For over a century, the Caretaker’s Cottage has watched West Lafayette grow into a busy, hi-tech town. Originally fronted by a wrought-iron fence set with matching stone pillars, the cemetery on Salisbury Street is a familiar landmark to many in the community. The cottage, built alongside in 1903 to house Grand View’s grounds laborer, is a window to the community’s past. Constructed of Bedford limestone and with unique terracotta roof tiles, the original design with the iconic double porches included no more than a 1-2 rooms and a root cellar. Generations of caretakers watched the nearby farms and barns come down one after another when West Lafayette began to rapidly develop after World War II.

Few records exist to tell us who exactly lived in the Cottage over the years before it was eventually placed on the Wabash Valley Trust for Historic Preservation’s Endangered List in 2017. The cemetery’s owner at that time was interested in selling the cottage, and the West Lafayette Redevelopment Commission purchased the plot in April of that same year.

Decades of vacancy and neglect had taken a toll – broken windows, crumbling masonry, a large hole in the roof, and a partially collapsed floor – and left the place in precarious shape. The house looked like a goner, until Wabash Valley Trust for Historic Preservation put it in the spotlight by adding it to its Endangered List. Encouraged by public support for saving the landmark, city officials struck a deal to buy the cottage earlier in 2017, with plans to restore it as a local history center for exhibits using the West
Lafayette Public Library’s city archives. To finance the rehab, the city created a community preservation fund, allowing supporters to donate to the project. A team of local citizens called Community Historical Project Support (CHiPS) took charge of fundraising, securing grants and public donations.

The WL Redevelopment Commission stepped in and finished the project in 2023 at the cost of around $650,000, with Kettelhut Construction and J.R. Kelly Company doing much of the work. The Caretaker’s Cottage is a labor of love, and has been since this project started years ago. This community should be proud, because something truly amazing is happening when precious things like this can be restored, preserved, and shared with the rest of West Lafayette.

Part of a years-long endeavor by Racial Reconciliation of Greater Lafayette, this exhibition is being developed along with a class at the John Martinson Honors College at Purdue University under Dr. Nathan Swanson. The center of the project highlights the historic use in West Lafayette property deed language of racial covenants that segregated local housing.

The year was 1940 and a young Purdue graduate was hired as the football coach to lead the West Lafayette High School team to victory. With high school sporting successes under his belt Coach Straley joined the US Army during WW II and saw military service with George Patton’s 3rd army in Europe.

Returning to lead the West Lafayette high school team after the war, Straley became the high school’s head football coach until 1975, coaching high school basketball as well until 1952. Coach Straley served as head of the West Lafayette High School athletic department from 1954 until his retirement in 1980.

Coach Straley was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in 1980. The West Lafayette High School Football field on Cumberland Avenue was named in his honor in 1998, just after he finished a history of the West Lafayette High School football program, “More Than A Game”, which told the high school’s football teams’ stories from 1901 to 1993.

Many of the articles and photos in the book come from the in-depth scrapbooks Straley kept with the assistance of his wife from his first year of coaching in 1940 forward; the scrapbooks were donated to the West Lafayette Library’s archives after Coach Straley’s death in 1999.

Coming in Fall of 2025, we will install an exhibit featuring African American veterans from the world wars who were from Tippecanoe County.  Featuring profiles and photos, this exhibit’s placement in the second half of the year is both to take advantage of Memorial Day and Veterans Day in marketing the display.  We will obtain some great war-era artifacts from our partner TCHA to add some physicality to the information presented in this exhibit.

Coming in Spring of 2025, we will install an exhibit on the North wall that explores the history of African American institutions, organizations, and spaces in West Lafayette.  Centering on the Black Cultural Center at Purdue University, the exhibit will offer insights into how the Center’s creation played a crucial role in carving out a space for Black identity at Purdue as well as in West Lafayette.

Coming in Fall of 2025, we will install an exhibit using the Marshall Howenstein collection at the Library to tell the story of Howenstein’s time as music director of WLHS where he famously wrote the music for the school’s fight song, Scarlet and Grey. 

Coming in Spring of 2025, we will install a curated collection of sports memorabilia items from the Orlando Itin Local Sports History Collection at WLPL.  This large collection features items and information about a number of players in various sports, and this exhibit will focus on baseball players from West Side and Harrison who eventually played in the major leagues.  

From the mid 1890s until 1913, a brutal student past-time called the Tank Scraps took place right next to the Caretaker’s Cottage. The scraps were unarmed fights between the freshmen and sophomore Purdue classes to determine whose ‘numerals’ (the year a class would graduate from Purdue) would be painted on top of the water tower that sits next to the Cottage, which was built in 1896-87.

In the early 1950s, Purdue University professor Dr. John Christian and his wife Catherine dreamed of a home that would serve both their desire to entertain faculty, staff, and students and be a lasting structure that would grow with their family. Research, perseverance, and a touch of luck led the Christians to Frank Lloyd Wright with whom they built their dream home.

The John and Catherine Christian House, commonly known as SAMARA, is one of the most complete Frank Lloyd Wright homes in the United States. Designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2015, SAMARA affords national and international visitors of all ages the rare and immersive opportunity to experience Mr. Wright’s fully realized Usonian design just as if they were guests of the family.

Samara, named for the winged seeds found in pinecones, was completed in 1956 near the end of Mr. Wright’s career. The home was built on a modest budget and with the caveat that the clients would see the famous architect’s designs through to full completion.

John and Catherine held true to this commitment and the architect’s vision. Samara is an approachable and educational work of art that proudly features more than 40 of Mr. Wright’s architectural innovations and plays host to thousands of visitors annually.

Today, Indiana Landmarks co-stewards Samara with the John E. Christian Family Memorial Trust, Inc., working to preserve the extraordinary property and share its remarkable story.

The Chauncey Family, who were rich land speculators from Philadelphia, purchased the land neighboring Kingston and platted the town of Chauncey on January 18, 1860. At this time, all of West Lafayette south of State Street and east of Salisbury was thick woodlands and there were approximately two dozen homes and five main roads through Kingston and Chauncey. Some we might recognize (State, River, Salisbury), but others were only in their infancy as ideas; Robinson St. was just a plank road.

The story of the West Lafayette we know today began in the cabin home of Mr. James H. Marsteller on January 2, 1866. Whether it was to maximize tax income for public investment or shore-up local authority in the township by combining separate towns into a stronger one, these citizens were determined to make something happen. By late February that same year, a census was taken to determine who could vote; of the 93 men and 104 women, only 48 people were legally allowed to vote. Then, in December, the voters of Kingston/Chauncey decided to levy a tax of $0.20 per $100.00 made. They could not, however, decide on a new name. Many suggestions were floated, including Kingston, Chauncey, West Lafayette, Brooklyn, Lowell, Peckham, and Roswell. After nearly two decades of debate, the town voted on May 21st, 1888, to rename the town West Lafayette.

By the time this name was chosen, Purdue University had been located nearby Chauncey, Indiana for almost as long as it took the town to pick a new name. The introduction of Purdue to the community landscape during a period where community members were organizing to better invest in their own future is a very important moment in the history of West Lafayette. Only a generation after this historic moment, we begin to see very interesting characters entering the record.

This exhibition is being developed by a class at the John Martinson Honors College at Purdue University under Dr. Kristina Bross. The focus is on Charles Major, a notable Hoosier author lost to the sands of time.  He wrote When Knighthood Was in Flower over a century ago, and Dr. Bross’s class aims to explore that novel with the aim to release a new edition of it in the future.