The Cottage Home Historic District (also known as the Cottage Home Conservation District) is a historic district and neighborhood located on the near east side of Indianapolis, Indiana. A small portion of Cottage Home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places while a larger area is listed on the state and local levels. Known for its preponderance of "cottage-style" homes built with strong Victorian influences, Cottage Home has historically been a working class neighborhood. Numerous industrial buildings are also scattered throughout the district, providing a base of economic activity. Today, however, many of these buildings are vacant, providing a special challenge to preservation and urban renewal efforts.
After a period of urban decay in the 1960s and '70s, common to inner city neighborhoods in Indianapolis, Cottage Home has since stemmed the loss of historic buildings and is now home to a flourishing and diverse community. Key to the area's improvement was the establishment of the Cottage Home Neighborhood Association (CHNA) in 1984, whose efforts halted the razing of residential properties by local businesses, and a renewed interest in restoring the area's homes. The Ruskaup-Ratcliffe house and store are the most architecturally significant buildings in the district, anchoring the district's addition to the National Register in 1990. Cottage Home was further expanded to its largest bounds at the state level in 1995 and local designation of the Ruskaup-Ratcliffe house and store followed. In 2008, the state bounds, encompassing 320 parcels and 292 properties, were designated as a Conservation District by the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission.
Geography
Cottage Home is located on the near east side of Indianapolis. The neighborhood is bordered to the west by the Chatham Arch & Massachusetts Avenue Historic District, to the north by the Windsor Park neighborhood, to the east by Arsenal Technical High School and the Woodruff Place Historic District and to the south by the Holy Cross neighborhood. Most of the district is built on a traditional grid plan, broken up by Pogue's Run cutting across the southeast portion.
National Register boundaries
The originally drawn boundaries of the Cottage Home Historic District, still the current boundaries of the National Register district, are much smaller than the state and locally designated boundaries. Comprising the 700 block of Dorman Street, 1102 to 1130 East St. Clair Street and 802 and 806 North Highland Avenue, 23 properties are included in the National Register district. Anchored by the Ruskaup-Ratcliffe house and store, these boundaries also include the Vonnegut & Bohn doubles and sixteen other houses. This area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 1990.
State and local boundaries
Cottage Home received designation as a historic district at the state level on the Indiana Register of Historic Sites and Structures in 1995 with expanded boundaries. In 2008, the neighborhood worked with the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission to develop a conservation plan and became a locally designated Conservation District, following the boundaries of the state listing. The Cottage Home Conservation District is bounded by a CSX right-of-way between I-70/I-65 and Dorman Street to the west, 10th Street to the north, Oriental Street to the east, and Michigan Street to the south. As the Ruskaup-Ratcliffe house and store had already been designated locally by the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, the local boundaries do not include those two properties, while the state boundaries do. Including the Ruskaup-Ratcliffe house and store, Cottage Home contains 320 parcels and 292 buildings, over half of which are residential.