Geoff Davis: My Friend In His Creative Prime

I met Geoff Davis in 1987. At the time, he was helping found the Noblesville Preservation Alliance, trying to make a then, indifferent Noblesville, care about its historic architecture. For the 35 years since, he’s doggedly walked his own path, pursuing out-of-the-ordinary interests, delighting and inspiring people like me along the way. 

We sat on that early NPA board together and restored our own Victorian-era houses in the same neighborhood. I knew I loved old homes and restoration, and already knew a lot about carpentry, but Geoff understood the granular details of architecture and historic design and helped me deepen my own knowledge. I’ve learned so much from him over our 35-year friendship. 

 

Together, we salvaged old buildings slated for demolition. Once, we scoured a decades-long-abandoned boarding house, picking decorative hardware, woodwork, light fixtures, and eventually, a staggeringly heavy 1940s refrigerator we slid down a stairway and into my truck.

 

I wrote and published a novel called The Salvage Man, about a man doing what Geoff inspired me to do; save those irreplaceable bits of beauty before they got thrown in a dumpster. I returned the favor by giving him a set of 1890s doors with matching ornate hardware I’d salvaged to be used in an addition he was building to his 1890s home. 

Twenty years ago I was free-lance writing, doing a piece about IPS schools. Thanks to Geoff’s help, I interviewed teachers and students in the school building where he taught. There, I discovered what an amazing teacher he was. Geoff was allowed to teach his elementary students a unique topic of his choosing each semester. He taught them to play the ukulele, creating a school ukulele band. It was an insane success. He and his students would go on to perform at former Indiana Governor O’Bannon’s funeral and in one of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion shows. 

Some years later, when I was going through a divorce and an emotional mess, he took me for a for peaceful walk along White River near the Blatchley Nature Study Club land, identifying birds and trees, giving my troubled heart exactly what it needed at that very moment. He probably has no idea how powerful, healing and inspiring that walk was. I went on my own walk the next day, and the next day. From that day on, I’ve walked in the woods and biked in the countryside to clear my mind and find relief from the chaos of life.

 

For 35 years we commiserated over beers about our difficult relationships with our fathers, woodworking, historic preservation, primitive country blues recordings, and our love/hate relationships with our shared former profession of teaching. 

 

A decade ago, my friend Bill Kenley and I created a literary journal for Noblesville, called the Polk Street Review. It was only natural Geoff would get involved. He set out on the North Forest Canoe Trail, a six-week, 350-mile canoe journey (with his canoe, named Joe) through New York, Vermont, Quebec, and Maine, and chronicled the arduous trip for that year’s edition of Polk Street.

His retirement from teaching in 2018 ushered in his most prolific creative period. He opened his own workshop in downtown Noblesville, teaching woodworking and ukulele building. This soon grew as he added a letterpress print shop that he operates for profit and for teaching that disappearing craft.

He plays uke and trombone in various ad-hoc bands and has built an impressive reputation as a wood carver, best known for his 50 Little Birds series that started with birds but grew into fish, dogs, and sea-going creatures. He’s a leatherworker, making belts and suspenders and is an impressive decorative painter. In the past year he’s given a TedTalk and a documentary was made about him called 50 Little Birds. And now he’s organized Noblesville residents to build a community toboggan to enter in the National Toboggan Championships in Camden Main this February.

There’s just about nothing he doesn’t do. Oh, and did I mention he set up a workbench in his shop window this past Christmas season and entertained shoppers dressed as Santa working in his workshop? Yeah, he did that, too!

Last December, at a bourbon tasting in my garage, Geoff arrived with two wooden cocktail garnish muddlers he’d made on a wood lathe. He pulled them from his pocket and handed one to me and the other to Samir Mohammad, like it was no big deal, “Made these for you guys.” The self-deprecation is very Hoosier–to make something so precious and beautiful and give it so casually. 

 

I love him for that quality. And over the holidays, every time I muddled the orange peel and cherry in my old fashion, I was reminded how lucky I am to call this incredible person my friend.

*Santa photo by Rocky Walls

 

 

Are New Downtown Developments Good For Old Town Noblesville?

The Village At Federal Hill is set to break ground in 2022

I see folks on social media claim new high-rise apartment buildings are “destroying downtown Noblesville.”

