This includes the “BLOCK” portion of the building’s nameplate, which fell the night of the fire and has been donated to the Bartholomew County Historical Society, said Curator and Collections Manager Jared Anderson. The “IRWIN” sign, which he believes is in better shape, will remain with the building’s owners.
The Irwin Block Building was irreparably damaged in a Dec. 3 fire, which resulted in a large portion of its third-story facade collapsing onto the sidewalk and street at both the front and the back of the structure. The building, located at 422 Fifth St., is being torn down by Casey-Bertram of Indianapolis.
Local and state investigators ruled the cause of the blaze as “undetermined,” meaning that they were unable to find enough physical evidence or evidence obtained from witnesses that would indicate what caused the fire.
“Our director was in contact with the building owners,” said Anderson. “Tricia Gilson had in the newspaper, just last week, an article on behalf of CIAA (Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives). And the momentum over the last few weeks — I know our director spoke with the mayor and just has been in contact with the building owners, the Hege sisters. And so we’ve just been talking with them, and they decided that things should be salvaged.”
In discussing the “BLOCK” sign, Anderson said that the society’s research had indicated that locals thought it was created from some kind of stone material. Upon receiving it, they were surprised to discover that it was actually metal.
Workers have also removed pieces of stained glass from the building. One window was able to be salvaged and was given to the owners, and the historical society has received several fragments that it hopes to eventually reassemble with help from a local artist.
They have also been given various materials such as bricks and wood, and a stove that was built in Columbus about 100 or more years ago. They’re also in the process of getting other items such as slate tiles, detail work and pressed metal from the building.
“Something that I encouraged them to save, not necessarily for us but for the building owners, was some of the Vitrolite glass on the front,” Anderson said. “There’s only two other buildings downtown with this Vitrolite. … And so they were able to salvage some of that; I don’t know what the building owners are going to do with it from there. And it’s a very rare building material today — in fact, you’ll notice the Crump has quite a few pieces of greenish Vitrolite.”
The historical society hopes to exhibit the items it receives from the Irwin Block Building. However, Anderson noted that since the historical society has about 100,000 artifacts overall and hopes to keep expanding, they can only display so many objects at a time.
He said that the society might create an exhibit on different disasters and fires that have occurred over the years.
For the complete story and more photos, see Monday’s Republic.
