We visited Michigan City, Indiana, to see the lighthouse and lighthouse museum, but the city's Naval Armory building and bascule bridge with its geometric design details, also drew my attention.
I guessed both structures dated from the 1930s, and my research reveals that both were projects provided jobs for workers during the Great Depression of that decade.
The Michigan City harbor began taking shape as a recreational area during the 1890s when then-mayor Martin H. Krueger led efforts to rehabilitate it and establish Washington Park. A bathhouse, baseball field, dance hall, zoo, amusement park, and skating pavilion provided plenty of amenities for tourists drawn to the Hoosier Slide, a 200-foot-tall sand dune.
Many of the recreational facilities disappeared as the economic difficulties of the 1930s deepened, the Hoosier Slide disappeared because of sand mining, and the Northern Indiana Public Service Company purchased much of the park land.
The Works Projects Administration (later renamed the Works Progress Administration) created some jobs in Michigan City by having workers create stone benches and walkways for Washington Park. The Franklin Street Bridge and the Naval Armory were among the larger WPA construction projects benefitting Michigan City during the 1930s.
The year 1932 marked the bicentennial of President George Washington's birth, and a plaque identifies the Franklin Street Bridge, built that year, as the Washington Bi-Centennial Memorial Bridge.
Many WPA-built bridges featured quintessentially Art Deco design details like the geometric patterns incorporated into the Franklin Street Bridge's railings.
The 182-foot span over Trail Creek is the only historic movable, bascule-style lift bridges in Indiana. Unlike similar plate-girder bascule bridges in neighboring Michigan, it retains its original railings.
The bridge also has its original tender (operator) building at one end of the span, as you can see in my photos.
The nearby white stucco armory building was also a WPA project, featuring many Art Deco, or its Streamlined Moderne variant, style details. Geometric styling, triple entries with large glass windows, and the stark white-with-blue-accents color scheme make it a striking building.
The United States government allocated $25,501 to build the armory as a training center for the United States Naval Reserve, completing it after three years of work in 1939.
Men assigned to the armory right on Lake Michigan considered it "Shangri-La" according to a short video history of the building on the Indiana National Guard site.
Their subsequent assignments weren't always as idyllic.
Members of the 9th Naval Reserves departed from Michigan City aboard the USS Sacramento in August of 1941, bound for the Hawaiian Islands, making them among those stationed at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack that led to the United States' entry into World War II.
The Navy de-activated the armory in 1965, leasing it to the city until 1977, and later to a series of Army National Guard units. An Army National Guard unit currently occupies the building.
In 2007, volunteers cleaning up Trail Creek near the armory found several hundred pounds of World War II-era artillery shells.
The armory served as a gunnery school for the Navy during World War II. Army officials said many of the 160 shells were hollow or had holes drilled into them, so they posed no risk of explosion. They also suggested that the Navy possibly used them for practice rounds that never had any explosive charge to begin with.
The Defense Department recently classified the armory as excess, deciding to get rid of it.
However, Indiana ranks high among states in military recruitment and the department changed course, keeping the armory because of a strong record of recruitment at Michigan City.
The armory also sees other uses like serving as home to an Indiana Department of Natural Resources fisheries office and as a basketball practice venue for area schools.
See Visit the Old Lighthouse Museum at Michigan City, Indiana or Visit the East Pierhead Lighthouse at Michigan City, Indiana for more about our visit to this harbor. I also wrote about a notable WPA project in Michigan, Keweenaw Mountain Lodge: Legacy of hope in hard times, and a unique bascule bridge in Points of interest at Ashtabula, Ohio's Point Park.
Want to learn more? Check out Michigan City Marinas by Jonita Davis or Michigan City by Rose Anna Mueller. The Library of Congress volume, Bridges by Richard L. Cleary, is a sourcebook about the history, engineering, art, and design of American bridges.
© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved
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