Tag Archives: Indianapolis

Bellevue Resort – The Prettiest Grass in Indianapolis

Bellevue Resort was a pretty little place situated where the canal and an old tow path crossed the Michigan Road, roughly where Butler University is now. Operating in the 1890’s, Bellevue was part of the Kneipp Association and employed many different water healing techniques for members, as well as a rest point along a bicycling […]

Lost LGBTQ Landmarks

The Famous Door, Bellflower Clinic, Essex House, Body Works. What do these places have in common? They are just a handful of lost landmarks of the Indianapolis LGBTQ community. Even though the structures are gone, these demolished buildings still share their stories with us today. The Essex House was the youngest mid-rise apartment/hotel building in […]

William Hudnut III Versus the Reagan Administration

From Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Winter 2019. To receive Traces four times a year, join IHS  and enjoy this and other member benefits. Back issues of Traces are available through the Basile History Market and at images.indianahistory.org. “Either I have moved away from them or they have moved away from me” In 1991 evangelist and motivational speaker Guy Kawasaki interviewed Indianapolis mayor William Hudnut […]

Reckoning with Riverside

History Matters is a blog series where we’ll be talking about the things you’re not supposed to discuss at the dinner table – things that may make some people uncomfortable. These pieces of our history are there if you look but might not be top of mind or in a textbook. We often think of history on a larger scale, […]

Mapping Indianapolis with Survey Sketches

In preparation for our Mapping Indianapolis panel this Saturday, I thought it was timely to highlight one of my favorite new resources available in the library – the H.B. Fatout Co., Herbert Bloemker Co., and Ernest R. Hamilton Co. Surveying Books collection. The collection includes more than 50 sketchbooks surveying Marion County, beginning in the 1880s. […]

Countdown to Armageddon: The Reverend Jim Jones and Indiana

From Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Spring 2018. To receive Traces four times a year, join IHS  and enjoy this and other member benefits. Back issues of Traces are available through the Basile History Market. The world came to know Reverend Jim Jones as the mad maestro of a real-life horror show that left 918 people, many of them children, dead in a […]

The Legacy of Architect Evans Woollen

Today marks the two-year anniversary since we lost Indiana’s great Modernist architect, Evans Woollen. Woollen, a Yale University grad who studied under famed “Glass House” architect Philip Johnson, established his Indianapolis firm in 1955. Woollen’s earliest works consisted of mid-century modern residences, but he soon began exploring Brutalism with Clowes Memorial Hall, Barton Towers, and […]

From the Street to the Sky: A Contemporary Photo History of Indianapolis

Urban renewal. Revitalization. Skyscrapers. It is rare that a collection comes along that so thoroughly documents the changes in the downtown Indianapolis landscape over 50 years. The Joseph and Georgia McGuire Photographs narrates this municipal transformation – overlapping chronologically with the W.H. Bass Photo Co. and the Larry Foster photography collections – and continues in […]

What Could Have Been: White River State Park

I like architecture – a lot. But do you know what really makes me happy in the archives? Finding building plans that never came to be. So when I stumbled across photographs of the original White River State Park model while processing the McGuire Photographs collection, I was mesmerized by how many design concepts were incorporated […]