The Circle is Unbroken

Weighing in on closing Monument Circle to traffic has become the subject du jour for bloggers and opinionators across the city. For a recent opinion piece by the "Star" reporter, Matthew Tully see http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20105260385.

Closing the Circle to vehicular traffic is one of the most numbskull ideas to gain traction in this city in a long time. When Carmel is gaining national recognition for its innovative roundabouts, we're closing one right in the heart of our city. That Circle is a natural traffic calming device. It forces drivers to slow down and take a look. And there is plenty going on so there's always a lot to take a gander at when driving on the Circle.

The Circle also allows for parking directly in front of the few retail businesses that have made a stake on or near it. And we all know Hoosiers need to park within eyesight of their destination or they simply won't go there. So, as others have pointed out, closing the Circle to traffic and therefore to parking will kill the businesses that are there.

It also makes no sense in terms of drawing more people. The Circle is full of people almost all the time. Even on Sundays when there are very few business reasons to be there, people are all over the place. Sitting on the Monument, drinking their Starbucks, eating their burritos.

Given its popularity already as a pedestrian hangout, we gain nothing from making it a pedestrian mall. That is such a tired idea already. It was tried all over the state in the 70s and 80s and it virtually killed downtown areas like the one in Richmond, Indiana. Pedestrian malls are a failed revitalization tool. And Monument Circle doesn't need revitalization.

The Circle is already often closed for special events, which makes them seem very special indeed. The word "special" implies something that isn't ordinary. Making the Circle ordinary is the last thing we should be considering and closing it makes those special events not so special after all.

The Circle has been the heart of the city and part of what makes it so alive is the traffic that flows through it. People slowly driving around it get a gander at that extraordinary exclamation point at the center of an old city plan. And the Circle's history is that it has always been used for vehicular traffic, as well as pedestrian activity.

When I heard about this lamebrained idea it made me remember a meeting I attended when I was heading up the Mass Ave Merchants Association about 10 years ago. This was a meeting for the Indianapolis Downtown Inc. Marketing Board. At that time, the board included managers from all the downtown hotels, a representative from IUPUI, people from the Dept. of Metropolitan Development, folks from the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Bureau, downtown realtors and others who were busy trying to sell Indianapolis as a destination.

At this particular meeting Kurt Flock, a downtown real estate agent, asked the members of the board how many lived downtown. Out of probably 50 people making their livings promoting downtown, 4 of us (including Kurt and me) lifted our hands in answer to that question. Kurt then asked: "what would it take to get the rest of you to move here?" The first answer was the most memorable. It came from a representative of the ICVA: "cul de sacs."

Well, here we are making a cul de sac out of the Circle. So I guess he's getting his wish.

People, cul de sacs belong in the suburbs not in the center of our urban city. Until the people who market our city get that idea into their suburban brains I guess we'll continue to see these suburban planning notions creeping into the city center. Pretty soon we'll be an extension of Carmel and Zionsville, Greenwood and Brownsburg.

Then I'll be moving to a city.

New Harmony, Evans Woollen and Architecture

Last week the annual Indiana preserva-tion conference, with the new name of Preserving Historic Places, took place in New Harmony, Indiana. I have an incredible fondness for New Harmony. The site of two failed 19th Century Utopian communities, it is very close to an architectural Utopia with amazing buildngs from the 1810s to the 1990s. The Rappite architecture beginning in 1815 includes lovely log cabins with innovative insulation and air lock entries to keep the cold Indiana winds from blowing into the houses. Their brick community buildings are resplendent.

The residential buildings of the Owenite years, and the grand Workingman's Institute and Thrall's Opera House, are equally beautiful. And the Victorian era, after the Utopian failures, was also kind to this small town, leaving grand and modest homes and a beautiful downtown commercial area.

Even tiny infill ranches from the 1950s are sweet in New Harmony. Mid-Century Modern has a small voice, as well.


Then Jane Owen, starting in the 1970s has given us the Richard Meier Athenaeum, a building memorable enough to be listed on Meier's biography, and the Philip Johnson Roofless Church. Proclaimed by Johnson protege, Dean of the School of Architecture at University of Houston---and soon to be New Harmony resident---Joe Mashburn,`to be one of Johnson's best buildings.

The town amazes me and is reason enough for a visit. But there was so much more.

Included in the offerings for the conference was a talk by Bernhard Karpf,associate partner of Richard Meier & Partners, about the Athenaeum.

But the two star performances of the conference were the panel discussion by Joe Mashburn, Bernhard Karpf and Evans Woollen and, of course, the keynote address by Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic for the New Yorker. I may talk about Goldberger some other time. For me the funnest moment came in the panel discussion with Mashburn, Woollen and Karpf (that's Woollen in the center of the picture).

After brief introductions, and a few planned questions the moderator turned the questioning over to the crowd. I screwed up my courage and asked the last question of the day:

"Richard Meier said that light is one of his favorite building materials. If each of you had to come up with one sentence like that to describe your own work, what would you say?"

