Posted in: Historic Miscellania Rufus Cantrell, Intruder in the Dust

In 1935, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges weighed in on what mathematicians later called chaos theory: the results of some phenomena are simply impossible to predict, control, or even explain.  Take the freak reasoning of...

Read More 2 Comments

Posted in: Historic Miscellania A Chinese Gravestone and a Murder Mystery at 207 Indiana Avenue

Crown Hill — America’s third-largest public cemetery — has a few hundred thousand stories to tell.  One of its more extraordinary burials took place in 1902, when a Confucian ceremony officially ushered Doc Lung, a...

Read More 1 Comments

Posted in: Misc Mondays Misc Monday: The Rapid Rise and Tragic Fall of Frank W. Flanner

Flanner & Buchanan isn’t a street intersection — it’s a funeral business — but the great Indianapolis undertaking firm is a veritable crossroads of the capitol city’s history. “Dig Indy?” (Pun intended.) How about the story of the company’s founder, pioneering...

Read More 9 Comments

Posted in: Mailbag HI Mailbag: Northwest Corner of Illinois and 34th Streets

Reader’s Question: I’m interested in knowing what the building used to be that is located on the northwest corner of Illinois and 34th Streets.  I look forward to seeing what you discover. Thank you. ~...

Read More 22 Comments

Posted in: Mailbag HI Mailbag: Deaconess Hospital

Reader’s Question: My 92-year-old neighbor told me that she was born in Deaconess Hospital.  I had never heard of this institution before.  I’m wondering if it still exists today but is known by a different name?  ~ Kathy Z., Indianapolis ...

Read More 10 Comments

Posted in: Friday Favorites Friday Favorite: Sweet Caroline

How Do You Not Know This Woman? Not just “Benjamin Harrison’s wife,” she was accomplished and elegant. She was a deft leader among women at a time when the idea of women’s rights was just beginning to gain...

Read More 2 Comments

Posted in: Friday Favorites Friday Favorite: Grave Concerns

Is that Cemetery Cymbal-ism? A walk through any graveyard will draw the eye and the imagination to the most unique monuments. Many of these memorials would have plenty to reveal about their plot’s occupant —  if only...

Read More 10 Comments

Posted in: Friday Favorites Friday Favorite: Can Indy Claim First Ever Auto Accident?

YOU Decide… Our fair city, whose international fame is flavored heavily with automotive lore, might claim one more dubious automobile first: Indy may have been the site of the first auto accident in the United States....

Read More

Posted in: Historic Miscellania Indiana’s S & S War Memorial Sculptor

A close up view of “The Dying Solider” on the east side of the Solider’s and Sailor’s Monument. Every day, thousands of people pass the Soliders’ and Sailors’ Monument at the heart of downtown Indianapolis....

Read More 10 Comments

Posted in: Friday Favorites Friday Favorite: The Battle of Irvington

The first Irvington school began as one room in 1874 and grew to two stories with a tower by the time this picture was taken in the late 1890s. The building stood immediately east of...

Read More 6 Comments

Posted in: Friday Favorites Friday Favorite: Healin’ Hurty

John N. Hurty (1852-1925) Purdue University photo. (C)lean and Mean… John Hurty began his career in Indianapolis at a time when cows and pigs roamed the city streets at will. So much livestock lived among the human citizenry...

Read More 1 Comments

Posted in: Friday Favorites Friday Favorite: Haunted Hannah House

Other-worldly scratch, scratch, scratching… A chill in the air… Directionless whispers… A glimpsed apparition… The stench of decomposition… *Cue the creepy music* Touted in numerous books on the paranormal and celebrated in campfire stories for generations,...

Read More 9 Comments

Posted in: Mailbag HI Mailbag: Mustard Family Properties in Washington Township

Reader’s Question: Have you come across any information about Crown Hill Cemetery and the Mustard family?  My mother (age 92, with an excellent memory!) has always “recited” a family fact that, “Uncle Walter married the...

Read More 6 Comments

Posted in: Vintage Flats Flats Saved: Heier’s Hotel

The Heier Hotel, located at 12-18 South New Jersey Street, is named after original owner Fred Heier. Heier had multiple business ventures, including Heier & Shea and Heier & Son. Heier & Shea, with partner...

Read More 4 Comments

Posted in: A Room with a View A Room with a View – James Whitcomb Riley Tomb

View of downtown from the tomb of James Whitcomb Riley – Photo by Ryan Hamlett This week, not a Room with a View, but rather a Tomb with a View. That of Hoosier poet and longtime Lockerbie...

Read More 10 Comments

Posted in: A Room with a View A Room with a View – Camp Robinson and Lew Wallace

Monument in the woods of Riverside Park, north of Municipal Gardens. Just up the bike path from the Municipal Gardens, along the White River is a peculiar boulder that can just barely be spotted from...

Read More 14 Comments

Posted in: Mailbag HI Mailbag: Linwood Square

Reader’s Question:  When was Linwood Square built?  Before Linwood Square was there, this was the location of Newburg (sp?) Field, where we loved to play.  Why was this section not developed like the rest of...

Read More 15 Comments