Window Treatment Serving Downtown Lebanon and the Courthouse Square

Local Window Treatment Experience in Downtown Lebanon and the Courthouse Square

Downtown Lebanon stock, built around a courthouse of 1909 to 1911

Downtown isn't a subdivision and it doesn't have a home count. What sits on the square is commercial and civic frontage with upper floor space above it, built as two and three story blocks around a monumental three story courthouse. Lebanon has 1,275 pre-1940 housing units in total, but most of those sit on the residential streets radiating out from the square rather than on it. Boone County publishes no reachable parcel record for the district: gis.boonecounty.in.gov returned an HTTP 523 and the statewide Indiana parcel layer carries no year built field, so nobody can hand you a defensible building count for the square. We count openings on site instead.

The styles that matter here are Classical Revival on the courthouse and late nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial block everywhere around it. Add the Cragun House of 1893, a Victorian now operated as a living history museum by the Boone County Historical Society, and you have a district whose oldest fabric is roughly 133 years old and whose newest is around 85. Lots are zero lot line, fronting the sidewalk on all four sides. No price band is reported separately for downtown, and the citywide figures of $320,000 median list and $303,597 median sale describe detached houses rather than storefronts, so we price from measured openings.

What downtown Lebanon openings do: deep upstairs, shallow at the sidewalk

Start with count. A commercial block on the square carries roughly 6 to 18 upper floor openings on its street face plus a full width ground floor storefront bay, so the schedule for one building is really two schedules. Upstairs you're working in masonry reveals deep enough to take almost any headrail or cassette on an inside mount, which is a rarity in this city. Downstairs the storefront frame gives you very little to land on, and the honest specification is usually an outside mount with real overlap or an exterior product entirely. The Boone County Courthouse is its own case: art glass dome, clock tower, civic architecture that isn't a domestic job at all.

Now age. These openings run between 85 and 150 years old, set in masonry that has moved, and they measure differently at head and sill. Nothing repeats. A three point measure on width and height isn't a precaution downtown, it's the only way to arrive at a finished width that fits. Then exposure. The west face takes low afternoon sun straight onto storefront glass through the summer, when Indianapolis averages a July high of 85.2F, and the same glass gives you very little useful winter gain because the January average high is 36.1F. Openness gets specified on the face, not on the building.

What we specify downtown, from the storefront up

Downtown splits into separate jobs that don't share a product list. Street level glass on the west face is a solar and glare problem with a commercial owner behind it. Upper floor space is a residential scale problem sitting in deep masonry openings. And because the square carries a Downtown DORA District, with the sidewalk actively programmed for street level trade, exterior shade on a storefront is a live question here rather than a dormant one. Nationally, awnings run $1,000 to $6,000 installed, custom interior treatments $250 to $2,600 per window and shutters $175 to $800 per window. Lead time is 2 to 5 weeks, and IC 24-5-11 requires a written contract on residential work over $150.

Downtown streets, the square and Lebanon schools

The commercial ring runs along East and West Main Street, North and South Lebanon Street, East Washington Street and North Meridian Street, with State Road 32 carrying Main Street through the middle of it and Interstate 65 crossing US 52 in the city's northwest section. Memorial Park covers 40 acres, the Cragun House of 1893 is open as a Boone County Historical Society museum, and Christmas on the Square is the event this frontage gets dressed for every year. Central Elementary School serves downtown addresses and feeds Lebanon Middle School and Lebanon Senior High School, inside a Lebanon Community School Corporation that enrolled 3,381 students in 2019-2020.

Downtown approvals and the Historic Preservation Commission question

There's no homeowners association downtown and no recorded rule anywhere on window coverings. What there is, and what separates Lebanon from Danville, Pittsboro and Sheridan, is a Historic Preservation Commission: the city's own site states that it 'meets regularly to oversee preservation efforts.' What it actually regulates, which properties fall under it and whether it issues any approval for exterior work were not established, because the commission's own page returns an HTTP 404. An Indiana city outside Marion County operates such a commission under IC 36-7-11. So here's the honest position. Interior treatments are your business. Before anything gets fixed to the outside of a building on the square, call city planning and ask, because we won't guess at a commission's powers on your behalf.

Window Treatment Services in Downtown Lebanon and the Courthouse Square

Every service Lebanon Window Treatments offers across Lebanon is available to Downtown Lebanon and the Courthouse Square homeowners.

Beyond Lebanon: Towns on the List

Downtown Lebanon and the Courthouse Square is one of several Lebanon communities we serve. We measure and install across Lebanon, Boone County, and surrounding areas.

Downtown Lebanon and the Courthouse Square Window Treatment FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Downtown Lebanon and the Courthouse Square homeowners.