Growing Pains in New Carlisle
Home built in 1870s demolished to build new Taco Bell
NEW CARLISLE- Workers have finished demolition of the historic Stafford Family Home located on North Main Street in preparation for the construction of a new Taco Bell location planned for the site.
“It was an old property,” New Carlisle Historical Society member Bill Berry said, “one of the older ones in New Carlisle. It was a beautiful old house,” Berry said.
Located at 408 N. Main St., the two-story brick home was originally constructed in 1870 by members of the Stafford Family.
“It was originally the Stafford Home,” Berry said. “They were pretty familiar people in the area. One of them was in the bakery business,” he said. “They were apparently a pretty progressive family. They were active in our town politics, as far as local government.”
“They lived there for a good many years,” Berry said. “After that, the house was owned by different people.”
Over the years, the building also served as an attorney’s office and a beauty salon, New Carlisle Historical Society President David McWhorter said. It was last owned by a bank, he said, and had been vacant for the past several months.
The building was demolished on Thursday, July 11.
McWhorter said the Historical Society was able to salvage several items from the property before demolition, including a door with the original 1870s hinges.
“I was able to get an old window and also some pillars that came out of a windowsill,” he said. “They’re really cool.”
“The outside looked great,” McWhorter said of the building. “For being a family that was an elevated family, it was kind of a plain house.”
The house was demolished to prepare for a new Taco Bell location that will be constructed on the site. Public reaction to the home’s demolition has been mixed, McWhorter said.
“A lot of people are not happy about it, but they didn’t do anything about it,” he said. “There was a big gap in there where someone could have stepped in and done something, and it just didn’t happen.”
“People can become upset because they’re seeing something old go, but nobody was interested in buying it,” Berry said.
“I know growing up here as a kid, it’s always been there,” McWhorter said. “You hate to see something that old being taken down, regardless of what’s going there. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Taco Bell, or whatever.”
“I worked at the grocery store that was in this parking lot right here, and used to look at that house every day, and now it’s gone,” he said.
“It’s just a feeling,” Berry said. “People come by and think that’s a pretty old house, and now it’s going to come down and they get upset over that.”