William L. O’Connor was an art lover. Although he worked in his father’s wholesale grocery business, M. O’Connor &

Wear and tear has affected this image taken about 1910, but it still shows William O'Connor's great composition and use of light.

Co., eventually becoming president of the firm, William was an avid and gifted photographer and a collector of paintings. The photographs he took are heirlooms for his family, and they are also fine examples of a genre called Pictorialism.

Pictorialism arose as a photographic style in late 19th Century Europe.  About the same time that Impressionist painters were taking painting in an entirely new direction, away from being strictly representational, Pictorialists were producing photographic images that were also impressionistic and aesthetic with meaning imbued by the photographer.

George Eastman had introduced the first camera for Kodak in 1888, making photography easier and accessible to amateurs. The Pictorialists turned away from the idea of amateur photography. They were the first to raise the photographic image into the world of art.

Pictorialist photographs are often called “painterly.”  Unlike the staidly posed sharply focused daguerreotypes of the Civil War Era, they can appear at a glance to be paintings with their hazy black and white or sepia-toned, atmospheric and softly focused images. The use of natural light was important for Pictorialists. Bucolic outdoor scenes and candid-appearing indoor portraits, often of women or children posed in front of windows, are common. Pictorialists also took romantic shots of laborers and turned the grimy streets of cities into hazy works of art using soft-focus lenses and new printing techniques, such as combining several negatives into one print or using special chemicals that softened detail and fuzzed the images.

In the late 19th Century, Pictorialism swept through Europe and found its place as part of the avant garde art world.  In 1903, photographer Alfred Stieglitz made Pictorialism popular in the United States with his magazine, “Camera Work.” About the time Stieglitz was championing European Pictorialism, William O’Connor of Indianapolis was in Ireland courting the woman who would soon be his wife, Eleanor (Nellie, or Bam) Carr.

This photo of an unknown child shows O'Connor's sense of humor as well as nice techniques.

Eleanor’s wealthy family lived in a 100-year-old large stone house in Galway called Lakeview House.  The country of Ireland, Lakeview House, nearby villagers and Eleanor and her family were all picturesque to William O’Connor, and all were the subjects of shots taken during his extended visit. These photos include scenes of everyday life in an Irish village: women spinning and churning butter, a group of men gathered around a makeshift stage in front of an old stone house, several children sharing a seat on an old rubble wall with their dog, and field workers. In the more intimate photographs of Eleanor and her family, William is also in some of the shots. Either someone else must have taken some of them, or perhaps William set the camera’s timer and then scurried into place before it snapped the picture.

Whoever took the photographs in Ireland was clearly influenced by the new ideas of Pictorialism.  Almost all are open-air settings capturing common scenes with an artist’s eye.  One photo shows William and Nellie picnicking on the banks of a creek or river. She leans against a basket; he’s stretched out reclining on one elbow below her holding up a small box to her. The light picks out the white flounce on her hat, the ruffle of her blouse, and the white collar tip and cuff of his shirt.  The scene seems too intimate to have been shot by a third party. The image seems filled with meaning that we can only ponder. Did William set the camera and then hustle into place at his lady’s feet?  Is the box he’s holding an engagement ring?

We can’t answer those questions, but we can say that while William was in Ireland he convinced Eleanor May Angela Joseph Aloysus Carr (sometimes known as Nellie, sometimes known as Bam) to marry him.  Her 1904 wedding portrait is posed and formal and nothing like the atmospheric exterior shots of Ireland that William took.  In keeping with the solemnity of the occasion this is a traditional bridal portrait, sharply focused on her in white gown and veil in front of a dark screen.

After their wedding, William returned to Indianapolis with his new bride and an interest in the new photography style of Pictorialism. Although he must have resumed his work at the M. O’Connor Co., the images in his family’s collection suggest he also began to dabble more and more in artistic photography.  And around this time William began to purchase art. His collection would eventually include paintings by T. C. Steele and Wayman Adams, members of the Hoosier Group who were gaining fame and selling their work through H. Lieber Co. in Downtown Indianapolis. H. Lieber Co. was a photographic equipment and photo-finishing business, so it’s likely that William’s interest in photography also exposed him to these rising Hoosier artists.

William and Nellie had their first child, Eileen, in 1905. About two years later came William, two years after that, Thomas, then Patricia, Michael, John, Richard and, finally, Elizabeth arrived in 1922. Over the years, William took beautiful Pictorialist-style photographs of his children and their friends.  In one, two of the boys, Billy and Tom, sit before a lighted window reading a book. They veritably glow with the soft light coming into the frame on the right before it’s swallowed into the darkness on the left.  In another, a small child (probably a neighbor boy) stands in front of a spindly tree looking forlornly down at the grass.  Dressed in white, the child lights up the scene, even though he is in soft focus and looking down not at the camera.

The O’Connor family albums grew fat with these painterly photographs over time: one shows one of the girls on the sidewalk to a cottage surrounded by overgrown, tangled bushes; she’s placed in the tracery shadows cast by a tall tree. Another has Bam in her finery standing beside her daughter, who has a golf club in one hand, ready to putt a golf ball off a rug placed on the white sidewalk in front of her.  The sidewalk winds behind them to the back door of a large house.  Still another is an incredible portrait of a blonde child with only his face visible in the middle of a homemade star-shaped costume.  Shot outside, a few fern fronds are visible on a wall or tree behind the giant star surrounding the cherubic face.

Through the 1910s William explored the softened beauty of Pictorialism as he recorded the lives of family, friends and neighbors, creating portraits that would be passed down through many generations.  But, by the 1920s photography was changing again. Alfred Stieglitz and his cronies had moved away from the painterly, atmospheric Pictorialism to a harsher, modernism in their photographs. Stieglitz became famous for his sharply focused shots of New York City and his unromantic portraits of Georgia O’Keefe in this period.

William L. O’Connor continued to be interested in photography and his images changed a bit with the times as well, although he never became a strict modernist in his style. His photographs from around this time have a more solid realistic, less dreamy look:  in one, his children are in a boat tied up at a quay.  The children are older, the image is sharper and the overall feel is more like a modern photograph, as if there is less hidden meaning to convey and more attention paid to bringing the details of the lapping water and the squinting children into focus.

William appears in many of the photographs of this vintage, a still handsome, now silver-haired man with his round-faced wife and their brood of children coming of age.  William L. O’Connor died in 1944. He was the president of M. O’Connor & Co. wholesale grocers.  But of course he was much more than that.  He was also a husband, father, grandfather and gifted photographer.

