Let’s meet three Indianapolis business trailblazers and entrepreneurs. These three are connected through their creation of Morton Place (19th to 22nd Streets, Delaware, Alabama, New Jersey and west side of Central streets). These three businessmen had the vision to acquire the old State Fair & Exposition Grounds and redevelop the area into Morton Place, with 280 lots and esplanades from 19th to 22nd streets on Delaware, Alabama and New Jersey Streets.
Now, the old Morton Place has been enveloped as part of a larger neighborhood called Herron-Morton Place that extends down to 16th Street and over to Pennsylvania on the west and Central on the east.
Who were these visionaries? Elijah B. Martindale, Willard W. Hubbard and Edward F. Claypool.
Any of these sound familiar? This was one of many of Martindale’s real estate investments.
Claypool surely rings a bell if you ever visited or have heard of the Claypool Hotel, formerly at the northwest corner of Washington and Illinois Streets.
Hubbard was secretary and treasurer of the Island Coal Company in Greene County, Indiana, and the only one of the three to live in Morton Place for some time. His former home still stands on the southeast corner of 20th and Delaware Streets.
Nice mustachery going on here…
ELIJAH B. MARTINDALE
WILLARD W. HUBBARD
EDWARD F. CLAYPOOL
Too bad a superhighway was created through the heart of the neighborhood, out of Delaware Street, in particular. Esplanades that once ran from 19th to 22nd on Delaware Street were removed in the early 1920s, to help relieve the increase in car traffic.
