LOGANSPORT, Ind. (AP) - After 20-odd years renovating historic buildings across several states, Paul Willham wants to “wind down.” But for him, that means buying another building - and this time, it’s in Logansport.
Willham and business partner Gregory Drake recently bought the 1880s-era Burgman building at the corner 15th and Smead streets, where they plan to extensively restore its historic architecture and open a storefront for their Victorian-period interior design firm.
Willham and Drake own and operate Victorian Antiquities and Design, a restoration consultation and antique dealership business, and say they intend to restore the Burgman building to U.S. Secretary of the Interior standards for historic preservation - ultimately hoping to seek national designation as a historic property.
The pair, who call Indianapolis home and own several properties in Cincinnati and elsewhere, said they’ve been looking for the perfect building for about five years across a five-to-six-state area in the Midwest. They had formerly operated a storefront in the Midland Arts and Antiques Center in Indianapolis for several years, Willham said, before moving their business online.
“This building in Indianapolis would cost over $1 million,” Willham told the Pharos-Tribune (https://bit.ly/1HZf5bs ). It had been listed for sale at an asking price of $39,900.
The Burgman building was originally built in 1884 to house Ferd and Gustav Burgman’s grocery and saloon. The family members started their business shortly after their arrival to Logansport in 1859, according to information provided by the Cass County Historical Society. Their surname remains carved into the facade above the building’s 15th Street entrance.
Family members also lived over the storefront, and former president and board member of First National Bank in Logansport Ferd W. Burgman II called it home his entire life. The building was designated locally as a historic property until de-designation in 2012.
It was used as storage during the 1980s, the historical society indicates, then became the home site of drapery and window treatment firm Merry Windows and Walls, which occupied the building until about 2005. It was since partly renovated as a private residence.
Plenty remains from the building’s Burgman family days - including most of the original woodwork, and dozens of square feet of faded but still recognizable milk paint depicting a floral pattern along all four walls of the upper story’s front room.
“In the day, this would’ve been the formal parlor of the house,” Willham said. Several full-length windows cast the afternoon light onto the soft pastel colors of the milk paint.
“It’s a very fragile paint,” Willham noted. “It takes a lot of patience, but it does bond well with plaster, which is why it’s still here.”
Willham recently got excited about the prospect of restoring the Persian-style milk painted walls and hopes to find out what local artist may have created the design. It’s not signed, but there’s a single blue flower along the north wall that stands out from the yellow, white and green all over the rest of the blue background. The flower may have been an artist’s signature touch.
They’ll eventually turn the upper story into a livable master suite restored to 1880s grandeur, complete with electrified antique gas lights, and redo the former saloon area into a second phase for the antiques and interior design store. But first on the to-do list is getting the first-story room facing 15th Street shipshape in time to open the store in two to three months’ time.
“We’ll probably be in the building within six weeks. It’s sort of like camping out at first,” Willham said last month, days after closing on the building. Eventually, walls will be reconfigured and entryways rearranged, he added. “A lot of this involves just rethinking how the property will work.”
Willham anticipates posting photos and regular updates on his progress with renovations on his blog at victorianantiquitiesanddesign.blogspot.com.
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Source: Logansport Pharos-Tribune,
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Information from: Pharos-Tribune, https://www.pharostribune.com
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