William L. O’Connor’s pictorialist photographs are family heirlooms now.  But they are also snapshots of a certain period and of a style that turned the medium of photography into an art form.  William may not have published photographs in Stieglitz’s cutting edge “Camera Work,” but his images reveal a deft hand at composition and a romantic vision skillfully expressed in sepia tone.

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc.  Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot. com.

By Connie Zeigler

Abandoned housing is a problem in Indianapolis. It’s a problem that looms particularly large in working class and poor

The house at 1024 Morris St. (in the middle) is one of 2,079 buildings on the City's demolition list.

neighborhoods in Center Township. These neighborhoods, which are already suffering from a high percentage of the city’s bank foreclosures, also contend with a disproportionate number of residences owned by out-of-touch, non-resident property owners. They let their properties degrade to the point where only shady renters will live in them, or let them sit empty with no maintenance of home or lawn.

Mayor Greg Ballard has recently announced an Abandoned Structures Initiative. That initiative has slated the demolition of 1,200 buildings and, according to the mayor’s press release, “aims to remove 2,000 structures by the end of 2012.” It’s not a coincidence that the lion’s share of these demolitions are scheduled in time for the Super Bowl – let’s eliminate our “blight” before the guests arrive. Ironically part of the RebuildIndy program, this “initiative” is not making the city more vital or livable; it’s not rebuilding anything. It’s tearing down housing, especially in Center Township, that won’t be replaced for decades to come, if ever.

We all acknowledge that abandoned houses are a problem. If you believe in the theory that a house with a broken window indicates a neighborhood where residents aren’t taking care of their surroundings and therefore are susceptible to crime, then a neighborhood with several clearly abandoned, boarded properties is tantamount to an invitation for break-ins, squatters, crack houses and worse.

But wholesale demolitions aren’t the answer to this problem.

A city is a symphony played by it neighborhoods. Right now, the flute players are on strike; the piano is out of tune. But you don’t make the symphony better by deciding to play only pieces that don’t require flutes or by hacking the piano to bits. You work to bring the flute players back. You tune the piano.

Our inner-city neighborhoods are not all playing a pretty tune. But they don’t need the punitive removal of all their striking flautists. They need help. And it’s help the City could provide if our bureaucrats would think past the quick-and-easy demolition mindset that virtually eliminates the possibility that we’ll ever hear those lovely flutes again.

With all the talk of Smart Growth and New Urbanism, we should all know by now that urban density is a primary factor in smart cities. Since the mayor likes to tout his sustainability efforts, he should already know that decreasing density isn’t smart. And yet, these demolitions take away, in the present and for the future, the highest use of existing infrastructure. They create gaps in what should be efficient use.

Smart growth aside, a thinking person should be wondering about the class issues involved in these demolitions. Houses on Meridian Street have sat empty for decades. Some property owners of these mansions have even been brought into Environmental Court for letting the properties deteriorate. But there are no slated demolitions on Meridian Street (thankfully). No, it will be the working-class neighborhoods of the city that lose housing stock, and possibly their chances of future recovery, in this plan.

While we hear platitudes from City Hall about freeing up abandoned house lots for future development, what is the real possibility that someone will buy a 25-foot lot between two small houses in a neighborhood that’s already challenged and build a new house there?

And what’s to become of these empty lots denuded of purpose? The mayor likes to talk about urban gardens as if they would be a solution. Maybe a few lots would be converted to garden space, but 2,000 lots? It doesn’t require a mentalist to figure out that far more will remain abandoned, as they are in other cities that tried to use demolition as a poor development tool. Those abandoned lots will grow up with weeds, provide sleeping spots for the homeless and become their own version of a problem. Does the City plan to maintain them all, mowing every few weeks each summer, keeping trash picked up and homeless out? If so, it’s throwing more money at the problem without creating a solution.

What demolition accomplishes is empty spaces between existing housing. A symphony with no flutes.

Preservationists cry out against the destruction of our historic housing stock. In a recent article on its Preservation Nation website, the National Trust wrote that city-sponsored demolition, which is happening across the nation from Westport, Conn., to Dallas, Texas, is an “epidemic that is wiping out historic neighborhoods one house at a time.” Is a city with gaping holes the city we want?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers but I do have a few questions for the mayor. According to a recent article in The Indianapolis Star, the City pays as much as $18,000 to demolish a structure. Why couldn’t we offer half of that amount in cash as an incentive to anyone who would be willing to rehab and live in one of these houses? Cash in hand if you’re willing to bring back to life a house in an old neighborhood. Sign the papers and produce or the City takes the house back. Sure, we might wind up with some of these houses back in city hands, but at least we would have tried to keep our housing stock and chances are good that at least some of the houses would be rehabbed and added back into the symphony of the city.

I know the City has a Land Bank from which some houses slated for demolition can be purchased by CDCs and developers for $2,500. Southeast Neighborhood Development has set up a “Transfer and Transform” program to pull houses from the Land Bank and then sell them to buyers who meet program guidelines for $3,500. They are having some success with this program. Three houses which had been slated for demolition in the North Square Neighborhood of Fountain Square were sold recently through Transfer and Transform after the neighborhood took an active role in requesting a stay of demolition from the city and posting “for sale” signs in front of the homes that had sat empty for more than five years. Their sale to a local small developer made this program a success for North Square.

The developer made the purchase without even seeing the interior of the homes. A bold move that not many would risk. But think how many more people would take that risk on similar houses if the City paid them a small amount of start up money to take the chance.

Rather than spending taxpayer money on demolitions, isn’t it a better idea to spend it on new residents who will do rehabs? And if we only hand over half the cost of a demolition to the new owner we can afford to fund a bureaucrat’s time to handle this incentive program with the other half of the money we’ve saved. Saving money and saving houses.

I know that not everyone cares about the history of these houses and neighborhoods, but how can we ignore the shortfalls in our budget that keep us from adequately funding our libraries and our schools? We can’t afford to keep our libraries open, we can’t afford to keep teachers in our already challenged schools. How can the solution to those problems be to eliminate potential taxpaying households? We need more taxpayers in our townships. In these most-challenging of times, let’s use monies to incentivize new householders who will become additions to our taxpaying rolls, rather than on demolitions. Let’s try the carrot, not the stick.

