Beauty in Excess

Drive into the small Washington County town of Campbellsburg off State Road 60 and you can’t miss the John T.C. Wilkins House on Sycamore Street. The Queen Anne-style house flaunts a wealth of ornamental details, from bracketed bay windows, fish scale gables, and elaborate spindled porches to distinctive horseshoe and arched stained glass windows.

The eye-catching house landed on Indiana Landmarks’ radar in recent years as it fell into disrepair and demolition seemed imminent. To save it, Indiana Landmarks took possession of the endangered property in the fall of 2023 and is completing a turnkey rehabilitation before offering the house the for sale.

Over the past several months, a team of contractors including Danny James, Dan Kichline, Chad Steele, Adam Jennings, Josh Walker, and Brandon Linderman have been at work to return the Wilkins House to its former grandeur, replacing damaged siding and trim, making structural repairs, upgrading electrical and plumbing systems, repairing interior finishes, duplicating missing architectural features, and more.  The rehabilitation project has received support from the Paul Ogle Foundation and the Washington Community Foundation.

“The ongoing transformation has really excited local residents who, at first, were skeptical that anyone would be willing to make a major investment in the community,” says Greg Sekula, director of Indiana Landmarks Southern Regional Office. “Folks stop by or slow down as they drive past and give the contractors a thumbs up.”

In the nineteenth century, the Wilkins family helped put Campbellsburg on the map and imparted a unique architectural imprint on the community.

Located along the New Albany and Salem Railroad between Salem and Mitchell, Campbellsburg grew around a grist mill established by John T.C. Wilkins in 1859. Additional mills followed, and by the town’s incorporation in 1875, Campbellsburg’s downtown bustling boasted commercial buildings, three hotels, three churches, a railroad depot, a bank, and a school. In 1858, John T.C. Wilkins established a farm on present-day Sycamore Street at the entrance to town with a two-story folk Victorian farmhouse.

His son, William, later occupied the house and, in the late 1890s, gave it a Victorian makeover,  expanding its footprint and adding embellishments including horseshoe-shaped stained-glass windows and elaborate spindled porch work. He adapted the details from pattern books published by George F. Barber, a Tennessee architect whose designs filled mail-order catalogs during the era. Known for his exuberant Queen Anne-style houses, Barber’s plans regularly featured turrets, balconies, porches, projecting windows, arches, and gingerbread trim.

Wilkins’ three other sons purchased house plans from Barber and built their own Queen Anne-style homes in Campbellsburg. Today this group of four surviving houses constitutes a rare concentration of Barber houses in a small-town setting, attracting the attention of Barber enthusiasts around the country and appearing in a book on the architect’s work, Architectural Ragtime: The Houses of Geo. F. Barber & Company.

The Wilkins House will be available for sale once work wraps up later this summer. It will be sold with preservation covenants to make sure its spectacular architectural features are preserved for the next generation of admirers. For more information, contact Greg Sekula, 812-284-4534, gsekula@indianalandmarks.org.