State Exchange Bank Building, Culver, Indiana:
the bank that Good Will built
Though the assignment that incited this paper instructed one to “find a public historic building in (my) community that (I) believe is successfully preserved,” I chose instead to focus on a building that is presently underutilized and in urgent need of preservation work. This required special permission from the professor, archival research, and gaining physical access to decaying, wet, and moldy portions of the building not accessible to the public.
My research findings spurred interest by the building’s owners, as well as other community stakeholders, and there is now a nucleus of what may become a serious preservation effort.