Those of us who live in historic urban neighborhoods understand fully how much abandoned housing is a problem. But there has to be a better solution to that problem than wholesale demolition of parts of the city, resulting in nothing more than the creation of thousands of abandoned empty lots. If the City has money in its coffers for demolition and the necessary ongoing maintenance these lots would require, I for one would so much rather see it going to put taxpaying folks into those houses. Just this month The Star told us that Baby Boomers are looking to downsize. They want to trade in their large houses, but are having a hard time finding enough small houses to move to. If you’re one of those Baby Boomers, or one of their children, the City could hook you up with a unique fixer-upper.

Our symphony needs its flutes. Let’s save the old city rather than demolish it. n

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc. Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc. blogspot.com.

For a quarter of a century beginning in the 1920s, Gaseteria, Inc., gas stations populated the corners of Indianapolis’s

Gaseteria’s former East Washington Street headquarters now home to the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana.

streets and made the company owner, Russel S. Williams, a petroleum industry giant. Today, the Gaseteria, Inc. office building, a stylish Art Moderne building on East Washington Street (now owned by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana) is the last bricks-and-mortar evidence of a company that was once the largest independently owned petroleum business in the nation.

Russel S. Williams was born in Sheridan, Ind., in 1898. By 1917, at the young age of 19, Williams and his brother, Phil, were already rising stars in the relatively new petroleum industry and founding members of the Omaha Petroleum Marketers Association. In 1924 the brothers opened Williams Oil Co. in Anderson and Muncie.

Four years later, in 1928, they founded Gaseteria, Inc., and the following year moved their new business to 1801-1805 Madison Ave. in Indianapolis. Russel was president and Phil was vice-president. The firm immediately began constructing “branch” gasoline stations in Indianapolis and other Indiana towns.

Gaseteria was doing so well by 1937 that Russel Williams and his wife, Gertrude, built a new Colonial Revival style home at 4747 North Meridian St.

A few years later, in 1941, the Williams brothers constructed a new office building. Notes written about the building on the 1940s Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Indianapolis state that it was “cinder block with brick face; air conditioning; steel beams; tile and concrete floors; wood roof on steel joists.” A small Gaseteria gas station was 26 feet east of the office building. Russel could keep an eye on the station’s activity through the curved window of his stylish modern office.

The City Directory listing for Gaseteria in 1941 notes several “branch” stations: 2101 N. Capitol; 3364 Central; 726 N. Delaware; 1801 Madison; 320 W. Michigan; 1009 E. New York; 802 Oliver; 1079 E. 10th; 1017 E. Washington; 1702 W. Washington; 69 and 1502 N. West; and 700 White River Parkway.

By 1945 several changes had taken place in both the private and work life of Russel S. Williams. He was still living in the Meridian Street home but had a new wife named Mary. His brother had died and Russel’s sons were now part of the business. That year’s City Directory shows Russel S. as senior president; Gene L. Williams as vice-president; Russel Williams Jr. as treasurer; and Wm. L. Barr as director of fuel oil home delivery. There were then 21 Gaseteria gas stations in Indianapolis.

After World War II, Williams was appointed to the National Petroleum Council, which advised federal agencies on matters related to the petroleum industry. He also became a director of the American Petroleum Institute. In 1948, he was elected president of the Individually Branded Petroleum Association of America.

In the 1950s, Williams found ways to expand his company and the reach of his brand. By 1951 Gaseteria, Inc., also owned Bonded Heating Oil Corp., with both companies based at the Gaseteria, Inc. office building at 1031 E. Washington. In 1953, Gaseteria experimented with a new medium to advertise its product. The company sponsored the television show, “Ramar of the Jungle,” and helped promote the show in a booklet passed out at its gas stations. That year, Gaseteria also purchased controlling interest in the Hoosier Petroleum Co. (Hoosier Pete), which operated 35 service stations in Indiana. This added the Hoosier Pete holdings to the 45 stations that Gaseteria now operated in 14 Indiana cities.

Williams and his sons began negotiations to purchase Johnson Oil Refining Co. in 1956. With the consummation of this purchase, Gaseteria gained a 6500-barrels-a-day refinery in Cleveland, Okla., and became the “largest independent petroleum marketer” in the nation.

But Russel Williams had little time to enjoy this achievement. On Nov. 5, 1956, he was a passenger on board his company’s jet when it crashed in New Jersey en route to New York. The Lebanon, N.J., Daily News reported that the plane slammed into an apartment building after hitting a leg of a radio tower in the fog. Williams, the pilot and three people in the apartment building were killed.

At the time of his death, in addition to being president of Gaseteria, , Russel S. Williams was the vice-president and a director of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. He was also a director of Fidelity Trust Co. Bank; his Meridian Street neighbor, Frank E. McKinney, was the chairman of Fidelity Trust and years later, Williams’s daughter, Marianne, would marry Frank E. McKinney Jr.

Russel S. Williams was survived by two sons, Russel Jr. and Gene, one daughter from his first marriage, Mrs. Jane Barr; one daughter from his second marriage, Marianne; and eight grandchildren.

Williams reportedly left a $1 million estate. By then his company owned 300 Gaseteria stations in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa and Kentucky; an Oklahoma refinery, 38 bulk distribution plants and 425 miles of oil pipeline.

One year after Williams’ death, his sons sold the company to the Oklahoma Oil subsidiary of Standard Oil for a $5.5 million stock deal. The Gaseteria stations retained their name for a few years, but by 1958 the stylish office building at 1031 E. Washington was listed in the City Directory under the name Oklahoma Oil Co.

Three years after his death, Russel S. Williams was inducted posthumously as a charter member into the Oil Hall of Fame. He shared the honor with John D. Rockefeller, Harry F. Sinclair and other “giants of the industry.” Williams was honored as a man who “built a private brand empire.”

That empire operated out of a small Art Moderne building on East Washington Street in Indianapolis. In July 2010 the building was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc. Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot. com.

R.K. and Avriel Shull as seen in their Life magazine feature story.

Few couples had more impact on Indianapolis in the 1950s and 1960s than Avriel and R. K. Shull.  It’s safe to say that if you lived in the state in those decades, you knew or knew of one or both of the Shulls. R. K. Shull can be conjured up today only on microfilm and archival copies of Indianapolis newspapers, but many Indianapolis suburbanites are spending their days and nights with Avriel still.

After their engagement in 1950 or so, R.K., an Indianapolis Times reporter, and his young bride-to-be – a professional artist since her early teen years – spent more than a little time at the Indianapolis Press Club, hanging with R. K.’s reporter friends.

One of R. K.’s Press Club associates happened to be a stringer for Life magazine.  That acquaintance – undoubtedly inspired like so many others would be by Avriel’s pizzazz and much-admired, flame-haired beauty – is probably the person responsible for the couple’s wedding landing in a multiple-page spread in Life in 1951.  The photographs and the text showed model-perfect Avriel as the star. The dark-haired R. K. was clearly more suited to a character role.

