One wonders how the city of Indianapolis neighborhoods made it through snowy days 100 or so years ago. This photo at 19th and Delaware Streets (circa 1909) looks north into Morton Place and shows no evidence of plowing, while also obscuring the esplanades down the middle. But it does show (not all that clearly) the T. B. Laycock Mansion that used to stand on the northwest corner of Delaware and 19th Streets, and a snippet of the also long-gone home that once stood on the northeast corner. Hard to believe a mere 20 years earlier this strip of land fronted Exposition Avenue and housed the State Fairgrounds hog sheds.
As it Herron-Morton Place looks today, you’ve probably seen it:
The “new” fairgrounds “out” on Maple Road was purchased in 1891 as the city grew around the earlier fairgrounds that were used as “Camp Morton” during the Civil War, and the Sutherland family, a prominent farm family whose farm was located north and northeast of the fairgrounds, also was appointed to the State Agricultural Board that ran the fairgrounds for around, more or less, the next generation but knew the northward movement of the fairgrounds was inevitable…