Arthur Asahel Shurcliff (1865-1957) was a prominent landscape architect who immediately followed Charles Eliot and Frederic Law Olmstead in the succession of great Bostonian landscape architects. Best known for his work at Williamsburg, his work in Fort Wayne includes three City Beautiful era neighborhoods – Wildwood Park, Lafayette Esplanade and Brook View. The last of these, Brookview, is threatened by multiple projects that threaten to destroy the historic integrity of the neighborhood.

In 2002 the “Historic Residential Suburbs” bulletin from the National Park Service clarified the importance of historic garden suburbs like Brookview. Elements like planned vistas, meandering and riverside drives and green park space became defining elements that were eligible for federal recognition on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Bound by Clinton Street on the east, the former New York Central tracks on the west and the Centlivre apartment complex on the north, the roughly triangular neighborhood is bisected by Spy Run Creek. Spy Run Creek has always had periodic flooding, but in recent years this once occasional event has become routine. Current projects to address this flooding, as well as traffic “enhancement” projects threaten to disrupt the neighborhood in such a way as to render Shurcliff’s design unrecognizable.

The first of these projects, the replacement of the US 27 (Clinton Street) bridge over Spy Run. ARCH, along with Friends of the Parks, Brookview Neighborhood Association and Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana are working to mitigate the harm that this project will create by engaging in a process known as Section 106 review. Named after the section of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act that mandates it, the review requires the federal government to “take into account” the effects of its undertakings on “historic properties.”

Identification and evaluation of historic properties as part of this review has led to some new discoveries in the Brookview Neighborhood. The first and most important is a legal finding by the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) that the Brookview Neighborhood is Preliminarily Eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places as part of a Historic District. This means that as federally funded projects happen in and around this neighborhood the neighborhood is considered to be historic, and there needs to be an effort to “avid, minimize or mitigate” effects from any project that may damage those characteristics of the neighborhood that make it historic.

The second important legal finding is that closing Westbrook Drive and possibly Eastbrook Drive at Clinton Street are part of the Clinton Street bridge project and constitute an “adverse effect” on the neighborhood.

These findings mean that there will be some federally funded mitigation efforts in this neighborhood. Friends of the Parks, along with ARCH, HLFI and the Brookview Neighborhood Association will be asking for documentation efforts like the preparation of an NRHP Nomination and Cultural Landscape Report, as well as physical mitigation related to the creek, bridge and green space. As further developments happen with this project and with the upcoming State Street project, I hope to be able to give further updates.

Posted by Mike