The Old Jeffersonville Historic District encompasses a large swath of downtown Jeffersonville and its neighboring residential neighborhoods along the Ohio River in Clark County, Indiana. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in October 1987, the district was nominated by architectural historian Marty Hedgepeth of Kentuckiana Historical Services. It covers roughly 203 acres bounded by Interstate 65 to the west, Court Avenue to the north, Graham Street to the east, and the Ohio River to the south.
The district was found significant for its architecture, commerce, and transportation. At the time of listing it contained 500 contributing buildings, 87 non-contributing buildings, 6 contributing structures (sections of cast and wrought iron fence), 4 non-contributing structures, and 11 contributing objects. A 2010 amendment relocated one contributing property from 301 East Riverside Drive to 125 W. Chestnut Street within the same district, leaving the resource count unchanged.
Jeffersonville occupies the north bank of the Ohio River directly across from Louisville, Kentucky. It lies upstream from the Falls of the Ohio, the only natural obstruction along the river between Pittsburgh and the Mississippi, and possesses the deepest harbor in this stretch of the river — a geographic fact that anchored its commercial identity for generations.
The city follows a grid-iron street plan running parallel to the river. Within the historic district, most major streets run northeast to southwest. The main exception is Spring Street, the principal commercial spine, which runs five blocks northwest from the riverfront to Warder Park at the district's northwesternmost corner. The present plan replaced an earlier checkerboard layout attributed to President Thomas Jefferson and revised by local attorney John Gwathmey; the current grid has been in place since 1817.
European-American settlement began around 1786 at Fort Finney, a post-Revolutionary military post at the foot of Fort Street between Riverside Drive and the Ohio River. The fort was renamed Fort Steuben in 1787. Jeffersonville was formally organized in June 1802 when Lt. Isaac Bowman — who received the land as part of General George Rogers Clark's military grant — placed 150 acres in the hands of five trustees charged with platting and selling lots. The town served as Clark County seat from 1802 until 1812, when county government moved to Charlestown; it regained that status in 1878.
Although Jeffersonville never challenged Louisville as the region's metropolitan center, it quickly developed a robust economy rooted in river commerce. Efforts to build a canal around the northern end of the Falls of the Ohio in 1805 and again in 1818 both failed for lack of funds; a canal on the southern end finally opened in December 1830, cementing Louisville's dominance. Jeffersonville responded by becoming a premier shipbuilding center. Flatboats and keelboats were constructed there from its earliest years, and in 1848 James Howard opened the Howard Shipyards — the forerunner of Jeffboat, Inc. For more than a century the Howard Yards launched some of the most celebrated vessels on American waters, among them the Robert E. Lee II, the Glendy Burke, and the Mark Twain.
Jeffersonville entered the railroad age in 1852 when its railroad company completed a line to Columbus, connecting with the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad. The two lines merged in 1862 as the Jeffersonville, Madison & Indianapolis, and consolidated with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1873, folding the area into a major national trunk line. The Louisville Bridge, opened in 1870, added a rail crossing of the Ohio River and tightened the bond between river and rail traffic. This convergence of transportation modes spurred the growth of the Ohio Falls Car and Locomotive Company in nearby Clarksville in 1864. Rebuilt after a fire in 1872 and reorganized as the Ohio Falls Car Company, the firm became one of the country's foremost railroad car manufacturers before merging into the American Car & Foundry Company in 1899.
Three Northern railroads converged at Jeffersonville's Ohio River crossing, making the city a natural funnel for Union troops and materiel moving south. Its position was considered more defensible than Louisville because the river lay at its front rather than its rear. During the war the city hosted the large Jefferson General Hospital, rail and river transport terminals, a provost marshal's office, and a hardtack bakery on the site of what is now Warder Park. Congress appropriated $150,000 in 1864 to construct the United States Quartermaster Depot at Jeffersonville. Designed by Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, the completed depot sprawled across four blocks bounded by Tenth, Twelfth, Watt, and Mechanic Streets and remained in operation through the 1950s.
