<p>MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. — A northern Indiana city’s ornate former library building will be transformed into luxury apartments under plans drafted by a developer who’s lined up an investor for the project.</p>
<p>Mike Conner with @properties said the project will revive the original Michigan City Library, a blue limestone building that opened in 1897 in the city’s downtown. The landmark building was designed by Reed & Stern, the same architecture firm that designed New York City’s Grand Central Station.</p>
<p>“To me there is not a more beautiful, architecturally significant property in all of Michigan City,” Conner <a href="https://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/developer-plans-to-turn-former-michigan-city-library-into-luxury-apartments/article_7c102ef6-8f8b-5d5d-984b-ac13328a4c08.html">told</a> The (Northwest Indiana) Times.</p>
<p>The building boasts a neoclassical facade, a grand staircase, a marble interior, a columned portico and marble-clad fireplace. It also features 2-foot-tall Tiffany-style stained glass windows depicting the Shakespeare characters Ophelia, Portia and Rosalind.</p>
<p>The library closed in 1977 and was replaced that year by the city’s current library, an architectural landmark of its own designed by the world-renowned architect Helmut Jahn.</p>
<p>The original library was sold to the Blank family in 1978 to keep the grand building with opulent chamber rooms open as a public space. </p>
<p>It then became the Blank Center for the Arts, until that center closed in 2002 in the city that’s located along Lake Michigan about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Chicago.</p>
