While landscapers busily watered newly planted, bright-red ground-cover roses at 5909 Wheelock Road last fall, carpet installers laid padding in a back office – one with a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking two ponds and Cherry Hill Golf Course’s 10th green

And Gregg Richhart, soon to become the occupant, was feeling pleased with his company’s newly built office.

But when Richhart tells people about Star Homes by Delagrange and Richhart’s dazzling new digs, he’s sometimes met with a dazed expression.

Puzzled look. Scratching of head. Clearing of throat. And finally, “Hmmm. Delagrange, Delagrange. Now, just which Delagrange is that?”

“The Delagrange name has jumped around a bit,” he acknowledges.

Indeed, homebuilding and the Delagrange name have been intertwined for more than 70 years in the Fort Wayne area, says Herb Delagrange, 60. He’s one of a tribe of Delagrange builders and one of the few people who can keep track of all the players without a scorecard.

But when it comes to some of the finer twigs on the family tree, even he has to call in reinforcement – namely his uncle, Louis Delagrange, 85 – the last living member of the second generation of Delagrange builders.

Herb, co-owner of Colonial Homes and Delagrange Homes, 4328 Flagstaff Cove off Stellhorn Road, is part of the third. And there’s a fourth generation well on the way.

But, Herb says, nearly all Delagrange builders in the Fort Wayne area trace their ancestry to his late grandfather, David Delagrange, who started the family’s building tradition in the 1920s.

David Delagrange, who owned a farm outside Woodburn, got his start by building barns for other farmers. He branched out into homebuilding through the 1950s, earning a reputation for craftsmanship. Three of his four sons – Louis, the late Delbert and the late Amos D. – followed in his footsteps. The fourth son, Menno, also deceased, was a farmer and Herb’s father.

Amos D., who first built under his own name and then took the name Delagrange Homes in 1961, helped Delbert and Louis get started in building, Herb says. Delbert started Star Homes with his brother-in-law, Elmer Yoder, in the early 1960s.

Louis, who owned a Ford dealership in New Haven for many years, did commercial building, invested in Star Homes, developed land under the name DL&J and, beginning in the 1980s, built homes under the Chateau Homes name.

Louis, who started working for his father at age 15, recalls the work was hard. Basements were dug by hand or with a dumpscraper and a tractor. There were no power saws or nailers, and concrete was mixed on site.

“See the cement mixer,” he says, pointing to an old, 3-by-5-inch black and white picture of a job site. “It was before the days they had Redi-Mix. You had to shovel the gravel in.”

‘Farmed out’

Herb Delagrange also got his start in the building business as a teenager, when he and two of his five brothers, Roger and Larry, got “farmed out” by their father to work for Delbert’s construction crews building houses.

The reason: too many farmhands and not enough farm, he says. Even after Delbert, busy with building, had Menno take over his share of the family land, the family farmland could not support all six sons and their families, Herb says.

Just back from a military tour of duty in Vietnam, Herb didn’t complain. He built his first house for Star Homes at Darling and Roberts roads in 1972 and branched out with Delbert and Roger as Colonial Homes in 1976.

It was a good time for homebuilding in the Fort Wayne area. The early wave of baby boomers like himself was entering adulthood, factory jobs were plentiful and so was developable land.

“I can still go into subdivisions in Fort Wayne and remember the houses I worked on,” Herb says. “We stayed with it, and that’s why we’re where we are today.” Over the years, Delagrange family members have built “thousands” of area homes, he estimates.

Of Herb’s other brothers, Terry Delagrange worked for various family-building businesses, while Max and Don Delagrange continued to farm. Don is now a full-time pastor at Central Church on Schwartz Road in Fort Wayne.

Richhart, meanwhile, came to the Delagrange family more than two decades ago, at age 23. Delbert hired Richhart for a crew while Richhart was dating his wife-to-be, Delbert’s daughter Shawn.

“One day (in 1987), he offered to sell the company to me, and after that we’ve just sort of grown,” says Richhart, who says he kept “Delagrange” in the company name out of respect for his late father-in-law, who died in 1994 after suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and his mother-in-law, Catherine.

Richhart has also had an association since 1997 with Roger Delagrange, Herb’s brother, in a villaminium-building company, GRD Group. The company, whose name combines the pair’s initials, still exists. But these days Roger spends the majority of his time managing Cherry Hill and Autumn Ridge golf courses and another golf course he owns in Florida, Richhart says.

