Indiana’s annual historic preservation conference, Preserving Historic Places, takes place April 9-12 this year in Evansville on the Ohio River. Among the educational sessions on the first full day (April 10) will be The New Deal Gardens of Lockefield and Lincoln, a presentation on two PWA housing projects in Indiana, which was quite a hotbed of New Deal efforts. Professor Emeritus Patrick J. Furlong will open the program with an overview of New Deal housing improvement projects, both urban and rural, in the state. Glory-June Greiff, historian and LND consultant, will tell the story of Lockefield Gardens in Indianapolis, a beautiful and modern project built on a park-like 22 acres, and designed on a humane scale in an International Style with Art Deco elements. Opened in 1938, it boasted 748 units, garages, shops, and playgrounds. Greiff, who was deeply involved in the fight to save Lockefield Gardens and who organized the session, will focus mainly on that grassroots effort, in which a core group rehabbed one apartment within the closed complex and then brought movers and shakers, former residents, and community organizers to see it. The gallant battle was lost, but they did manage to secure the preservation of about one-fourth of the complex, which was rehabbed and whose units are much in demand today.
Dennis Au, former preservation officer of Evansville, will then speak briefly on Lincoln Gardens, another PWA housing complex built for the African-American community. Although only one structure from Lincoln Gardens remains, today it houses Evansville’s African-American Museum and contains one refurnished unit of the complex. The session takes place in this building, and will end with a tour of the refurbished unit by Janice Hall, who had lived in Lincoln Gardens.