Gracing the pages of Life would have been a high point in any other Indianapolis couple’s marriage. But “Arky and Ave,” as they were known to friends, were literally just beginning their newsworthy lives.

The year after the wedding, Life did a follow-up photo shoot. In it, the couple was shown with the three-dimensional model of a house, which Avriel had made as she prepared to become a house designer and builder.  She was undeterred by her lack of both an architecture degree and prior experience.

R.K., who’d covered City Hall, the police beat, and done investigative reporting for The Times, was shooting off in a new direction, too.  He was about to become the city’s first TV critic.

“Avalon,” one of Avriel Shull’s houses from the 1950s.

By the late 1950s Avriel had built that home whose model she had shown off in the 1952 Life photograph.  She’d also laid out an addition to the Town of Carmel, which she called Thornhurst, and had built a number of the 21 modern-style homes she would eventually complete there.  She’d also designed and helped construct homes in some of Indianapolis’s newest, upscale suburbs, including Sunset Acres, Meridian Hills and Crow’s Nest.  According to one family friend, R.K. helped out at Avriel’s construction sites at times.  But no one worked harder than Avriel, who often laid the stone herself on the houses she designed.

When R. K. wasn’t working his construction “job” he was writing a now-regular TV criticism column.  By the 1960s it had exploded in popularity.  While the other Indianapolis newspapers had tried to ignore television, seeing it only as competition. The Times made the most of Shull’s razor-sharp wit and created a huge following for his question-and-answer column on the medium, its mistakes, mishaps and main players.  Shull’s column was syndicated to all Scripps-Howard’s papers in the country.  Eventually “Shull’s Mailbag” would run in 260 newspapers.

The highly successful, duo-careered Shulls were a ground-breaking couple.  They were part of the Indianapolis beau monde, highly sought-after guests at political fund-raisers and black-tie affairs – for which Avriel would often design and sew her own show-stopping gowns.  Donna Mikels Shea, a great friend of both Shulls, who was an investigative reporter with The Times until she left that career to marry Cortland Shea, recalls her husband referring to one particularly outlandish dress of Avriel’s as looking like a red, sparkly “cheap drum set.”

In 1965, the award-winning Indianapolis Times folded.  R. K. received an offer to replace the TV critic for two New York newspapers and he took it.  But Avriel refused to move. Her career was here where her name had become synonymous with modern house design.  Everyone knew the business and the woman by the single name, “Avriel,” and she wasn’t about to become an anonymous housewife in New York.

Luckily for Arky, who probably wouldn’t have succeeded in uprooting his stubborn wife, publisher Eugene Pulliam famously decided he wanted two things from the recently defunct Indianapolis Times. The Peanuts comic strip was one.  R. K. Shull was the other.   Shull moved home and joined Pulliam’s The Indianapolis News.

Avriel kept on designing and building houses.  She gave birth to two daughters, Bambi and September. Bambi arrived a bit early because her mother fell while building a cabin for her parents. About this time, Avriel was diagnosed with diabetes.

But that didn’t slow her down.  By the 1970s, the Shulls were busier than ever, Avriel was designing and building houses all over the Indianapolis area and in other states.  She also had begun selling house plans in national magazines.   But she didn’t take care of herself; her diabetes was uncontrolled, causing her to go into diabetic comas.

R.K. helped her fill orders for her plans.  He began to write his clever column working from home to help watch the girls and to try to keep an eye on their mother, whose extreme workload was an additional stressor to her diabetes-racked body.

Finally, in 1976, Avriel’s diabetes won the battle it had waged with her.  Her heart gave out. R. K.’s was broken.

Still, he continued to write his irreverent “Shull’s Mailbag,” answering readers’ questions about 1950s television series and actors and actresses with his smart, funny, to-the-point columns.  In fact, he was so knowledgeable about so many things that fans reportedly called The News offices asking for him to settle their bar bets on TV trivia.

Through the loss of his wife, becoming a single parent, remarrying and eventually losing his eyesight, Arky kept his sense of humor. After retirement, he attended an Indiana Broadcast Pioneers meeting and introduced himself as the man who “used to be R. K. Shull.”  In 2005, he was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.

R. K. Shull died in the home Avriel had designed for them in 2007.

Avriel Shull left her mark in stone and mortar on the city. At least 50, and probably far more, of her houses are still standing in the Indianapolis area.  The Thornhurst Addition that she made to the City of Carmel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

R. K.’s work is still remembered with fondness by his former readers.  Arky and Ave were an awe-inspiring couple who helped make Indianapolis a modern city.  Or at least, as he would have written, “so the story goes.”

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc.  Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot. com. Connie wrote the National Register nomination for Thornhurst Historic District.

The Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology is holding a program in July centered on a slavery case argued in the Indiana courts. That inspired a little research of my own into another important case decided here in

A report on the case from The American Jurist and Law Magazine, 1830.

Indianapolis in 1829.

Bethuel Morris, who had a hand in just about every commercial and cultural enterprise in early Indianapolis, was at the time the President Judge of the Fifth Circuit Court. In these early years of statehood the Circuit Court was true to its name; the judges would travel the circuit around the counties within their purviews and rule on cases in the home courts.

As president judge, Bethuel Morris wrote the decision in the case heard in Indianapolis and recorded in court documents as “Sewall’s Slaves.”  The case was an early landmark in slavery law in the United States.

The suit was brought by slave owner, William Sewall, over his female slaves, Nelly and Mary, and Nelly’s two daughters, according to Jacob Piatt Dunn’s “Greater Indianapolis.”   Sewall and the women and children were traveling through Indiana from Virginia on their way to Sewall’s new home in Illinois.  Delayed in Indianapolis by a big rainstorm, the women heard that they were in a free state and escaped their owner, seeking refuge with one of the city’s overseers of the poor.

Sewall found the women and retook them.  But their case was brought to the Circuit Court and before Judge Bethuel Morris in a writ of habeas corpus – seeking to free them from unlawful imprisonment, since Indiana was a free state.

In his ruling, Judge Morris upheld the freeing of the slaves.  His decision was not based on Indiana being a free state, but on the concept of “comity” (or courtesy) between Indiana and Illinois.  It was a case of comity because Sewall was moving through a free state to a free state.  So the freedom of the slave women and children was based on the Free State status of the place where Sewall would take up residence.

