Vinegar Hill Historic District

About this property

The Vinegar Hill Historic District is a historic district and neighborhood in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. Built primarily in the second quarter of the twentieth century, and located a few blocks south of Indiana University Bloomington campus, Vinegar Hill has been the home of leading Indiana University faculty members. It has inspired literary attention, and it has been designated a historic site. Rapid growth in the importance of Bloomington's limestone industry made limestone company executives wealthy and created heavy demand for skilled stonecutters in the city. As limestone became the city's leading industry in the 1920s, an apple orchard was removed to permit the extension of First Street eastward up a long hill and the platting of a new neighborhood. Several other city neighborhoods, such as the distinctive Prospect Hill, already bore topographical names; according to local tradition, the fermentation of apples from the orchard produced a distinctive smell that became the neighborhood's namesake. The first families to build houses in this new development were those of stonecutters, many of whom were European immigrants. Leading among these families were the Donatos, whose members built seven significant houses in the neighborhood. Because so many of the new residents were skilled stoneworkers, they decorated their houses with carvings and sculptures that would have been far too expensive for all but the richest members of society. At the top of Vinegar Hill were the mansions of the wealthy limestone executives; like the workers' houses below them, these homes featured ornate stonework with images such as those of the children of the homeowners. Yet other residents of the district were some prominent Indiana University faculty, including sexology professor Alfred Kinsey, music dean Winfred Merrill, and Nobel-winning biology professor Hermann Muller. As limestone workers and owners, the residents of Vinegar Hill naturally looked to limestone as the material for their own houses. They used these materials to construct residences in a wide range of architectural styles, including American Craftsman, Neoclassical, and Art Deco. Inside, the houses were also ornate: many feature mantels and balusters of carven stone, and the four houses built by Christopher Donato also include elaborate transoms and lintels. The most prominent houses in the neighborhood are the hilltop homes of the wealthy near the eastern end of the district; here may be found styles such as Tudor Revival and Georgian-influenced Colonial Revival. Throughout the district, many houses are found in various forms of Colonial and English Revivals, and multiple Spanish Colonial Revivals are among the most significant residences of the lower part of the hill. Among the books that have concentrated on the architecture of Vinegar Hill is Carol Shields' novel The Stone Diaries, in which the neighborhood is part of the setting for much of the novel.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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