are the only honest ones for Greenfield: shutters $175 to $800 per window, drapery $300 to $4,000, custom treatments $250 to $2,600. Fabrication is 2 to 5 weeks. Work over $150 gets a written contract with scope, dates and total price under the Indiana Home Improvement Contract Act (IC 24-5-11), and we're insured and insured.

West Main, Riley Park and the streets behind them

The district runs west from the Courthouse Square along W Main St with Pennsylvania, Walnut, Lincoln, Grant and Douglas filling in either side, and Fourth and Fifth Streets crossing them. James Whitcomb Riley's birthplace at 250 W Main St is separately listed on the National Register and gives the Riley Festival its name. The Charles Barr House at 25 W Walnut St, St. Michael's Catholic Church of 1898, the Chair Factory of about 1880 and Lincoln Park School at 600 W North St are all inside the boundary, and Riley Park and the Pennsy Trail sit at the western end. Everything here feeds Greenfield-Central schools and everything is walking distance to the Square.

National Register listing is not design review

This is the fact people in the Residential Historic District get wrong most often. Listing on the National Register in 2011 gave the 523 contributing buildings recognition and tax credit eligibility. It did not create a design ordinance, and for most of the district there is no body with authority over what you hang inside your own windows or outside them. Greenfield's Historic Board of Review does hold Certificate of Appropriateness authority, but its map covers the Courthouse Square plus properties flanking State and Main for several blocks, so a house at the eastern end of this belt can fall under review while one on Douglas Street does not. No recorded covenant on window covering color was found anywhere in Greenfield. The Planning Department holds the mapped edge at 317-477-4320.

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