Morris wrote that despite Indiana’s constitution, which prohibited slavery “in the strongest and most emphatic terms,” had the man been passing through Indiana on his way to take up residence in a slave state, then he could have retained the right to transport his slaves.  But since the free state of Illinois was his destination, and that state would not allow Sewall to legally hold the women and the children in slavery, then Indiana could treat him as the resident of a free state illegally holding slaves within our borders.

Morris wrote: “I have no doubt that the citizen of a slave state has a right to pass, upon business or pleasure, through any of the states attended by his slaves or servants; and while he retains the rights of a citizen of a slave state, his right to retain his slaves would be unquestioned.”  But since Sewall was settling in Illinois, he could not claim his right to the slaves “as a citizen of Virginia because he no longer retains that character.” Sewall had no right to transit of his slaves through Indiana to Illinois.

In its time, this decision on the “right to transit” was considered controversial both at home and across the nation. Indiana was a state whose settlers had strong southern affiliations and leanings. Calvin Fletcher, the Indianapolis lawyer, entrepreneur and compulsive diarist, noted in his diary on the day of Morris’s ruling that “the decision will produce great excitement.” But in reality, while Morris’s decision denied this particular slaveholder of his “property,” it allowed the right of transit of slaves through Indiana, if the slaveholder resided in a slave state.

Although there’s no historical record of any “great excitement” in the city or the state over this case, the decision seems to have sparked the Indiana State Legislature to draft a bill in defense of slave-owners’ rights in 1831.  The new law stated that the right of slave owners to retain possession of their slaves “when emigrating or traveling to any other state or territory or country, making no unnecessary delay, is hereby declared and secured.” This law also required free African Americans passing through the state to post bond.

The 1831 law paved the way for the even more restrictive 1852 State Constitution, which prohibited all African Americans, free or slave, from settling in the state.  Although Indiana was a free state and it has a history of Underground Railroad involvement, we were not strong in our stance against the institution of slavery.

Any anti-slavery fame that the state briefly gained from Morris’s decision in “Sewall’s Slaves” was quickly white-washed over by the support of slavery written into law in 1831.

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc.  Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot. com.

This year, Garfield Park turns 130. That’s impressive.

This 1913 postcard depicts an afternoon in Garfield Park.

But there’s been a city park at the same location even longer, since 1873.  Indianapolis purchased the land that had been the Southern [Horse] Riding Park that year and turned it into one of the first city parks.  Although local lore holds that Garfield is the city’s oldest park, according to the “Encyclopedia of Indianapolis” only Military Park (established 1864) and Brookside Park (1870) are older.  City fathers named this new park Southern Park initially, but changed its name to Garfield Park in 1881 after President James A. Garfield was assassinated.

Under progressive-thinking Mayor Thomas Taggert (who also purchased the land that became Riverside Park), the city added 35 acres to Garfield Park in 1895, increasing its size to 99 acres. A history produced by The Friends of Garfield Park notes that 1895 was also the year the city built the first greenhouse in the park on South Garfield Drive. And, in 1895 the Indianapolis Street Railway Co. constructed a streetcar line to Garfield Park with a turnaround at the park, making it much more accessible, especially for those who lived north of Downtown.

The “modern” Garfield Park began to emerge in the first years of the 20th Century. In 1903, Daniel Dupree designed the Pagoda – a rock, concrete and iron structure with a copper roof that functioned as a band shell and dancing area. The Pagoda still stands, thanks to a 1950 fund-raising/conservation effort by one of Dupree’s descendents. Tennis courts made their appearance by 1905. Updated and in a new location, they are still part of the park’s many amenities. A one-time zoo with cages for bears and monkeys added in 1905 didn’t stand the test of time so well and has been gone for decades.

In 1908, came the person who would be Garfield Park’s most important design influence. The Indianapolis Board of Park Commissioners hired George Kessler, the landscape architect who had designed the St. Louis World’s Fairgrounds in 1904 and the Kansas City, Mo., park and boulevard system, to design a similar system in Indianapolis and to become the city parks’ landscape architect.

Kessler designed a new Garfield Park plan. He crafted new bridges over Pleasant Run Creek and connected the park to Ellenberger Park in Irvington with the long, winding Pleasant Run Parkway. He added Garfield Park’s famous Sunken Garden, with its wide stone walkways and Rookwood pottery inserts in large prairie-style planters. He envisioned the sunken garden “along absolutely formal lines . . . merging at the west end into the forest background of the park.”

Kessler also designed the original Conservatory, for use “through the winter months when the outside floral show is gone.” And, in this era when popular amusement parks had made “watching” the action as much a part of the fun as personally experiencing it, he put a formal spin on an outside viewing area, the “Outlook,” a raised and terraced gathering spot above and focused on the Sunken Garden. Here visitors could both experience the park while sitting on one of the benches between the abundantly blooming planters and watch others experiencing it within the Sunken Garden below.

Kessler finely tuned his plans for Garfield Park and his park and boulevard system in Indianapolis by which he aimed at linking every major park in the city through a system of winding parkways. He finally left to move on to new projects in other states in 1915. A year later, the city hired F. W. Darlington of Chicago to design and build fountains at the east end of the Sunken Gardens. “The History of Garfield Park” claims that these fountains were the first in the nation equipped with mechanics that allowed the spray to change and displayed lights that could be changed according to the season and holiday. It must have been a little thrilling to see the lights changed from the usual gold and silver to red, white and blue for Memorial Day.

By 1925 or so, a day in the park at Garfield might include a leisurely stroll past the monument to General Henry Ware Lawton, a war hero from both the Civil and Spanish-American wars who lost his life in the Philippines (His monument was moved to the park from the southwest corner of the former Marion County Courthouse Square in 1915.); through the Grove of Remembrance planted in 1919 and 1920 to commemorate those who lost their lives in World War I; and past the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, moved to the south entrance of the park in 1919 from the former Greenlawn Cemetery, once the burial ground of Confederate soldiers who died in Indiana.

Then, perhaps, the strollers stopped for a tasty picnic in the outdoor shelter added in 1922 (and later enclosed to become the Garfield Arts Center) before finding their seat at the Amphitheater added in the 1920s, now called the MacAllister Center for the Performing Arts.

During the Great Depression (and probably with New Deal funding), the City added a swimming pool, which replaced former bathing beaches in the park and which has since been replaced with an Aquatic Center. In the 1950s, the Kessler-designed Conservatory was demolished, to be replaced by an Art Deco-inspired building..