Larry and Herb bought Roger’s interest in Colonial Homes about 2000, when Roger affiliated with GRD, Herb says. Larry, who had been in business with Delbert as Star Builders, bought Delbert’s shares in Colonial Homes in 1981.

In 2005, Herb and Larry bought the name Delagrange Homes, after that company, started by Amos D., was sold to Dan Yoder, a Delagrange in-law, and his son Denny.

Denny Yoder had moved to Sarasota, Fla., to develop other building interests, and Herb says he wanted to bring the name “back into the Delagrange family.”

Christian ethic

The family has not been immune to tragedy – Elmer Yoder, a business partner of Delbert, accidentally drowned in Amos D.’s pool in 1970, and relations were strained by grief for a while.

But competitive pressures have been kept to a minimum, Herb says, noting there are several other Delagranges and Delagrange in-laws in construction-related businesses in the Fort Wayne area, including Amos D.’s sons, Lynn and Richard.

Lynn, 51, worked with Louis under the Chateau Homes name and began building under Lynn Delagrange Inc., New Haven, in 2000. Richard, 63, started with Louis as A.D. Delagrange and Associates in the late 1970s and shortly thereafter started Legacy Homes in Warsaw. His son, Allan, 37, is a home-framing subcontractor working under his own name in Warsaw.

Other Delagranges in construction descend from other branches from David’s generation or earlier, Herb says, apologizing in advance if he’s missed anyone.

“We still have a huge family get-together at Christmastime, all these extended families,” he says. “Can you imagine?”

Louis says he believes the Delagranges have succeeded by retaining a strong Christian ethic. Some have moved from the Mennonite denomination to other Protestant faiths, but they are all firm believers in personal integrity and family peace.

“My father was a good builder, honest, and I don’t think there’s any substitute for honesty. That’s what we practiced,” he says. “There have been several splits, but I don’t think anyone ever got overly upset about it. There was always work. There was always room for everybody.”

A framed Bible verse hangs by Herb and Larry’s office front door.

It reads: “For every house has a builder, but the builder of everything is God.” – Hebrews 3:4.

More in fold

These days, Herb and Larry Delagrange build under both Colonial Homes and Delagrange Homes, using the former for higher-end homes and villaminiums and the latter for mostly midrange homes and a few villas.

The companies have taken in two members of the fourth generation – Larry’s son, Chad, 38, and Don’s son, Nate, 35.

The two work on project and site management as junior partners, Herb says. They got their start in the time-honored family way, working on construction sites as teens, although Nate also did a two-year stint as a business major at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

“I didn’t have any boys, but if I could adopt these two, I would. They’re doing wonderfully,” Herb says. “We’re hoping these young guys will keep us around a long time. I’d kind of like to be like my Uncle Louis. I still want to come into the office when I’m 85.”

The late 1980s were the peak for Colonial Homes, which then was building more than 20 homes a year, Herb says. In the summer of 2008, the two companies’ reach spread to eight counties as homebuilding in and around Fort Wayne got more competitive and the real estate market dipped.

“We’re not a Lancia or a Granite Ridge, and we don’t want to grow there,” Herb says. “I don’t want to be the largest builder in Fort Wayne. That’s not my goal. I just want to take care of the people who come to us, the people we have.”

Richhart, meanwhile, feels his new office just down the street and around the corner from Herb and Larry’s will keep his business growing by offering him more visibility in the Fort Wayne-area market.

The company, which specializes in custom homes, has been doing much of its building in the Van Wert and Bryan areas in Ohio and in northeast Indiana’s lake country, he says.

“In 1999, we did close to 70 houses between Star Homes and GRD,” he says. “In the last three years, we averaged 30 to 40 houses.”

Richhart says he was confident in building an office, even in the midst of a protracted homebuilding slump, because he had saved for it for a long time.

He also got a prod from a friend, Dr. Michael Thompson, an orthodontist who invested in and is occupying half the building. Richhart figures Thompson’s clients are a pipeline into his market – families with growing children.

Although Richhart and his wife have no children, next-generation Delagrange relatives are on staff in the form of Justin Doxsee, a draftsman and project manager, and Sara Gremaux, office manager, Richhart says.

“There’s a lot of people we talk to who say, ‘Delbert built our (parents’) home in 1962.’ The majority of our jobs are referrals, from people we’ve built for in the past,” Richhart says as he stands in the lobby of the office under a cathedral-ceiling next to a winding staircase with solid-craftsman-style newel posts and backed by wainscoting.

“This is for the next 50 years,” he says.

rsalter@jg.net