Large numbers of Irish and German immigrants arrived in the two decades before the Civil War. Germans became the dominant immigrant group and constituted 17 percent of the city's population by 1870. Their presence reshaped Spring Street's commercial landscape — Germanic family names such as Spieth, Liebel, Pfau, Kilgus, and Frank appeared on storefronts — and gave rise to institutions like St. Luke's Church on East Maple Street, founded by 25 German families in 1860.
Jeffersonville's first bank, the Exchange Bank of Indiana, opened in 1817 but collapsed in the early 1820s following the Panic of 1819. The Jeffersonville branch of the Bank of the State of Indiana was reorganized as Citizens National Bank in 1865 and eventually became Citizens Bank & Trust, which still occupied the 1907 building at Spring and Court at the time of nomination. Indiana's first state prison was established just west of the district in 1821 — a rude log structure costing $3,000 whose first lessee, Captain Seymour Westover, later died at the Battle of the Alamo. The city's first newspaper followed in 1820; two public schools opened in 1850. One of the era's great social occasions was the 1825 visit of the Marquis de Lafayette.
Jeffersonville endured major Ohio River floods in 1884, 1907, 1933, and 1937, and a tornado in 1890. These events account for much of the loss of 19th-century building stock in the district.
The district's built environment reflects a predominantly middle- and working-class community, with a modest number of residences belonging to merchants and manufacturers of greater means. The architecture is described in the nomination as "not grandiose, but solid, well-built examples of the popular 19th and early 20th century styles." The great majority of surviving 19th-century buildings date from after the Civil War, though a handful of earlier structures recall the city's founding decades.
Spring Street presents a textbook 19th-century commercial streetscape — two to three stories in height, built flush to the sidewalk, predominantly brick, with Italianate and eclectic Victorian details. The 100 block nearest the river has suffered the most from demolition and new construction, but retains the Old Stauss Hotel at 100 East Riverside Drive, a three-story Italianate hostelry with arched windows and a corbeled cornice, started by German immigrants just after the Civil War and run by the same family until the 1940s. The 200–400 blocks are denser and more coherent. The Elk's Club Building at 240 Spring is a three-story, glazed-brick showpiece; the old Bensinger's Building at 242 is a typical 1920s pressed-brick commercial block with a crenelated parapet. The 300 block mixes styles across a wider time range, including several Italianates, the Queen Anne H. M. Frank store at 353, and two standouts from the early 20th century: the LaRose Theatre at 333 (orange glazed brick with terra cotta trim, 1920s, possibly designed by Louisville's Joseph and Joseph firm) and a classical stone facade at 332 with a pedimented entry. In the 400 block, the finest small Italianate in the district occupies 418–420, retaining an original storefront with slender cast-iron columns. The Citizens National Bank Building of 1907 at the corner of Spring and Court is a stone-faced Classical Revival structure adorned with large eagles. The 500 block faces Warder Park; the Masonic Temple at 509 is in pristine condition with an unaltered Classical Revival facade and large portico.
The earliest surviving examples of ambitious residential design are three Greek Revival houses. The Grisamore House (c. 1837) at 111 West Chestnut — separately listed on the National Register in 1983 — is a double house combining the grandeur of a two-story portico with delicate iron rails and fanlights. It was built by brothers David and Wilson Grisamore, who had prospered in Jeffersonville trade. Number 415 East Riverside carries the stately portico most commonly associated with the style, while 313 Pearl offers a smaller, more delicate entry with a side gallery. All three are notable as urban rather than rural expressions of the Greek Revival.
The Italianate is the dominant style throughout the district, appearing in commercial buildings, large residences, and modest shotgun houses alike. Commercial examples on Spring Street display extended cornices and long upper-story windows with decorative lintels. Among residential examples, 318 West Market stands out as the finest house in the district: a two-story, brick, double-bay Italianate that retains its original cast-iron porch and fence virtually unaltered. The largest and most detailed frame Italianates line West Riverside Drive. The exceptional 401 East Chestnut, owned by a railroad engineer in 1907, is a one-story frame shotgun with highly ornate extended window and door hoods, considered one of the finest of its type in the Ohio River region. Number 620 East Maple carries elaborate terra cotta lintels.