Kessler’s conservatory may be gone but his influence is still very much part of the experience of Garfield Park. Although the Aquatic Center may draw the biggest crowds most days, the Sunken Garden and the Outlook still offer an experience to see and be seen and the Conservatory is a favored spot for weddings, or just for sitting “in the winter months, when the outside floral show is gone.”

Garfield Park has aged beautifully.

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc.  Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot. com.

It’s surprising to no one that cities change over time. Buildings come up, go down. Modes of transportation change; architectural styles become popular, then lose favor. It’s impossible to track the morphology of a living city. Even

Stout Shoes (left) dates to 1886, while the Marott Building (right) went up in 1906 in the 300 block of Massachusetts Avenue.

the history of one street is a Herculean task to chart.

When faced with the challenges of researching and charting change, historians create timelines. Here’s a short timeline tackling roughly a century of history of one six-block street, Massachusetts Avenue, with a couple neighboring buildings thrown in. More history is missing from this timeline than is in it, but here’s a column’s length of Mass Ave history.

1821 – Massachusetts Avenue is one of four diagonal streets in the original Alexander Ralston plat of Indianapolis.

1872 – A new fire station opens at 748 Massachusetts Avenue.

1886 – Harry Stout & Company, a family-owned shoe store opens at 318 Massachusetts Ave.

1887 – The Hammond Building (301 Massachusetts) houses the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons until 1891.

1893 – The first phase of construction of Das Deutsche Haus (401 E. Michigan) is completed. Members changed the building’s name to The Athenaeum during World War I due to anti-German sentiment in the city.

1898 – Indianapolis streetcars are electrified. One of the first city streetcars is on Massachusetts Avenue. There is also a streetcar station on the Avenue.

1898 – The 400 block of Massachusetts Avenue begins to develop with a retail druggist at 431, John E. Merritt’s Dyers and Scourer’s at 432, a flour and feed store at 437, Baker Bros. Furniture Mfg. at 441 and the Gilbert Hotel at 440.

1898 – The City Directory shows that George Reed, a “mantelsetter,” has his showroom in a new building at 435 Massachusetts Avenue. Reed moved his business from its 1895 location at 137 Massachusetts.

1900 – Massachusetts Avenue is the “busiest street in the city, with seven streetcar lines and five interurban lines” traversing it, according to

The Indianapolis News.

1906 – George J. Marott constructs a five-story retail store, the Marott Center, at 342 Massachusetts Avenue. The store closes in 1919.

1911 – The Argyle building is open in the 600 block of Massachusetts Avenue with apartments upstairs and retail establishments downstairs.

1918 – 435 Massachusetts Ave. (current home of The Chatterbox) now houses Edward Foster’s Saloon. There is a book and wallpaper store at 431 and the Adam Lewis shoe store at 437. The hotel at 440 is now called the Avenue Hotel.

1919 – 18th Amendment prohibits the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors. The Indianapolis News reports a “sudden decrease in the number of brawls, shootings, and other disturbances.” Police attribute the decrease to the fact that “the city’s 500 or more saloons (including Edward Foster’s) closed their doors last Tuesday at midnight.”

1922 – Indianapolis passes its first zoning legislation.

1926 – George Hammond has a “hard goods” business at 435 Massachusetts Ave.. His neighbors include a photographer, the Adolph Lewis shoe store, a grocer and across the street The Davlan Apartments.

1929 – Ferdinand Schaefer starts the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra which plays for many years at the Murat Temple (502 N. New Jersey).

1930s – Kelly’s Bargaintown occupies the ground floor of the Marott Center building (342 Massachusetts) until 1984.

1933 – Prohibition repealed. Yeah!

1935 – Edward DeBiase owns the beer tavern located at 435 Massachusetts Ave.

1945 – The Hammond Building (301 Massachusetts) is sold to Beverly Goldstein and her father to house her husband Joe Budnick’s liquor store. Budnick could not obtain a liquor license due to close proximity to a church so he opened a general store which evolved into a sporting goods and toy store. By the time it closed in 1979, the store, managed by Budnick’s widow, sold only fishing tackle.

1962 – Riley Towers is constructed at 500 N. Alabama St

1967 – Indiana National Bank (now Regions) begins construction on the 37-story INB Tower at the western terminus of Massachusetts Avenue, eliminating the 200 block of the Avenue. Upon completion in 1970 the bank is the tallest building in the city, a distinction it holds for nearly two decades.

1979 – Brother Juniper’s opens on Massachusetts Avenue. Tn The Indianapolis Star, Harry A. Stout, owner of Stout’s Shoes, calls the restaurant “the best thing that’s happened to Massachusetts Avenue in the last 20 years.”

1979 – A study prepared for the Dept. of Metropolitan Development proposes that the city close the 400 block of Massachusetts Avenue to through traffic and turn the street into a pedestrian mall.

1979 – A new Station 7 fire station opens in the 500 block of Massachusetts Avenue.

1981 – Scott Keller, president of Acquisition and Restoration Corp. purchases three buildings in the 400 block of Massachusetts Avenue. He also owns the Lockerbie Court apartments, formerly the Alexandra.

1982 – The Massachusetts Avenue Commercial District is accepted on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the seventh nominated district in Indianapolis.

1982 – David Andrichik purchases the Chatterbox tavern. The first day the bar is open under his management he raises the price of wine by 15 cents a pint to discourage “winos” from frequenting the bar. Sales dropped by $50 that day.

1980s – Massachusetts Avenue becomes the “Arts District” with an influx of galleries on Massachusetts Avenue. Patrick King Contemporary Art opens at 427 in 1982, followed by the Cunningham, Ruschman Gallery, and Engle galleries and the nonprofit 431 Gallery.

1985 – A “conservative estimate” of the amount of construction and renovation taking place along the Avenue is at least $15 million, according to The Indianapolis News.

1990 – The City and the Riley Neighborhood Association implement a $1.3 million renovation and beautification project for Massachusetts Avenue.

1991 – Ownership of The Athenaeum is acquired by the Athenaeum Foundation, Inc., which begins much-needed repair and redevelopment of the building.

There’s so much more. But even a truncated timeline is a good tool for gaining an appreciation for how much can change in 100 years – in only six blocks.

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc.  Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot.com.

Indianapolis owes a debt to Chicago for some of our best “modern” buildings. Two Chicago firms, in particular, made an impact on this city in the 20th Century. Burnham and Root, just after the turn of the century, and Skidmore

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed the Monument Circle building now owned by Chase Bank.

Owings and Merrill, in the middle of it, played a role in shaping the core of the Indianapolis we see today with for-their-time modern architectural statements.

