Window Treatment Crews in Greenwood Residential Historic District, Greenwood, IN

Local Window Treatment Experience in Greenwood Residential Historic District

Old Town Greenwood housing: 1870s to 1930s on the original village grid

This district has no builder to name. About 300 buildings went up incrementally over roughly 60 years, put up by individual owners and local builders on the original town grid rather than by any production company, so no two blocks share a window schedule. Lots are village lots: generally narrow and deep, though no parcel level dimension is published for them. Values run generally below the Greenwood average of $304,000 reported across 210 listings, with restored houses trading above it. That split matters when you're specifying, because a fully restored Italianate on Madison Avenue and a bungalow two streets over are at different points in their lives and want different money spent on the windows.

The style list is unusually long for a district this size: Gothic Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival, Colonial Revival, plus the Craftsman bungalows that fill the later blocks. Predominantly two story, though that isn't separately sourced, and no square footage range is published at all. What is documented is the period, and the period tells you what the openings do. Nothing in this district has a two story great room glass wall, because the open plan great room postdates the newest house here by 50 years. Instead you get many separate rooms, each with glass on two walls, which is why the opening count runs so high against the floor area.

Measuring Old Town glass: tall, narrow, arched and out of square

The proportions are the whole story. A tall narrow opening in an 1880s house on Wiley Street can run a height to width ratio past 3:1, and Lutron publishes larger light gaps on shades 120 inches and taller or at a 4:1 ratio, on top of the 3/4 inch per side it already publishes for an inside mount Roller 20/64 and the 1/16 inch per side standard factory deduction. Stack a narrow shade that tall and the light down each side becomes a feature of the room rather than a detail. That single measurement drives most of what we recommend here, and it's the reason a fabric treatment with real overlap often beats a hard treatment on the same opening.

Depth and squareness pull in opposite directions in this district. Deep plaster or wood lined returns give generous inside mount clearance, which is the opposite of the 3.25 inch flat stop found in Greenwood's newer plats, but the dimension is non uniform and cannot be carried from one opening to the next. Then there's age. These houses are 90 to 155 years old on Johnson County clay, so we treat every opening as out of square until proven otherwise, take three widths and three heights, and check the diagonal on anything visibly racked. On a north south grid either side of Madison Avenue, front elevations face predominantly east or west, which puts low sun straight into the front rooms morning and evening.

What we specify in the Greenwood Residential Historic District

Two constraints drive every recommendation in Old Town: openings that are far taller than they are wide, and openings that are not square. Fabric handles both better than a rigid product does, which is why drapery and Roman shades come up more often in this district than anywhere else in Greenwood, while a shutter earns its place when the return is deep and the frame can do the squaring for you. Custom drapery runs $300 to $4,000 per window nationally, shutters $175 to $800, and custom work generally $250 to $2,600. Order a whole room at once, because fabric dye lots move between runs, and a matching panel added a year later frequently doesn't match. Lead time is 2 to 5 weeks.

Madison Avenue, Old City Park and the Greenwood schools

The district sits northeast of the US 31 and Main Street intersection, either side of Madison Avenue, immediately adjoining the Greenwood Commercial Historic District, which was listed in 1991 with 25 contributing buildings in Italianate, Romanesque and Classical Revival. Old City Park and the Greenwood Amphitheater are inside walking distance, and the Madison Avenue storefronts anchor the north end. Streets here are the original village grid: Madison Avenue, Main Street, Brewer Street and Wiley Street. Schooling is Greenwood Community School Corporation, not Center Grove, which is a real distinction in this city because three separate corporations serve Greenwood addresses and the boundaries don't follow the city limits. Greenwood Middle School and Greenwood Community High School take the district.

Historic listing here is honorific, not a design review board

Owners in this district regularly assume they need permission and they don't. The Greenwood Residential Historic District is a National Register listing added in 2017, and National Register status by itself does not restrict what a private owner does to their own house. Reporting from the time the designation was pursued described it as optional, a bonus for living in the Old Town area, with tax credits available for qualifying improvements rather than mandatory design control. No local preservation ordinance imposing exterior design review on this district was found, and Restore Old Town Greenwood is an advocacy and Main Street organization, not a homeowners association with an architectural committee. Interior window coverings were never in scope regardless. Our contracts follow IC 24-5-11, which requires written scope and price over $150.

Window Treatment Services in Greenwood Residential Historic District

Every service Greenwood Window Treatments offers across Greenwood is available to Greenwood Residential Historic District homeowners.

Our Coverage From Greenwood Outward

Greenwood Residential Historic District is one of several Greenwood communities we serve. We measure and install across Greenwood, Johnson County, and surrounding areas.

Greenwood Residential Historic District Window Treatment FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Greenwood Residential Historic District homeowners.