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1975 — present
Preservation by ownership: ARCH's distinctive method, from its early years, was to put the organization's own name on the deed. The Operation Preservation revolving fund, created with the Junior League, was used to move two historic homes from their original locations — where, ARCH's history says, they were going to be demolished — to lots in a healthy historic residential neighborhood that had become a parking lot, and return them to residential use. The fund's logic became a standing practice: rescue, stabilize, sell, and in some cases keep. ARCH completed the restoration of Fort Wayne's Canal House and successfully nominated the William E. Edsall House to the National Register, after which the house was incorporated into plans for a downtown affordable-housing project.
The properties ARCH itself has held tell the method's range: the c. 1840 Mary Rockhill-Tyler House, rescued and owned by ARCH — its board voted in February 2020 to convert it from an occasionally used house museum back to a viable residential rental, its original purpose; the houses at 1016 Broadway (rescued, stabilized, sold) and 1014 Broadway (kept and rented); and the 1841 Alexander T. Rankin House at 818 Lafayette Street, acquired, restored, and occupied as ARCH's own office. The Merchant Huxford House, the longest of these stories, has its own entry below.
Sources:
- ARCH Inc., "Becoming ARCH" (archfw.org) — the revolving fund and the two moved houses, the Canal House restoration, the Edsall nomination, and the Rockhill-Tyler, Broadway and Rankin properties, including the February 2020 Rockhill-Tyler decision.