Once nationally known but abandoned for decades, this dairy farm is being demolished

The abandoned barn at Normandy Farm in Traders Point is dusty and dark; while the doors, stairs and walls are surprisingly sturdy, the windows and floors cracked and broken.

Long ago, the barn housed some of the most prized cattle in the country. Nestled between a Serbian Church and a subdivision with new homes selling for $500,000 or more, the old farm is a reminder of a time when the city had large stretches of rolling hills. A farmhouse, grain silos and storage space also sit on the property near West 79th Street.

By mid-April, demolition on the buildings began to make way for housing, according to Tim Ashby, the owner of a company contracted for the demolition. Builder LCP Development, which owns the land, did not respond to questions about the plans.

Businessman Herman C. Krannert owned Normandy Farms, which he named because the rolling hills mirror those in the French province of Normandy.

Normandy Farms stretched 600 acres and was known in the mid-1900s as one of the most advanced dairy farms in the country.

Krannert died in 1972 at age 84. In 1975, nearly 400 acres of the farm were sold to the developer, who built part of the Traders Point subdivision, according to the Normandy Farms Homeowners Association. The white barn on the property was moved to the Indiana State Fairgrounds in the 1990s and repainted and reconstructed for use as an event space.

Steve Klingenberger, who has lived in the Normandy Farms neighborhood since the mid-1960s, has an old brochure detailing the farm's operations that a friend found cleaning out her house.

"They had more money than they knew what to do with," Klingenberger said. "They wanted to raise very noteworthy cattle."

Klingenberger said it would be nice if developers preserved the Normandy Farms barn and renovated it for use as an event space.

"It needs to fixed up or torn down," he said.