PPH opens doors of Hooper House to community, celebrates initial step in saving this historic building
By Jennifer Zartman Romano
A crowd of eager visitors braved wintery conditions Saturday afternoon to take part in history – the opening of the doors to what will one day be another jewel in the crown of downtown Columbia City.
People Preserving History (PPH), a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and restoring homes and buildings in Whitley County, welcomed guests to the Hooper House at 209 North Chauncey Street to celebrate an initial victory in the preservation of a building and to introduce the property to the community.
Shoulder to shoulder, guests chatted in small groups throughout the first floor of the home. Small candles and festive greenery dressed the windows. A period Christmas tree, minimal décor and costumes set the tone inside the old home – indicating what the building once was and what it could be again.
“This is an irreplaceable home and building on what was once ‘Silk Stocking Row’” said Jon Pontzius of the PPH. On November 15, the organization saved the building from the wrecking ball and initiated a project to complete initial, required rehabilitation projects on the old brick house.
Silk Stocking Row is the name once attributed to the city’s finest homes located along North Chauncey Street. Many of these attractive homes remain as reminders of the well-known, prosperous city leaders and entrepreneurs who lived there – the McLellans, Clugstons, Adamses and others.
The Hooper House has long set vacant, but thanks to the efforts of the PPH and the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, hope springs eternal. But before we talk of the future, we must understand the past.
The home was built around 1855 and is thought to be the first brick building constructed in Columbia City.
The home was occupied by Adams Young Hooper and his wife, Edith. Hooper was a respected lawyer and State Senator. He employed young Thomas Riley Marshall in his law office and had she not died suddenly on the day before her wedding, Marshall would have married his daughter, Catherine Hooper, in 1878.
When Adams Young Hooper died in 1874 of consumption, the community mourned because, according to Kaler and Maring’s “Whitley County History,” he was “so admired, so respected and so loved that his early death was regarded as a public calamity.” Mrs. Hooper died in 1906.
In 1914, the house entered a new phase of usefulness: it became a church.
The property was purchased by Col. and Mrs. John Adams of Toledo, Ohio, according to a history of the church drafted many years ago and provided by former owner Steve Linvill. The Adamses then sold the building to the church.
The First Church of Christ Scientist, after completing a series of renovations on the property to convert it from a home to a house of worship, dedicated the property on December 3, 1916.
The staircase was removed during those initial renovations and the upper floor was closed off entirely, creating a sort of time capsule dating to sometime in 1915, said former owner Steve Linvill. When Linvill installed a stairway later, upstairs he found newspapers and clues to the past, including a piece of the woodwork from the original stairway – something that will undoubtedly help future restorers to bring back the long-lost luster to the house.
The church continued services in the building until the early 1970s, maintaining a free public reading room for reading of the Bible, the Christian Science textbook and the other writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the first Church of Christian Science.
For many years prior to 1915, the local followers of the Church of Christian Science met in a variety of locations in Columbia City before seeking a more permanent home on Chauncey Street.
Among those in attendance at the open house celebration Saturday were Dolores and Bob Krider of Columbia City.
At the age of 6, around 1936, Dolores (Messner) Krider began attending the Church of Christian Science at 209 North Chauncey Street.
“It wasn’t very big,” she recalled of the congregation. “We had about 20 members,” Krider said.
She attended church services and Sunday School at the church until it closed in 1973.
While going there, she recalls those attending the church had the surnames Nei, Smith, Messner and others, many of whom were related to Krider and were, “a lot of older people now gone,” she said.
Krider’s fondest memories of the building were associated with the hymns she remembers singing there. “A soloist would sing,” she recalls. “It was Glois Smith, my aunt.”
Krider also remembers the reading room at the back of the church and the many readers who presented the scripture over the years.
A highlight of Saturday’s event was the dramatic presentation of Adams and Edith Hooper as performed in costume by Dr. Clark Waterfall and Jan Hammer. Additionally, Pat Murphy entertained guests with musical selections.
Despite chilly temperatures and increasingly bad weather brewing outside, the optimism inside the house could be felt as visitors ascended the side porch steps, looked inside and saw so many familiar faces inside – all present in support of a positive move for preservation of a historic landmark in Whitley County.
“We want the people to become appreciative of the importance of preserving historic landmarks in Whitley County,” Pontzius said. “Other areas seem more interested in that sort of thing.”
“It can be important to the business community if they make use of historic buildings,” Pontzius added. “Some of the most vibrant northeast Indiana cities have found that using old buildings engenders a sound business plan.”
Will it become a business, an office for a non-profit organization or a family home remains to be seen – but the members of PPH, the Linvills and the community as a whole will be able to rest assured, the Hooper Home has a future.
