Batman House: The inside story

Pinnacle Asset Management has purchased Bloomington’s historic Batman House, the limestone Victorian at the corner of Kirkwood Avenue and Madison Street, through its subsidiary, The Batman, LLC.

Company president Peter Dvorak says redevelopment options are still being evaluated, ranging from a restored private residence or professional office space to a boutique hotel, short-term lodging, or upscale apartments. The company plans to work with Bloomington’s city planning staff and the city’s historic preservation commission as it studies possible uses.

Interviewed by The B Square Bulletin, Dvorak confirmed that Pinnacle was the winning bidder at the online auction. The recorded sales disclosure lists the final purchase price at $770,000, slightly above the $760,000 high bid at auction, after what he described as post-auction negotiations between the parties.

For now, there is not a finalized redevelopment concept. Dvorak says he’s in the early stages of figuring out what will work in a downtown historic structure. Dvorak said he’ll need to spend time with Bloomington’s planning staff to understand what options are feasible within the city’s zoning framework. That includes the downtown overlay district, which can require ground-floor commercial uses in some circumstances. Whether that requirement applies—or whether an exception or variance might be needed—could help determine the building’s eventual use.

Dvorak said he approached the auction with fewer preconceived plans than people might assume. What pushed him to participate in the auction, he said, was a long familiarity with the building itself. For about five years he lived in The Kirkwood across the street, where his terrace overlooked the house.

“Every day I got to go out and look at that building,” Dvorak said. “And I would think, man, that would be a really cool property to own.”

When the house was put on the auction block, he decided to bid, even though he said he expected the property to sell for “a heck of a lot more” than it did. “I was probably more surprised than anyone that I ended up the winning bidder,” he said.

Over the decades, the house has served several uses, including a funeral home and labor-union offices, before Dennis and Nancy Garrett purchased it in 1974, and opened The Garret Antique Shop two years later. Nancy Garrett died in late 2023. The use as an antique shop helps explain the large volume of items that had accumulated inside before the auction.

The auction of the building came only after the sale of the contents. Local auctioneer Brian Sample, owner of Estate & Downsizing Specialists, oversaw the sale of the items inside the house over roughly two years. According to Dvorak, the process involved cataloging and hauling away a remarkable range of objects. One item alone hints at the scale of what had been stored in the building: a full-size horse-drawn sleigh that had been kept in the attic and ultimately had to be removed through the windows.

The building at 403 W. Kirkwood dates to 1895. It was constructed by John Waldron Sr. as a wedding gift for his daughter Mary and her husband, Bloomington attorney Ira C. Batman. The home was designed by local architect John Nichols with elements of French Second Empire, Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival styles. One of its distinctive features is the extensive use of Indiana limestone.

The property’s name sometimes prompts some puzzlement. Dvorak said he initially assumed “Batman House” was simply a nickname inspired by the building’s two turret towers. He said he later learned the name actually comes from Ira C. Batman, the Bloomington attorney who lived there—adding that it’s unlikely an architect in 1895 would have designed a house to resemble a comic-book character that did not yet exist.

Batman the lawyer, even if not a superhero, had a notable legal career in Indiana. A memorial published after his death in 1934 records that he was born in Lawrence County in 1862, graduated from Indiana University in 1885, practiced law in Bloomington and served as both city attorney and county attorney before his election in 1916 to the Indiana Appellate Court, where he served eight years.

The obituary reflected a tone typical of its era, calling Batman “an indefatigable student and a tireless worker.” The obituary says “His good humor was proverbial and made him a most agreeable companion, yet he was ever a Christian gentleman in the fullest sense of that term.” The obituary concludes: “He possessed an unblemished character and was an excellent, well-balanced, and impartial judge, a very able lawyer, had a high sense of civic duty.”

According to the summary from Estate & Downsizing Specialists, prepared for the auction, The Batman House contains about 4,000 square feet of finished space across the first two floors, with basement and attic space estimated at roughly 1,780 square feet each, making the total area up to 8,000 square feet. The attic is one of the house’s most distinctive spaces, with exposed roof framing and turret towers rising nearly 18 feet above the floor.

Pinnacle is not new to historic restoration projects in Bloomington. The company’s local portfolio includes the (allegedly haunted) Buskirk-Showers mansion (now home to Greene & Schultz Trial Lawyers), along with the Lockerbie Court Condominiums, the Allen Building (home of the Uptown Café) and the Johnson Creamery Business Center.

What comes next for The Batman House will likely depend on a mix of architectural realities, zoning constraints and economics. Dvorak said the goal is to respect the character of the building while finding a use that works.

Photos: The Batman House (April 2, 2026)