Navarre Cabin will stay in Leeper Park, South Bend council votes

SOUTH BEND — The South Bend Common Council voted 6-2 Monday night to affirm the Historic Preservation Commission’s denial of The History Museum’s request to move the historic Navarre Cabin from Leeper Park to its Thomas Street campus.

The decision ends a decade-long plan by the museum to move the cabin, something it said would allow the cabin to be seen by more people and taken better care of by the museum. Several council members said museum staff made a persuasive argument, but the law allows the council to overturn HPC decisions only for specific reasons.

“I’d love to see the cabin moved, but that’s not the question before us,” council member Jake Teshka said, echoing remarks from council member Sheila Niezgodski.

Council members Troy Warner and Rachel Tomas-Morgan, who voted despite disclosing that she recently become a member of The History Museum’s board, voted to reverse the HPC’s denial. Voting to affirm it were council members Lori Hamann, Canneth Lee, Sharon McBride, Teshka, Niezgodski and Karen White.

The HPC in June voted 4-2 to deny The Museum’s request for a certificate of appropriateness needed to move the cabin, which is believed to be the county’s oldest residential structure, built by the city’s first settler of European descent, French-American trapper and fur trader Pierre Navarre. He built it in 1820 on the St. Joseph River’s north bank, around the location of 123 W. North Shore Drive.

When that site was developed for new homes, the cabin in 1895 was donated to the Northern Indiana Historical Society, The History Museum’s parent, and it was moved to Leeper Park in 1904.

Before council members listened to arguments from both sides, council attorney Bob Palmer instructed them that they can legally reverse an HPC denial of a certificate of appropriateness only if they find the denial was arbitrary or capricious, an abuse of its discretion, violates constitutional rights or is not supported by substantial evidence.

HPC president Michelle Gelfman said allowing the cabin to be moved from the park would have violated the park’s “standards and guidelines” set by the council in 1996 when it designated the park a historical landmark.

But Kristie Erickson, The History Museum’s deputy executive director, said the commission was willing to deviate from those standards and guidelines last year when it voted to let the city’s Venues, Parks & Arts department renovate the park’s entire western half, including removal of a duck pond that had stood in the park for 111 years.

Erickson added that the cabin was not included in architect George Kessler’s 1915 design of the park, and that it has been moved twice within the park to make way for projects having nothing to do with history, the last time being in 1954. The History Museum now wanted to move it for the very purpose of interpreting its historical significance for more people.

Erickson said the cabin is now seen by about 500 to 1,000 people a year, mostly as part of school field trips, but about 45,000 people visit the museum each year.

In 2006, as the cabin’s condition had deteriorated, the historical society raised about $155,000 and paid Tennessee-based Leatherwood Inc. to restore the structure. The company, known for log cabin restoration, dismantled and reassembled the cabin, removing a fireplace that was added in the 1950s and reducing the size of the cabin’s windows, two changes that Leatherwood said were more historically accurate. The cabin was raised 18 inches off the ground with fieldstone piers, a change that was not historically accurate but was deemed necessary to protect the structure from moisture and termites, according to Tribune archives. Some of the lower logs had to be replaced with wood from salvaged historic structures because the logs were badly rotted and damaged.

The History Museum had worked since 2010 to assemble land around the Thomas Street campus, securing about $250,000 for the project. It was expecting to spend up to $164,000 to move it.

Elicia Feasel, administrator of the city’s HPC, said the cabin would lose its listing on the National Register of Historic Places if it was moved. Erickson acknowledged that but said the organization would reapply for register status. Feasel said that Paul Diebold, an Indiana Department of Natural Resources expert who reviews nominations for the register, told her the cabin would have “very low” chances of making the list again if it was moved from the park, while Erickson told the council that Diebold told her the odds were “50/50.”

Feasel said removal from the registry would mean the loss of federal funding for its upkeep, but Erickson said that money has been utilized only once, and The History Museum was confident that it had the money for any needed maintenance.

Although Teshka and Niezgodski said they would rather see the cabin moved to the museum campus but didn’t think the law allowed them to reverse, Warner, an attorney, said he would rather see the cabin remain in the park but he thought the commission had acted “arbitrarily” because it had voted last year to let the city so dramatically change the park west of Michigan Street.

“The standard they relied on stated ‘shall not move’ and ‘shall preserve,’ but I felt they arbitrarily decided to entirely redo the west side of the park, but were then adamant that they couldn’t move the cabin from the east end,” Warner said after the meeting.

Gelfman said the commission decided to allow the duck pond’s removal because it was so unhealthy for ducks.