Window Treatment in Woodruff Place, Indianapolis

Local Window Treatment Experience in Woodruff Place

Eighty acres, four streets and a plan twenty years older than the houses

The sequence matters. Woodruff purchased 80 acres and subdivided in 1872, the Panic of 1873 collapsed his finances, and development stalled for two decades before the 1890s boom filled the Drives in. So the layout belongs to the Second Empire moment and the buildings belong to the Queen Anne one. It was an independent incorporated town from 1876, and it stayed independent for the better part of a century. Indianapolis charged the town $25,000 for police and fire protection in 1953, the town fought annexation all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and it finally surrendered on 20 March 1962.

Brandt Steele, son of the painter T.C. Steele, designed the houses at 798 and 811 East Drive, which is the sort of detail that tells you what kind of place this was. Lots are generous, fronting the three boulevards across 80 acres. Residents give their address by Drive rather than by street number alone, which we haven't found anywhere else in the city and which is worth knowing when you book a measure. The esplanades, the statuary and the fountains are contributing features of the historic district in their own right, not decoration that happens to be there.

Incised trim, uniform orientation and a shaded front elevation

Depth isn't the issue in these houses. Deep wood jambs with heavy applied casing are the norm and an inside mount usually has room. The complication is the Eastlake-Stick detailing, because incised and turned trim around an opening can prevent a clean bracket fixing on the face. A face fixed bracket needs a flat, continuous surface to land on, and carved or turned work gives you neither. That pushes the mount either inside the opening, where the depth is generous, or onto a header board sized to span the decorative work and land on something solid at each end.

The light situation is genuinely unusual and worth planning around rather than fighting. Front rooms look into a planted esplanade, so the frontage is filtered rather than open, all day, all year in the leaf season. Rear elevations don't have that benefit. On a typical Woodruff Place house that means the front rooms can carry a more open fabric than their orientation would suggest, while the back of the same house behaves like any other Victorian in the city. We walk the whole house rather than assume the frontage tells you about the rest of it.

What we specify most in Woodruff Place

No median sale price was published separately for Woodruff Place when we last checked, so we won't invent one. What we can say is that a 24 to 34 opening house with carved surrounds and a shaded frontage is a project where the trim decisions matter as much as the fabric ones. National figures put custom shades at roughly $250 to $2,600 a window, wood blinds and shutters $175 to $800, and exterior shades and awnings $1,000 to $6,000 installed. The exterior numbers come with a certificate conversation attached in this district, which is worth having before you fall for a product.

Getting around Woodruff Place

This is a near east side enclave immediately east of downtown, adjoining the Arsenal Technical High School campus. The entrance gates, the esplanades and the fountains make the boundary obvious in a way most Indianapolis neighborhoods aren't, and people navigate by Drive rather than by cross street. The nine tiered fountains include three at the Cross Drive intersections. The Brandt Steele houses at 798 and 811 East Drive are the two addresses architecture people ask about. If you're booking a measure here, give us the Drive as well as the number, because West, Middle and East all carry the same house numbers.

What the commission reaches here, including the esplanades

There's no homeowners association. IHPC is the reviewing body, and the certificate requirement in IC 36-7-11.1-9(a) covers constructing any exterior architectural structure or feature in a historic area, along with reconstructing or altering any such exterior or designated interior feature. In Woodruff Place that language reaches further than the houses, because the esplanades, the fountains and the cast iron statuary are contributing exterior features of the district in their own right. For window treatments the line is the same as everywhere else in the seventeen districts: interior blinds, shades, shutters and drapery aren't caught in the ordinary case, and anything fixed to the outside of the building is. Exemptions are set district by district under IC 36-7-11.1-7(a) and this district's preservation plan wasn't readable, so confirm exterior items with IHPC rather than assuming.

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