Old Jeffersonville Historic District - History

History

The first settlement in what later became Jeffersonville was just above the Falls of the Ohio, the only natural barrier along the entire length of the Ohio River. Because of its location above the falls, Jeffersonville has the deepest harbor of any nearby town. The settlement was established in 1786 at Finney, near the present day Big Four Bridge. In June 1802, Lieutenant Isaac Bowman had 150 acres (0.61 km2) of land, known as Section No. 1, awarded to him for his service in the American Revolutionary War as part of Clark's Grant.

Jeffersonville started as three streets that paralleled the Ohio River: Water Street (gone), Front Street (Riverside Drive) and Market Street. In 1802 John Gwathemey was appointed to plat the land north of Market Street using a plan devised by Thomas Jefferson. This plan deviated from Jefferson's original with the use of diagonal streets in the open checkerboard. By 1816 this plan proved to be unworkable and was re-platted by order of the Indiana Legislature (An Act to Change the Plan of the Town of Jeffersonville) in 1817. In 1836 a Cincinnati civil engineer (H. L. Barnum) was hired to plot the northern expansion of the town. This plan was again an attempt to use Jefferson's original. The plan was rejected by the town council and another plan from a local civil engineer (Edmund F. Lee) was accepted. At the time Cincinnati was the major town in the area and subsequent map makers used the Barnum map as their primary source. Consequently most maps of Jeffersonville from 1837 to about 1852 are in error.

From its heyday of the 1850s until the Great Depression in the 1930s, Jeffersonville was the leading center of U.S. steamboat production, due largely to its excellent harbor, which remained the deepest in the surrounding area. Many individuals who lived in the district worked at the Howard Shipyards, that became Jeffboat in the nearby town of Port Fulton, which was eventually annexed into Jeffersonville. The town gained its first railroad in 1852, connecting to Columbus, Indiana, and with the opening of the Fourteenth Street Bridge in 1870, became a railroad center. The city became an important distribution center during the Civil War for the Union Army, because three railroads connected to Jeffersonville and because the Ohio River served as a defensive barrier against invasion from Confederate attack, it was deemed a safer location than the more vulnerable city of Louisville, Kentucky located on the southern side of the river.

Most of the buildings still standing in the district were built after 1870. The majority of the commercial buildings along Spring Street are Italianate styles and Gothic Revival churches reflecting the large immigrations from Ireland and Germany that came during the time period. The residential buildings are generally of the American Four Square style, bungalows, and shotgun houses.

Until the mid-1950s, the district was a significant commercial area, including a J.C.Penney department store. However, with the construction of Youngstown Shopping Center 1.5 miles (2.4 km) northwest of the downtown area on 10th Street/Indiana State Road 62, the district began its decline. The decline was completed when Green Tree Mall was built in the 1960s, taking Penney's with it. By the 1980s over twenty store fronts were empty, leaving the bulk of the stores in the district occupied by antique shops, thrift stores, or repair technicians.