Canal Era Survivor

When it was constructed in 1844, the Matthias and Kline building in Cambridge City occupied prime business real estate on the well-traveled National Road. Today, the building anchors the eastern gateway to Cambridge City’s historic downtown — once again prime real estate.

In the early nineteenth century, Indiana participated in the canal building boom, when state and local governments thought the waterways were going to be the answer to transportation. Farmers and merchants in eastern Indiana lobbied for a better way to move goods to the Ohio River, and in 1836 the state broke ground on the Whitewater Canal, a 76-mile waterway intended to connect Hagerstown to Cincinnati.

At the same time, Ohio business partners Jacob Matthias and Beneville Kline saw plenty of potential to expand their dry goods business into Indiana. In 1844, they commissioned the two-story brick building in Cambridge City. Capitalizing on their ideal location just east of the canal, Matthias and Kline expanded their business, establishing the “People’s Line” to ship goods on the Whitewater Canal.

Despite the recipe for success, the venture didn’t last long. Frequent floods and chronic repair needs plagued the canal. In 1847, a flood caused thousands of dollars in damage and closed the canal for six months. By the next year, Matthias and Kline were gone – their building taken over by C.H. Raymond’s hardware store. The structure served a number of purposes over the ensuing years: drugstore, retail space, cigar factory.

In 2014, Cambridge City Main Street (CCMS) targeted the Matthias and Kline building as its first project, using a $60,000 loan from Indiana Landmarks’ Efroymson Family Endangered Places Fund to buy the building, and grants from the Wayne County Foundation, Western Wayne Heritage, and the Central Indiana Community Foundation’s Efroymson Family Fund to make repairs – including a new roof, exterior paint, and new floors.

The group raised more than $15,000 to hire artist Pamela Bliss to paint a mural on the building’s side commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln Funeral Train’s passage through Cambridge City.

The Matthias and Kline building is listed at $99,500. It will be sold with a protective covenant that guarantees the exterior of the building will retain its historic character. The buyer will need to finish interior rehab.

For more information, contact Michael Flowers in our Eastern Regional Office, 765-478-4534, 800-450-4534, mflowers@indianalandmarks.org.