Victorian picturesque styles found a receptive audience in a city accustomed to the ornate decoration of the riverboat. Queen Anne examples include 708 and 531 East Maple and the commercial H. M. Frank store at 353 Spring. Eastlake porches appear widely on both two-story houses and shotguns and are often combined with shingled window hoods or decorative lintels. The late Victorian 209 East Chestnut is one of the district's outstanding houses: a richly textured asymmetrical brick dwelling with sandstone trim, a turret, and exquisite leaded-glass doors, recently restored at the time of nomination. It belonged around 1900 to G. H. Holzbog, a carriage and wagon manufacturer.
Four Second Empire survivors remain, all simpler in treatment than the exuberant high-Victorian versions of the style. The most elaborate is 304 West Riverside, a large red brick dwelling with a mansard roof, a tower, and slender cast-iron porch columns.
The 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago rekindled national enthusiasm for classicism, and Jeffersonville shows the influence. The most prominent example is the 1903 Carnegie-endowed Jeffersonville Public Library, designed by Louisville architect Arthur Loomis — a small, stone, symmetrical Beaux-Arts structure with a classical entrance adorned with eagles and a dome that lends the building a sense of monumentality. Loomis also designed the Citizens Trust Bank across the street at Spring and Court (also adorned with eagles), and St. Paul's Episcopal Church. The LeRose Theatre, the Masonic Temple at 509 Spring, and the glazed-brick Elks Club building all reflect the period's enthusiasm for classical vocabulary.
Gothic Revival dominated ecclesiastical construction in Jeffersonville, in part reflecting the large European immigrant population. Smaller congregational churches — St. Luke's, the German Methodist Church at 426 East Maple, and the 1884 Christian Church at 330 East Chestnut — are modest versions of the style with bell towers and stained-glass windows. St. Paul's Episcopal Church at 331 East Market, designed by Arthur Loomis, is the finest Gothic Revival church in the district: a stone building with an outstanding large pointed-arch window with tracery on the facade. St. Augustine's Roman Catholic Church at 301 East Chestnut (built 1905 to replace a church destroyed by fire) is neo-Baroque with a pronounced Spanish flavor — two tall bell towers capped by cupolas — and may be the work of Louisville architect Fred Erhart, who designed the only three neo-Baroque churches in Louisville during the same period. The First Presbyterian Church at 400 East Chestnut is a more monumental brick Gothic Revival building with a soaring steeple and lancet windows.
The shotgun house — a one-story, one-room-wide working-class dwelling found primarily in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys — is well represented throughout the district. Easily adapted to narrow city lots and the decorative fashions of the day, they appear in ornate Victorian versions and in plainer early-20th-century forms with wide moldings and classical porches. Number 521 East Maple is one of the rare "camel-back" variants, in which the rear of the house rises to two stories.
Developed between roughly 1900 and 1920, the American Four-Square gave middle-class families maximum floor space for the money in a boxy, practical form with a large front porch and a dormered roofline. Frame construction predominates in the district. Finer examples carry bay windows and classical porches; Craftsman-influenced shingled variants appear at 832 East Court and 911–915 East Maple.
Bungalows from the period 1915–1930 appear throughout the district in both brick and frame, typically in the one-and-one-half-story configuration with brick-pier or battered-pier porches. Craftsman movement influence shows in shingled examples at 908, 910, and 926 East Maple and 412 Meigs. Number 603 East Maple is notable for its unusual jerkin-head gabled roof.
A scattering of Tudor, Colonial, Cape Cod, and Dutch Colonial revival houses filled remaining lots in the years before World War II. The finest Dutch Colonial in the district stands at 917 East Court. Art Moderne examples are limited to three vernacular buildings: a storefront at 400 Spring, the Chestnut Street School at 407 East Chestnut, and an apartment complex at 961 East Maple — all stuccoed, with casement windows, and possibly WPA projects.
