Window Treatment in Cottage Home, Indianapolis, IN

Local Window Treatment Experience in Cottage Home

Twenty two years of building and a 123 year gap

German American working families built modest frame cottages here from 1870, and the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis puts the houses between 1870 and 1892, with new construction largely ended by 1915. The plat record matches: Cottage Home Addition was recorded on 9 September 1870 and Long and Harlan's Cottage Home Addition on 28 October 1891. Then nothing under the Cottage Home name for over a century, until Dorman Square's Cottage Home Addition on 16 September 2014, a replat of Lot 8 on 22 April 2016 and DS Cottage Home Addition on 13 October 2016. The neighborhood also went through a restoration boom in the 1980s and early 1990s, driven by rising values and an active neighborhood organization, which is rehabilitation of the original fabric rather than new platting.

So a Cottage Home address is either an 1870s to 1890s frame cottage that has been through a 1980s or 1990s rehabilitation, or a house built in the last twelve years on a 2014 to 2016 plat. Those are opposite measuring jobs one door apart. The style list runs gable front, L-plan and cross gable vernacular cottage plus shotgun, Folk Victorian and Queen Anne, with Italianate commercial and industrial fabric on Dorman and the 10th Street edge and later Art Deco industrial work. The landmark exception is Frederick Ruskaup's brick Queen Anne at 711 Dorman Street, designed by Vonnegut and Bohn, alongside a Dorman Street commercial building and five duplexes he built.

Thin walls, narrow casing, and the shallowest reveal downtown

Frame construction with real wood jambs, applied casing, counterweight pockets and plaster returns, with storm panels common and aluminum or vinyl cladding over original trim on some elevations. On a shotgun or gable front cottage the wall is thin, the casing is narrow and the reveal is shallow, so an inside mount runs out of mounting depth faster here than anywhere else near downtown. We confirm depth at the stop against the specific cassette or headrail before quoting one, every time, because on this stock the answer is frequently that it won't hold and an outside mount is the better product anyway.

The houses are 134 to 156 years old, frame rather than masonry, on shallow nineteenth century foundations, and many went through a rehabilitation in the 1980s or early 1990s that moved trim and openings again. Assume out of square, assume the head and sill differ, and assume no two openings in one cottage repeat. We photograph existing conditions before anything is removed. The 2014 to 2016 houses on the same street are factory square with drywall returns, and the contrast inside one block is stark. On exposure this is a cardinal grid, so Dorman and Highland carry east and west fronts with one side of each taking full afternoon sun, while St. Clair and the 10th and Michigan edges take north or south fronts.

What suits a small nineteenth century cottage

Scale and depth drive everything. These are small rooms with few openings, so each treatment is a larger share of what you see, and the shallow reveal means face and above trim mounting rather than inside mounts in most of the house. Because the exterior is inside the certificate requirement while the interior isn't, we also sequence the conversation deliberately: interior product can be ordered now, and anything fixed outside the building gets checked with the commission first.

Streets, landmarks and schools

The neighborhood is bounded by a CSX right of way between the I-70 and I-65 north split and Dorman Street on the west, 10th Street on the north, Oriental Street on the east and Michigan Street on the south, with Dorman, North Highland Avenue and East St. Clair Street inside. The interstate cut through the west edge is the defining piece of its modern geography. It sits about three quarters of a mile from Massachusetts Avenue and within walking distance of the Bottleworks District, with Arsenal Technical High School next door. Sidewalks line gridded streets shaded by mature trees. A public magnet and a public charter both operate within the neighborhood boundary, and the district is Indianapolis Public Schools.

A public commission rather than a private association

There's no homeowners association here and no recorded architectural control committee. What governs exterior work is the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission under the 2008 conservation district designation, which is a public body with statutory authority rather than a private board. The neighborhood organization is real and active, credited with driving the restoration boom of the 1980s and early 1990s and with running the Cottage Home Block Party, but it doesn't issue approvals. Two levels of commission designation sit over this neighborhood at once, because the layer separately records the Ruskaup-Ratcliffe House and Store as an individual property inside a district that is itself designated. If your address is one of those, treat the individual designation as the stricter reading and ask the commission before anything goes on the outside of the building.

Window Treatment Services in Cottage Home

Every service Indianapolis Window Treatments offers across Indianapolis is available to Cottage Home homeowners.

Indianapolis Plus the Small Towns Around It

Cottage Home is one of several Indianapolis communities we serve. We measure and install across Indianapolis, Marion County, and surrounding areas.

Cottage Home Window Treatment FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Cottage Home homeowners.