In 1893 Daniel Burnham was the bombastic architect of the Chicago World’s Exposition (or World’s Fair). The “White City” at the center of that exposition was  classically beautiful, and it inspired both the City Beautiful movement in city planning and a revival in favor of Classical architecture.

Burnham’s firm, Burnham and Root, was well-known before the Chicago World’s Fair, but Burnham’s popularity exploded internationally afterwards. Among his most notable structures, he counted the Flatiron building in New York and the Reliance Building in Chicago – both national treasures.

In 1902, the Indianapolis Traction and Terminal Co. incorporated to operate the city’s streetcar system and interurban lines. The company hired Burnham, one of the nation’s most famous architects, to design a complex with a terminal and a nine-story office building. Burnham’s Traction Terminal design was an architectural wonder.

Not only was the complex the largest traction terminal in the world, as noted in the “Encyclopedia of Indianapolis,” it was also a remarkable free-span arched structure large enough to hold nine interurban lines. On opening day, which coincided with the first day of the Indiana State Fair in 1904, the station handled 10,000 customers, according to the Indiana Historical Society.

Unfortunately, in a burst of ill-conceived urban redevelopment, the terminal, previously located at Market and Ohio streets, was demolished in 1968 following construction of a new bus station. The office building survived only a few years longer. It was razed in 1972.

Burnham’s firm’s other building in Indianapolis, the Merchants National Bank Building at Meridian and Washington streets (home to the departing Border’s bookstore), has survived. This 17-story steel-framed, brick-clad building was a modern marvel in its time. Its height had local newspapers of the time writing about the god-like view from the top.

Merchants Bank constructed the building in two phases. The work began in 1904 and was completed in 1913, a year after Burnham died of diabetes complications in Heidelburg, Germany.

Burnham and Root designed the Merchants National Bank Building.

Although the Merchants Bank building is the only one left of the two designed by Burnham (or his firm) in Indianapolis, we can also thank his 1893 Chicago Exposition’s influence for the City Beautiful movement, which inspired the layout of many of our public spaces, such as the American Legion Mall. And for re-popularizing Classical architecture, which influenced, among other buildings in the city, the Old City Hall and the original section of the Central Branch Library Building (“What Does the Future Hold for Old City Hall” in the March 2009 issue of Urban Times).

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, another Chicago firm, also made a contribution to our city’s built environment. Their J. C. Penney building, which replaced the old English Hotel on the northwest quad of the Circle, and was later demolished for the current bland corporate headquarters at that location, was a tailored Cary Grant-kind-of-cool limestone fronted ultra-modern design when it went up in 1950. It brought mid-century modern to town.

Then, in 1959, Skidmore landed the contract to build on the east quadrant of the Circle. The firm’s International Style building at 101 Monument Circle (now owned by Chase Bank) is streamlined with a curved glass curtain wall façade.

One of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s founding partners was Nathanial Owings, an Indianapolis native. Perhaps that’s why their firm landed two such important contracts. In 1955 they also constructed another International Style building on Fall Creek Boulevard. Today called the Julia Carson Government Center, it’s hard to get a long look at that building as we hustle along the boulevard, but it sports a stylishly modern aluminum canopy over its entrance on Fall Creek and the hallmark glass curtain wall design with the thinnest of metal mullions between the windows make it a classic 1950s modern design.

Indianapolis is not a city known for great modernism. But we have it. Thanks to two Chicago firms, one with strong ties to Indianapolis, we still have some great modern design – from two different eras – to show off to our visitors and to appreciate for their beauty. Before it’s too late. n

Read more about Skidmore Owings and Merrill on Zeigler’s blog, INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot.com. Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc.  Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square.

Among the many interesting historic tales about Indianapolis is a compelling story that connects us to a fabled city of ancient Greece.  This story may not be the stuff of epic poems and it’s unlikely to inspire a movie, but it’s a surprising little tidbit interwoven with Indiana’s history as a divorce mill.

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc. Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot.com.

In 1852, when the state was still part of the frontier, Indiana’s divorce law was arguably the most liberal in the nation, possibly the world. The state allowed divorce on seven specific grounds, such as adultery and abandonment, and the law included an “omnibus clause,” which basically said that divorces could also be granted for any cause.

This new law also placed divorces onto the dockets of courts rather than requiring plaintiffs to plead their case to the Indiana General Assembly. At first it didn’t require any proof that the complainant was a resident of the state.  Although that was later changed, the residency requirements remained very loose and easily attained until the law became tougher in the 1870s.

During the 20 years or so before the divorce law was made more stringent an estimated 10 percent of marriages in the state ended in divorce. The divorce rate and the law that allowed it were condemned far and wide. That condemnation reached the ears of a famous European adventurer/archaeologist who came to Indiana to dig his way out of an unhappy marriage.

Heinrich Schliemann is not a household name in the 21st Century, but he became world famous in the mid-19th Century after he discovered the site of the ancient city of Troy. Following the path of Odysseus laid out in Homer’s epic poem, Schliemann made a first tentative excavation in a likely spot in 1868 and was convinced that he’d found Troy, but winter came on before he uncovered definitive proof.

In the spring of 1869, waiting for warm weather, Schliemann, a German by birth, arrived in New York City with plans to become a naturalized U. S. citizen, thinking this would aid his negotiations with the Turkish and Greek governments, both of which had to agree to allow his excavations to move forward.  It seems like contemplating the discovery of a legendary city and having to abandon the site to potential vandalism and scavengers for a season would have been Schliemann’s biggest worries during 1869, but apparently not.

During his stay in New York, Schliemann heard about Indiana’s divorce law and decided to also use his time in the U.S. to come to the Midwest and divorce his Russian wife.

A hundred years later, another man of discovery and an amateur historian, Eli Lilly, edited a book of Schliemann’s diary entries and other writings from his time here. In “Schliemann in Indianapolis,” we get a look at our city through the eyes of the European adventurer who made the most important archaeological discovery of his age.

Arriving in Indianapolis, Schliemann took a room at the Bates House, which stood on the northwest corner of Washington and Illinois streets. Although the Bates House was the best hotel in Indianapolis, good enough for President Lincoln when he traveled through Indianapolis on his way to his first inaugural, Schliemann was not impressed. There was no wine, and while the hotel’s Irish serving girls were not bad looking, he wrote, they “certainly do not appear to be types of virtue.”

Under such dubious circumstances, it’s no wonder that Schliemann didn’t stay long at the Bates House. He rented a house at #22 Noble Street (now College Avenue) and settled in for the few weeks he would spend in town awaiting his divorce.

