Built-environment reversals and industrial survivals: the church that left by rail, the elevator, the living sign

1915 · the survivals tested as of November 2026

The reversal is total: a church left town by train. St. Mary's Episcopal church, New Carlisle's Episcopal building, was moved by rail out of town in 1915 and re-erected in East Chicago as the Church of the Good Shepherd — a congregation's whole building riding the same railroad corridor that built the town, printed here from the banked parish record. Against that departure, two industrial survivals stand in daily use. Zahl's Elevator and Feed Mill, at 301 East Michigan Street, is the old line still working: the Zahl family came to New Carlisle and opened a first feed mill in the 1930s, moved to the present site and added an elevator to handle grain, and the firm passed in 1991 from the second generation of the Carl Zahl family to Doug and Mary Anne Millar, whose own site still presents the business in the present tense, read November 2026 — though one directory listing consulted marks the firm "permanently closed," and that variance prints unresolved, its settler the firm's own word at the counter. The second survival is alive in the literal sense: the Studebaker tree sign at Bendix Woods — thousands of pines planted in 1938 on the Studebaker proving ground spelling STUDEBAKER for the air — still stands, was listed on the National Register, and was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1987 as the world's longest living advertisement. A church exported by rail; an elevator still taking grain; an advertisement that outlived its company by sixty years and counting. The built environment of this town does not stay where, or as what, it was put.

Sources:

1. The banked parish record of this build (St. Mary's Episcopal moved by rail, 1915, becoming Good Shepherd, East Chicago).
2. Zahl's Elevator and Feed Mill, the firm's own site, zahlsfeed.com, read November 2026 (the 1930s first mill, the move and elevator, the 1991 purchase by Doug and Mary Anne Millar); a places-directory listing marking the firm permanently closed, consulted November 2026 — variance printed, not resolved.
3. St. Joseph County Parks / Bendix Woods record and the National Register listing for the Studebaker tree sign (planted 1938; Guinness Book of World Records, 1987, world's longest living advertisement) — read November 2026.