The thirty-year watch: the Merchant Huxford House

c. 1854 — designated 2014

The endangered list's longest resident: The Dr. Merchant W. Huxford House at 520 Tennessee Avenue is a Greek Revival house of about 1854 — the Historic Preservation Commission's designation report dates it c. 1854; ARCH's own publications have also printed c. 1845 and c. 1855, and the variants are carried here rather than reconciled — built for a pharmacist who was Fort Wayne's fifth mayor. The Commission's report calls it one of approximately four substantial Greek Revival houses surviving in the city. Local folklore, recorded in the same report, maintains that its basement timbers were salvaged from the demolition of the last building of the final Fort Wayne; a dendrochronological study of the timbers has since been published, and the folklore is printed here as the report prints it — as folklore.

ARCH, by its executive director's account, had kept an eye on the building for thirty years. It stood at the head of the Most Endangered Structures list announced November 17, 2010 — "threatened with vacancy and decay," the Journal Gazette's report said — and topped the list again in November 2012. The ending was not demolition but adoption: ARCH acquired the house, and on ARCH's own petition the City Council designated the Dr. Merchant Huxford House a single-site local historic district in July 2014 (Ordinance S-14-07-06; Commission case of June 23, 2014). A $20,000 city facade grant followed for the exterior work, and ARCH's history closes the arc in its ledger style: "rescuing stabilizing and selling the c. 1855 Merchant Huxford House." Not every entry on those lists ended so. The S. F. Bowser building on Creighton Avenue, named on the 2012 endangered list after the police department vacated it, was torn down in 2016.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne Historic Preservation Commission staff report, Case HPC 6-23-14-LHD-1 (June 23, 2014), and Ordinance S-14-07-06 — the c. 1854 date, the Greek Revival rarity, the timber folklore, Huxford's mayoralty, and the designation.
2. Journal Gazette, "Endangered structures, ARCHie winners named" (November 15, 2012), and Sarah Janssen, Journal Gazette (November 16, 2012) — the 2010 and 2012 endangered listings; Around Fort Wayne (November 17, 2010) for the 2010 list.
3. ARCH Inc., "Becoming ARCH" (archfw.org), and the Allen County Genealogical Society's Huxford House and ARCH pages — the thirty-year watch, the facade grant, the rescue-stabilize-sell outcome, and the Bowser building's 2016 demolition.
4. William E. Whittaker, dendrochronological study of the Huxford House timbers — the published attempt to test the fort-timber account.