By Indiana law, any complainant filing for divorce had to publish notice of the case in a local newspaper for three successive weeks.  It seems unlikely that Schliemann’s wife, living in Europe, caught wind of the notice, but he fulfilled the letter of the law. The divorce notice ran in the “Weekly Indiana State Journal” three times in April 1869.

During his sojourn Schliemann observed and wrote about the city.  His stay took place only four years after the Civil War.  The war’s toll was still visible in 1869.  The foreigner wrote that “one meets here at every step men with only one arm or one leg and sometimes even such whose both legs are amputated.”

For the most part, Schliemann found Indianapolis a dull place. There were no coffeehouses, and on Sundays all the shops closed. He found it impossible to keep a servant and eventually resorted to hiring an old soldier for 50 cents a day “plus victuals” to keep his house.  For their part, the citizens of Indianapolis found Schliemann’s habit of bathing daily in the White River to be something of an oddity.

On June 30, 1869, Schliemann wrote that his divorce decree was final. Judge Solomon Blair’s only objection was about the children from the marriage, who were not provided for in the divorce. Schliemann assured him he would take care of them and the decree was issued.

In mid-July Schliemann left Indianapolis.  He received a divorce, was aggravated by bad help and amazed by fireflies during his short stay in the city.

In September 1869, he married a Greek woman named Sophie. Over the next few years they worked together to uncover layers of ancient occupation at the site he’d previously located and Heinrich Schliemann gained fame as the person who discovered Troy.  He also just happened to get a divorce in Indianapolis. n

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc.  Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot.com.

If you’ve ever driven along Lafayette Road near Riverside Park you may have noticed a huge building next to White River behind a sign that says “Municipal Gardens.” Despite a makeover that has added a new wing and a lot of square footage, it’s still possible to see a historic building beneath the additions and changes.

Municipal Gardens was first the home of the Indianapolis Canoe Club.

And, it turns out, the Municipal Gardens property has had a long and fascinating life.

Despite its current bland and misleading moniker, there aren’t gardens on the property and it didn’t start life as a municipal building. Its location on the river gives a hint about its original purpose. This property first housed the Indianapolis Canoe Club. The private club had been active for a number of years before constructing a club house at this spot on Lafayette Road around 1910. An old postcard in the book “Indianapolis Social Clubs” shows the clubhouse at that time was a hipped-roof Craftsman-style building with a brick first story and frame second and third stories. The building had a hipped-roof entry and open porches wrapping around the second and third stories.

That new building quickly became the place to be. Indianapolis’s elite joined the Canoe Club and showed it off to friends, family and visiting dignitaries. Indianapolis Blue Books (local social registers) are full of members of the Indianapolis Canoe Club, who enjoyed traipsing around the wooded acres of the club grounds, canoeing or boating on White River, and undoubtedly appreciated a Manhattan, martini, or the trendy new cocktail, the Singapore Sling, on the building’s porches.

“Automotive Industries” magazine reported in 1913 that when members of the Institution of Automobile Engineers stopped in Indianapolis for two days during a tour of the United States, they visited the Indianapolis Canoe Club. The group came to the city to watch the Indianapolis 500. While here they visited the Wheeler & Schlebler carburetor plant (today’s Wheeler Arts Center in Fountain Square) and Carl Fisher’s Prest-o-Lite factory in the then-new town of Speedway. The British engineers then enjoyed a banquet at the Indianapolis Canoe Club where they “had a chance to see what country club life was like,” and to rub elbows with Howard Marmon and other Hoosier automobile giants.

Sadly only a few years after the engineers enjoyed the high life at the Canoe Club, the still-new building burned. A 1917 announcement in the “Domestic Engineering and Journal of Mechanical Contracting” noted that the contract for construction of a new canoe club was in the works after the former canoe club burned down in 1916.

The members of the canoe club must have liked their old building, because they constructed a new one that was very much like it. This time there weren’t open porches and the building was more Mediterranean Revival than Craftsman in details, but the two buildings were so similar in plan and footprint (before later additions to the current building) and even first-story window configurations that it seems likely the existing building was constructed over the brick sections of the first building and then the entire structure was covered in stucco.

Whether all-new construction or a rebuild on top of remnants of the original building, the club was rebuilt in 1917. Then, in 1921, the Indianapolis Canoe Club sold its new building to a new tenant. The building also got a new name and a new focus. That year it became Casino Gardens.

Casino Gardens, probably named for Tommy Dorsey’s dance club in California, was a hot Indianapolis jazz spot over the next few years. Among the many notables who entertained crowds on the open-air dance pavilion here were cornet player Bix Beiderbecke and his band, the Wolverines. Beiderbecke went on to become a jazz legend whose career began its ascent at Casino Gardens.

In 1922, the Miami Lucky Seven played Casino Gardens and then cut a jazz record at Gennett Records in Richmond, an early and important jazz record label, which also counted Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in its discography.

The Miami Lucky Seven, Syncopating Five, Dusty Rhoades, Hoagy Carmichael and a host of other local, regional and national bands played at Casino Gardens in the 1920s. But Casino Gardens’ heyday was brief.

Some records of Casino Gardens mention dwindling crowds in the mid-1920s. Maybe it was decreased revenue that caused the owners to seek a buyer for their business. It was probably the building’s great location on White River and its few acres of undeveloped land that inspired the Indianapolis Parks Department to purchase it. In 1927, Casino Gardens became Municipal Gardens.

For many years Municipal Gardens continued to host dance bands. Local drummer Larry Goshen remembers playing there many times in the 1950s with rock-n-roll groups. But more and more the building’s focus became physical recreation. A dads’ club football league began in the 1950s.

After the construction of the Municipal Gardens Community Center, the basketball program hosted there became famous. According to The Indianapolis Star, over the years this program tutored 69 Indiana basketball all-stars, 30 players who went on to play professional ball, and, by 2009, as many as 32 former Municipal Gardens Community Center alumni had become basketball coaches at high schools or colleges. Many of these students played for the Municipal Gardens’ local legend coach, Red Taylor.

By the 1970s the property was becoming run down. A federal grant in 1979 funded a $500,000 renovation of the building and grounds.

The Singapore slings of the Indianapolis Canoe Club and the Syncopated Five of Casino Gardens are no more. But today, Westsiders – and you, too – can still see a bit Municipal Garden’s storied past as you catch a glimpse of it along Lafayette Road. Or stop and play a game of hoops.

Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc.  Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc. blogspot.com.