Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

A first meeting

The third Tuesday of the month is always a busy time for meetings--the Jasper County Historical Society, the County Council, and the Rensselaer Central School Board often meet at the same time. Tonight the Historical Society started earlier than the others, so I stopped in for a while. I was given a brochure for the Moveable Feast that will be in Rensselaer on August 2, and the relevant part of it is shown below.
If you want to attend the event, you might want to plan to attend an early performance of the Carnegie Players production of Once Upon a Mattress. It will be on stage July 31, August 1 and August 2. (Tryouts are May 27 and May 28.)

Someone had donated some old newspapers to Historical Society, and this item was in one of them, the September 15, 1933 edition of the Chicago Herald Examiner.
 The business meeting of the society had a discussion about the need to get the Society's buildings at the fairgrounds ready for the Jasper County Fair. If you would like to help, their first workday will be May 31 (a Saturday) at 9:00 am. Bring gloves and tools if you have them. Next months meeting will be the annual meeting with a carry-in dinner. It will be June 17.

The main program was about the Midcentury Modern Architecture of Frank Fisher that is in Rensselaer. I left before the presentation, but  Mrs. Kanne, the presenter was kind enough to give me the handout. Fischer designed seven houses in Rensselaer, including his own on Milroy Street, and one commercial building, the Tonner Cleaners at Van Rensselaer and Kellner, which now houses the office of Dr. Balvich. I had never paid much attention to the small building and never realized that it was one of Fischer's buildings.
He also designed seven houses in College Woods and six buildings at Saint Joseph's College: Halleck Center, Schwietermann Hall, and the Bennett, Noll, Hallas, and Gallagher dorms.

The County Council meeting was long and perhaps I will get to it tomorrow. When I left and went home, I noticed that there was a woman's softball game under the lights in the park. It made the evening feel summer-like.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so very much for the publicity for the Jasper County Historical Society'meeting and the Indiana Landmarks and Historic Preservation Association of Jasper County's Moveable Feast.

Anonymous said...

I've noticed that Fisher's own house on Milroy Street has been "For Sale" for several years now.