Historic Downtown Chesterton - a walking tour Wherigo Cache

Welcome to the Historic District
of
The Town of Chesterton

Originally called Coffee Creek and located a little to the south of the current downtown, the name was changed some time after the post office was established in 1833 to Calumet, the river to the north. When the Lake Shore and Michigan Railroad came through the area in 1852, the town moved north to the current location and began to develop. The town's name was not changed to Chesterton until after the Civil War. There appears to have been confusion with Calumet, Illinois, further up the track.

The town's location along the railroad helped industry to grow. Soon, there was a cooperage, sawmills, a washing machine factory, and an organ company. Among the better examples of the towns growth are the commercial building on the southwest corner of Broadway and Calumet Rd, and the old Chesterton Tribune Building.

Chesterton is a small town in the Calumet Region of Indiana, positioned roughly halfway between Gary and Michigan City. The terrain is mostly flat, being former scrub dunes and prairie transformed into level terrain by years of settlement. The downtown area is level, however, the lots on the east side of Calumet Street sharply fall away to Coffee Creek, down perhaps thirty feet, so that the rear elevations of these buildings have an at-grade basement level. The alley, Lois Lane, is parallel to Calumet but about thirty feet below it. This fact is not discernible from the front of the buildings.

The district is a cluster of seventeen brick buildings dating mostly from about 1902 to 1915, centered on the main transportation routes of the area, the Valparaiso-Michigan City Road (today known as Calumet Road) and the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad. The grid plat of the town is skewed to follow the railroad which runs west/northwest to east/southeast, linking this part of the Calumet with Chicago. Calumet Road, however, roughly follows Coffee Creek and predated the plat, therefore, it runs north/northwest.

The buildings on the east side of Calumet face slightly southwest. One building on the west side of Calumet (#2) is flat-iron shaped and the other south of it is rhomboidal because of the skewed plat. The freight and passenger depots were across the street from the Calumet Road commercial buildings. Both survive; the passenger depot was recently placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stylistically, most of the buildings are vernacular commercial buildings; they front close to the street, have ground floor storefronts, second floor apartments, and flat or shed roofs masked by a decorative parapet. Few have enough style elements to be classified into one or another category, however, most of the buildings pay deference to existing popular styles of the day, including Italianate, Romanesque Revival and NeoClassical Revival. Modest features in the craft details of the buildings were used to refer to these popular styles.

The cohesiveness of the district owes to the fact that Chesterton merchants rebuilt most of their shops following a disastrous fire in 1902. The local brickyards in Porter and Chesterton likely provided the brick and simple terra cotta detailing for the buildings, which also contributes to the cohesiveness of the district. Most buildings are two stories high but a few are one story buildings.

This cache will walk you through the historic district and explain some of the history of the buildings and architecture along the route.

	Congrats to Team Gerbs! for being the FTF!