The commercial heart of the district, running five blocks from the Ohio River to Warder Park. Two to three stories, brick, Italianate and Victorian styles dominate. The 100 block nearest the river has been most affected by demolition; the 200–400 blocks are denser and more cohesive; the 500 block faces the park.
Lined with some of the finest residences in the district and described as one of the least-altered and most scenic stretches of the Ohio riverfront in the greater Louisville area. Architecture ranges from Federal-period double houses through large Greek Revival, Italianate, and late Victorian dwellings. Some commercial intrusions and apartment complexes disrupt the streetscape in places.
Primarily shotguns, cottages, and bungalows, with several standout larger structures including the outstanding Italianate at 318 West Market and a Second Empire dwelling at 330.
More markedly residential and intact. The 300 block features large late-19th-century dwellings including the Classical Revival 312 East Market with its Adamesque decoration, and the Gothic Revival stone St. Paul's Episcopal Church at the northeast corner.
Varied across its blocks. The 100 block of West Chestnut holds only two contributing resources — a stuccoed Colonial Revival house and the Grisamore House. The 200 block is primarily bungalows. The 300 block is anchored by St. Augustine's Roman Catholic Church and its Moorish-styled rectory (c. 1925). The 400 block contains the First Presbyterian Church.
The longest northeast-southwest street in the district. It becomes increasingly unaltered from the 500 block onward, with the 600–800 blocks containing only two non-contributing structures. The range of types — Italianate shotguns, American Four-Squares, bungalows, Craftsman houses — makes this one of the richest residential sequences in the district. St. Luke's Church anchors the 300 block.
Historic resources cluster at two ends. The southwestern stretch between Pearl and Wall contains a row of early-20th-century one-story commercial buildings, a simple railroad depot, the 1930s Classical Revival Post Office, and the 1903 Carnegie Library. The 700–900 blocks at the northeastern end are a residential area comparable to East Maple, with the added spaciousness of a wider-than-average street.
Notable for the exceptional Federal townhouse at 313 Pearl — a small building with an inset side veranda, decorative lintels, a cast-iron porch, and a fanlight doorway flanked by two Doric columns, considered one of the finest early residences in the district. Several early 1870s–80s brick houses stand at 321, 336, and 339 Pearl.
An interesting mix anchored by early post-Civil War brick Italianates in the 300 block, a late Queen Anne at 325, and well-preserved bungalow examples in the 400 block, including 425 Meigs with its sunburst porch-gable decoration.
A supplementary listing record amended the original nomination to note that a contributing property previously addressed as 301 East Riverside Drive had been moved to a vacant lot at 125 W. Chestnut Street within the same historic district. The new location was historically occupied by a building of similar scale and character. The total number of contributing resources remained unchanged. The Indiana State Historic Preservation Office was notified of the amendment.
Baird, Lewis C. Baird's History of Clark County, Indiana. Indianapolis: B. F. Brown, 1909.
Fishbaugh, Charles Preston. From Paddle Wheel to Propellers. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1970.
Ford, Henry, and Kate Ford. History of the Falls Cities and Their Counties. Cleveland: L. A. Williams, 1882.
Haffner, Gerald O. A Brief, Informal History of Clark County, Indiana. New Albany, Indiana: Indiana South East Bookstore, 1985.
Kramer, Carl E., and Mary A. Woodward. Clark County, Indiana. Crystal Lake, Illinois: Profile Pub., 1983.
Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1904. Copies held by Historic Landmarks Foundation, Jeffersonville, Indiana.
Nearby Neighborhoods
Street Names
Chestnut Street • Fort Street • Fulton Street • Graham Street • Locust Street • Maple Street • Market Street • Mechanic Street • Meigs Avenue • Mulberry Street • Ohio Avenue • Pearl Street • Riverside Drive • Spring Street • Wall Street • Walnut Street • Watt Street