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• May is National Preservation Month, and there are several historic activities planned locally. One of which will be the Pizza and Preservation historic window repair workshop, slated for 6 p.m. May 24. It will be held at the Vintage Fire Museum and Safety Education Center at 411 E. Spring St. in New Albany. Reservations are required, and can be made by calling Indiana Landmarks at 812-284-4534 or by email at south@indianalandmarks.org.

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May 17, 2012

Historic New Albany tour to wind through East Spring Street, Midtown

New historic brochure will be available during Sunday stroll

By DANIEL SUDDEATH daniel.suddeath@newsandtribune.com

NEW ALBANY — In correlation with National Historic Preservation Month, a free walking tour of New Albany’s Midtown neighborhood will be held Sunday beginning at 3 p.m.

Among the stops on the tour, participants will stroll through the historic East Spring Street neighborhood, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The new walking tour brochure will also be available Sunday, as the pamphlet details 61 historic structures in the East Spring Street Historic District. The brochure was funded via a Historic Preservation Education Grant from the Indiana Humanities Council and Indiana Landmarks.

It was designed locally at the Indiana University Southeast Design Center. The pamphlet is the third in a series of historic walking tour brochures, as the first edition focused on downtown and the second Mansion Row.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re not going to stop at number three because there are other neighborhoods that we need to do this exact same thing for,” Floyd County Historian Dave Barksdale said.

Barksdale along with Greg Sekula, director of Indiana Landmarks’ Southern Regional Office, will guide the tour Sunday. It will depart at 3 p.m. from the front of the Vintage Fire Museum and Safety Education Center, which is located at 411 E. Spring St., and is expected to last about two hours.

“East Spring Street and Midtown are just wonderful examples of historic architecture,” Barksdale said.

Indiana Landmarks touts the area as a “rich array of residential, commercial and religious structures in a variety of architectural styles, dating from the mid-19th Century to the mid-20th centuries.”

More than 100 years ago the area was home to mostly middle class residents, but Barksdale said there was a good mix of economic groups in the neighborhoods.

“I don’t know if you’d call it a melting pot, but yet you had your prominent business owners and you might of had your laborers practically living next door to each other,” he said.

Reservations aren’t required for the walking tour, and the event is sponsored by the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association, Develop New Albany, the New Albany Historic Preservation Commission and Indiana Landmarks.

Though there’s only one tour, people can utilize the brochure as a self-guide if they would like to walk through the neighborhoods in the future. Barksdale said they will likely be available at several locations including the Padgett Museum.

Barksdale is seeking churches and businesses that would display brochures at their locations so people can pick one up in the future. For more information, call Barksdale at 502-751-9686.

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