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The W. E. Mick Building, also known as the Aquilina Apartments, was a brick structure built in 1910-11 on the northwest corner of Central Avenue and East 30th Street. Realtor and developer William E. Mick hired architect William H. Albersmeier to design the mixed commercial and residential building with five storefronts on the first floor and four second-floor apartments. The flats were large for the era with four and five rooms. The corner location was the site of a drug store for many decades, including Merrill and Alford Drug Store (1910s) and Koehler Pharmacy (late 1910s until at least the 1980s). (Indianapolis Star, November 20, 1910)
Looking west on 30th Street
When this accident scene was documented by the Indianapolis Fire Department in the 1950s, the busy Koehler Drugs intersection was also home to the Air Liner Sandwich Shop, a Pure Oil Company gas station, a Westinghouse appliance store, Frances Shoppe dresses, and Raysey Interiors. After John P. Koehler’s death in 1954, the pharmacy was owned by Joseph Felsher at least until the 1980s. In the 1970s the area was also home to Ted’s Union 76 Service Station, Poro Barber and Beauty College, the Seven Star Baptist Church, and the Mini Record Shop. For a closer view, zoom in on the IMCPL image. (IMCPL Digital Collections, Indianapolis Firefighters Museum Collection)
Detail, 1950s (IMCPL Digital Collections, Indianapolis Firefighters Museum Collection)
Today, this intersection hardly has any presence with empty lots on three of the corners. If my memory is correct, a fire broke-out in the Mick Building/Aquilina Apartments in the late 1990s and the charred shell was demolished around 2000. The surviving brick building houses the Unleavened Bread Café, offering soul food meals (breakfast and lunch only), while also hosting occasional bible study classes and church groups. Committed residents of the Mapleton-Fall Creek Neighborhood are working along with the Mapleton-Fall Creek Develoment Corporation to rebuilt and revitalize the area. (Google Street View, 2009)
As always, I love hearing your memories of these neighborhoods and especially would like to find snapshots of this intersection or any other area of Indianapolis.
14 Comments on "Then and Now: W. E. Mick Building and Aquilina Apartments, Central Avenue and East 30th Street"
Wow, what a difference!! Also, while I think it may have already been gone when this building was built, do you know exactly where Newby’s Oval, the bicycle race track, was. I know it was near this intersection.
Judging by the cars in the “Before” shot, the photo has to be from no earlier than 1964. The car on the far left is a 1964 Ford Galaxie.
Tom: I’ve seen Newby’s Oval on maps, but don’t know the location off-hand.
Jim, thanks for the car information. I took the 1950s date from IMCPL’s catalog record, but thought that the image had a later feel.
I was there at this time….
and I was a paper boy delivering the Indpls Times in the pm and the Indpls Star in the am on Central Street from 30th to 34th streets and 30th to 32d respectively. Immediately inside the entrance to the Aquilina was a one-story staircase up which I tossed many a paper and (since we collected each week) climbed many times.
Koehler’s drugstore offered a favorite root beer for 5cents and a float for a dime from its neighborhood soda fountain.
At the Pure Oil station on the SE corner, Jessie would pump gas and wipe windshields (no self serve) for around 30cents/gallon. I appreciated how the owner, Jack Lang (sp?) would offer an odd job now and then and would gladly trade “paper boy collection change” for paper dollar bills.
But how about the Air Liner? This was a small diner where Joe Rangel worked as one of two short-order cooks. In the early mornings before making deliveries, several carriers would park bikes and papers outside the diner and go in to play competitive pinball. The diner “rules” were that you had to order food to be inside. So for years (and for a dime) I got a grilled Danish and chocolate milk served up by Joe Rangel who went on to open Acapulco Joe’s Mexican Restaurant. Joe was a good friend to all us kids.
I just found this link:
http://indianapolis.about.com/od/landmarkslegends/a/JoeRangelBioAcapulcoJoes.htm
Another memory about that intersection is that just north of the Air Liner on Central Street was a Plymouth dealership with state-of-the-art showrooms. I remember sneaking peeks at the new car models which were kept literally wrapped up and under cover in the showroom until the public introduction day arrived. That was a big deal!
I remember Koehler’s Drugs well from my grade school days at William A. Bell School 60 and high school days at Shortridge. Horstmann’s at 34th and Central and McSoley’s (later, Vestal’s) at 32nd and Central were closer to my family’s home at 33rd and Ruckle, but most of my friends lived near 30th Street on New Jersey, Washington Boulevard, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, making Koehler’s closer to their families’ homes. I’m pretty sure Koehler’s Drugs was still there in the 1980s. Although Koehler’s kept the same name over its many years of existence, it probably had different owners.
Civil rights organizers met upstairs circa 1965-68 trying to recruit people for freedom rides & marches. Lots of Shortridge HS there.
I think almost more than any other historic loss the city has seen, losing the neighborhood “corner store” is one of the city’s biggest losses. These provided the glue that held neighborhoods together. Like the General Store in rural areas, trips to these stores were more than buying milk. You would catch up with local gossip, see your neighbors and interact. We don’t do that now with the mega stores that are miles from our homes.
I grew up a couple of blocks from 49th and Penn and loved going to Hamakers to buy candy and read comic books, buying junk food at Friendly Foods, drinking cold bottled pop while sitting in the barber chairs at Lloyds or hanging around at Kurts Marathon. Great memories. The loss of these little neighborhood “nodes” really took a lot of character out of the old neighborhoods all over the northside.
The photos from teh fire department would have to have been in the 60′s as the car on the corner is a Ford Fairlane(?) and some of the others look like 60′s cars… Right?
Tom, Newby Oval was near the northeast corner of 30th and Central. According to this map: http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/u?/HIM,60 there was a “businessmans’ driving” track at the corner, with the cycling track north of it, closer to Fall Creek.
The land from the north side of E. 30th Street on the south to the south side of E. 31st on the north and from the east side of Central Avenue on the west to the west side of N. College Avenue on the east became a housing addition known as Boulevard Square about the year 1910. The land directly east of the above rectangle, from the east side of N. College Avenue to the west side of Fall Creek Boulevard became a part of the Jose-Balz Fall Creek Boulevard Addition, also established in about 1910. East Fall Creek Parkway North Drive (as we know it today) did not exist at the time of the Newby Oval. The Jose and Balz families, who have been discussed in earlier Historic Indianapolis Facebook postings, built mansions for themselves in the 3000 block of Fall Creek Boulevard and developed significant tracts of land in Mapleton-Fall Creek and Meridian-Kessler.
Michael…you are right that this is from the ’60s (not the ’50s as the catalog record stated). One person on Facebook identified a 1964 car. Thanks for the gentle correction.
Well, regardless of the date of the photo, I really really like these kind of posts to the site! Keep up this great work!
My father met a guy at the Koehler drug store in the late forties who recommended a dance studio on Meridian to take lessons from. My father ended up marrying the owner, Terry, and I was born a few years later. There was a cafeteria on the south side of 30th Street and just west of Central. My father used to eat there often. I forget the name of it. It’s long gone, but he ate there a lot in the 40s. It was owned by two brothers.