Indiana Landmarks awarding grants to repair Black historical sites

LEBANON — Historic preservation of buildings can be an expensive and complicated mission, but Indiana's leading preservation non-profit group hopes to make it easier by awarding grants.

Indiana Landmarks is now taking applications for the Standiford Cox grant, which is awarded to buildings important to Indiana's Black history. The organization doled out more than $200,000 in Standiford Cox grants in 2024.

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The program was planned by its namesake, who was Eli Lilly's first Black chemist. Cox passed away in 2019 and Indiana Landmarks handed out its first Cox grants in 2020.

"Stan was a tremendous person with a great deal of vision, and we are all benefiting from that today," said Mark Dollase with Indiana Landmarks. "If we can assist in that by fulfilling Stan's mission to aid Black heritage sites across the state, then we will try to make it happen."

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Missy & Kevin Krulik received $30,000 from the program last year to restore a long-abandoned African Methodist Episcopal Church in Lebanon built in 1880.

"We would not have been able to do the project without the grant, it would have been too much for us," Missy Krulik said. "There was really bad rot along the foundation."

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The Kruliks hope to reopen the church as a short-term rental option featuring a gallery honoring its past.

"Even in the shape that it's in with no paint, we still have people stop us and say it looks great," Krulik said.

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Indiana Landmarks has awarded 74 Standiford Cox grants totaling more than $1 million since the program's inception.

This year's grant applications are due before April 1.