Berhard Karpf punted on this question, claiming to not have much architecture to draw conclusions from. Mashburn said that he and his partner (his wife) relied on the power of the landscape to shape their thoughts about what should be built. And Karpf made the intersting point that well-known architects all possess one similar trait, which is that they "are all good marketers." They know how to talk about their work in order to get other people talking about and appreciating it. He also confessed that he didn't really appreciate Philip Johnson's work. [perhaps a bit snarky considering the company]

But the big payoff was getting this answer from the leprechaunish Evans Woollen, one of my Indianapolis architect heroes:

"For me, every building is a whole new venture into a different context, different community. My buildings are crazily different from each other. I've been criticized for that but it's not an accident. My buildings are purposely inconsistent." Woollen used the New Harmony Inn as an example. He built that building to blend into the landscape. It was not intended to stand out and compete but to harmonize with New Harmony. And that it does. And there's a little insight into an interesting modernist architect's brain.

Oh Carmel, you hurt my eyes!

Drove to Carmel, Indiana, today to take a picture of the first home that Avriel Shull, a modern home designer/builder, constructed in that town when she was 23. Her house, the Golden Unicorn, holds up well as a design, despite its age. The Golden Unicorn, named for the animal Avriel mounted by the door was built in 1955 as I recall.


What doesn't work as a design statement in that town is the new construction going up along Rangeline Road. Ouch! My eyes hurt when I see all the cribbed fake historic building styles jammed into this one hulking behemoth of a building.
Why? With the funds that Carmel has available and that Mayor Brainard is willing to spend, why put money into a cobbled together copy of old architectural styles? Wouldn't it be great if Carmel would spend its municipal funds on great new, Modern architecture? Instead of copying a Palladian design for your Performing Arts Center, why not a Calatrava or even a Gehry?

With the funding muscle that Carmel can muster, even with a mayor embattled over his budgets, why shouldn't that town be the next midwestern mecca of modern design? Show us something new. Spend your money on fabulous, even controversial designs, not on hackneyed copies of buildings with designs that look more or less like styles from more than 100 years ago. Carmel seems to be the main player in the public architectural game around here these days. It's sad that they are playing it so safe and uninterestingly.

What's a preservation gal to do? Let me tell ya.

I've been catching some heat lately from folks wondering why I haven't updated my blog. And no wonder. It's been more than a month since I last posted.

So this post explains why I haven't posted. I'm also going to attempt to answer the oft asked question: "So what is it that you do?" My usual answer is that my career doesn't fit well into a sound bite. Here's why.

By the end of this week, I will have finished researching, writing, photographing and creating a site plan for a National Register of Historic Places nomination for a district of homes dating from the 1850s to the 1920s in Edinburgh, Indiana. Once I'm finished drafting it I will drop it off at the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology for a series of reviews.

Right now I'm also working on several other projects. One of them is a regular gig. I serve as the preservationist/professional staff for the Meridian Street Preservation Commission. The commission was created by a state law in the 1970s and is appointed by the governor. I am the MSPC's first staff preservationist. In that I capacity work with applicants who want to make exterior changes to their homes within the district. The district includes Meridian Street generally from about 39th to about the canal, and also parts of Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Delaware streets. This month I have five projects to look at, meet with applicants for, try to work out any issues that raise red flags in terms of preservation and write recommendations for or against.

By April 10 I'll have written my next month's History 301 column for the "Urban Times." I often don't have the topic for that one figured out much more than a day or two in advance but I think May's column will be about the Wonderland Amusement Park that once stood on E. Washington Street.

I'm working on a research/writing project for an Indianapolis engineering/environmental firm. This work is for a federally funded project in southern Indiana near a ranch house subdivision from the 1950s. I will be researching and writing a history of the town and of ranch house development in the nation in order to see how this particular development fits into a greater historic context.

By April 22 I'll submit text and photos of an article on Avriel Shull and her architecture to the Recent Past Preservation Network.

In April, I'll attend the Indiana State Board of Review quarterly meeting to speak on behalf of the National Register nomination I wrote for Avriel Shull's Thornhurst Addition in Carmel. If all goes well, Indiana may soon have a Mid-Century Modern Historic District on the National Register!

I have an article on Shull coming out in the Spring Issue of "Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History". And yesterday I met with a graphic arts design firm that's asked me to write the text and select the illustrations for an artsy little booklet on her. And speaking of Avriel, I'm working with Historic Landmarks Foundation on a presentation about Avriel Shull's architecture that will be part of their fall offerings.


By the end of April I'll finish researching and writing a National Register nomination for Fire Station 32 in Broad Ripple. And I'll have put together a package for a neighborhood that needs a consultant to help with appropriate rehabilitation and renovation. I'll be helping those who are interested choose exterior house colors, light fixtures, appropriate doors, and wall cladding and even landscape plants and plans to return their early 20th century neighborhood to a more period-appropriate look.