 

I disagree.

 

Some eight years ago I was guest speaker at a local civic group. Asked to name the biggest change I’d seen while living in Old Town, I answered that because of rising population, rising economic activity, and increased traffic, it was becoming less a small town environment, like Tipton or Lebanon, and more an urban environment, like Fountain Square. 

 

That didn’t’ go over well. A Noblesville Common Council member in the crowd scoffed that traffic congestion in Old Town was no different than when he was a teenager in the 1980s. That astonished me. The next day I called the Indiana Department of Transportation and got 30 years of traffic counts for Conner and 10^th streets. The data showed a nearly 300% rise in traffic since the late ‘80s.

 

Perceptions have to meet reality.

Village At Federal Hill looking west. Conner St. is at left and
existing amphitheater green space is out of view to the right.
The existing playground remains in middle of this rendering.

 

I’m fine with Old Town’s increasingly urban environment. Two years from now when four more planned apartment complexes are complete, any debate on the topic will be over.

 

I was the first president of Noblesville Main Street back in the early ‘90s. Main Street is an economic development entity that works to revitalize historic downtowns. At Main Street’s founding, we got a year of consultation from experts on that very subject thanks to the National Trust of Historic Preservation. They examined Noblesville back then and made two big observations.

 

First, Noblesville was developing a surface “parking doughnut” around downtown, an asphalt desert between commercial and residential Old Town. They warned that this tends to destroy downtowns, that people don’t like to move through an ugly, barren environment to get to a pleasant destination. The pleasant destination will just wither. No one in power listened at the time. The City, the County, a law firm, and a developer all torn down historic structures and made more ugly surface parking. So I’m thrilled now to see these asphalt deserts turned into something that can both increase population and intensify economic activity, which will help sustain downtown restaurants and retail and make for more compelling night life. 

 

Their second observation was that we Noblesville folk saw the river as the edge of downtown and should reimagine it as the middle. At the time, the Kroger strip mall was under construction. They argued Noblesville should have zoned the west side to work like the east side: buildings right up on the sidewalk, put parking behind, and add wide sidewalks along bridges to encourage pedestrian movement across the river–in other words, an urban environment. Instead, we let the Kroger mall, including the street width out front, be built like a suburban environment designed for cars.

The Bridge of Flowers, the brainchild of Dick Gordon, seeks to transform the new, wide Logan
Street sidewalk over White River into a lush, green connection between east and west downtown.

 

Those consultants were 100% right. And the current City leadership appears to be in the process of undoing that mistake. And I say ,“Hell Yes!”

 

With the construction of a new 3-building complex at Federal Hill, we lose a Wendy’s, a Mexican restaurant eyesore, and the parking area next to Federal Hill Park. Ninety five percent of the park’s green space will remain. The buildings will have apartments, garage parking, retail and offices. The City intends to narrow Logan Street there so it’s more like a neighborhood and less like a highway. Hopes are the Kroger outlots will get redeveloped and better fit what those National Trust consultants argued for 30 years ago.

 

I’ll admit, we’ve got a developmental tiger by the tail, one that might turn on us and our goals, but at the moment, that’s not what’s happening.

 

Do I wish the Levinson was one story shorter so it fit in downtown better? Yes. Do I wish the county had put two stories of their new parking garage underground so it wouldn’t loom over downtown? Yes. Do I wish the historic structures at 10^th and Clinton could have been restored rather than a new apartment building put in their place? Yes. But I’m tired of waiting for downtown to be transformed into a compelling, energetic place, so I’m not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

 

Downtown projects have faced simmering resentments. On the morning
of the groundbreaking of the County's parking garage last May, this awaited.

Having said that, compromise isn’t limitless. The city needs a moratorium on the demolition of pre-1960 structures in Old Town. Most of the lovely homes and historic buildings we see now and love looked terrible at some point in the past 75 years, but they were reclaimed. Just because something looks bad today doesn’t mean it can’t be made beautiful. If we’d torn down everything when it looked bad, we’d be . . . well, Fishers or Westfield.

 

For those disheartened by these new developments, be prepared for 2022. There are more new buildings coming. If you see a surface parking lot in or around downtown, assume someone is planning to build something new.