In early May I'll finish researching and writing a National Register nomination for the Willis Mortuary, a great Arts and Crafts Era building important in the African American history of Indianapolis.

That's kinda what I do. At least that's some of what I've been working on and will be working on for the next month or so. And it's why I don't have time to write a blog post right now.

Preservation Consternation

The recent battle between preservationists and a bill sponsored by Indiana State Senator Pat Miller creates an opportunity for pondering. What I'm pondering is this: how does a city keep important historic buildings and districts while also maintaining a sense of vibrancy? And, how might Indianapolis enhance its unimpressive collection of contemporary architecture with new buildings that are architecturally significant, while also maintaining its dwindling collection of historic buildings that are architecturally significant?

This is a ponderance that requires much long and thoughtful attention. And probably more than one blog. But for now, I'm going to think just a bit about it. I think I know the questions to ask but am still struggling internally with the answers to them.

In addition to being a preservationist, I also happen to be a modern design freak. Talk about your cognitive dissonance! It would be much easier for me to be one of those preservationist-types who looks at the City/County Building and feels nothing but remorse for the lost Marion County Courthouse. But I'm not. I thought the Second Empire Courthouse was fabulous and wish we still had it. But I also think the Bauhaus-inspired City/County building is great and I worry that since so few others love it, it is in danger of going the way of the courthouse that was demolished to make room for it.

At the same time, if I could make a wish for my city it would be that we begin to demand amazing architecture in new buildings that are constructed downtown. For I believe that until we start showing some muscle with great, hopefully even controversial, architecture, we will never deserve the title of the "world-class" city that all of our paid marketing boosters claim for us.

So, how's a preservationist/modernist junkie to resolve these conflicting notions: keep the old, and build new and fabulous? Over the course of the next few posts I'm going to offer my ideas of how to solve some of these dilemmas and why some just can't be solved.

The first rule has to be: if it's downtown and architecturally significant and it can be saved, then developers must be required to make the effort to do that. And if they say that's not possible, let's charge a demolition fine for destroying a building that's been deemed significant. This fine would be on top of whatever regular fees are required and it could be dispersed in grants to owners of the other downtown historic buildings to appropriately rehabilitate and maintain them.

Significance can sometimes be in the eye of the beholder. So let's establish some rules about determining it. First, let's just say that, when it comes to considering demolition, any building more than a century old is significant. No discussion. We must stop knocking down our heritage. If it's more than 100 years old, then you need to come up with some sound reasons to tear it down, and you need to pay up to the city for the loss you are causing to our cityscape and our cultural understanding of our history. If you simply cannot save one of our pieces of architectural heritage then pay up so that your fees will help other building owners save theirs.

Would this stop redevelopment downtown? It would deincentivize destruction certainly. But it incentivizes reuse. And makes wholesale demolishers pay up so that other significant buildings get more protection.

Rule 2. If you decide to build new within the MileSquare, then you have to bring it with the design. No more 3-story suburban housing developments. Yes, good design may also be in the eye of the beholder but no one in his/her right mind is looking at the development at Alabama and Ohio and thinking, Wow! that's fabulous! No more, blah architecture downtown.

My first rules to making a better city.

I know that we can't stop building in the city. This isn't a museum. If it were, we wouldn't have much of a collection. Not every old building is worthy of a fight to save it. Just as the pediatrician told us about raising children: save your "nos" for the most important stuff. Preservationists need to save their ballyhooing for the important buildings. Do I feel sad that the Jaws building is no longer a landmark downtown? Yeah, sort of, I guess. Even though that was a building that didn't fit---too small in scale, and probably would never have been considered significant, the redone building (now called the Broadbent building) is much worse. If we're going to give up an interesting old building, then a new one has to be better. Better in terms of design and in terms of landuse. (See Rule 2 above).

Stay tuned, more's coming. And I welcome your response to these first steps.

[black and white images from "Indianapolis Architecture"]

A Great Society and a not-so-great one: the importance and nuances of preservation

In light of the disturbing news that the Indiana State Senate has passed SB 177, which limits the terms of commissioners on the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission and which sends appeals of commission decisions to the Metropolitan Development Commission rather than to the Circuit Court. And in light of the Obama administration's withdrawal of budget support for some national preservation efforts it seems like a good time to repost a column I wrote for the July 2008 "Urban Times." Here is a brief primer on how and why preservation is important.

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Downtown Indianapolis is brimming over with historic homes, historic districts, notable and outstanding properties, and even a National Historic Landmark (American Legion Mall).

Many downtowners are familiar with terms like “historic resources” and “historic preservation.” But unless you are a preservation professional (and even if you are) it’s difficult to understand the myriad of terms that define preservation in your neighborhood and even more difficult to grasp the nuances of the terminology. Here is a primer of sorts about the origin of those terms and their significance in the preservation movement.

We have Lyndon Johnson to thank for the federal government’s involvement in the national preservation movement. In 1966, President Johnson signed the National Historic Preservation Act. This act provides the groundwork for preservation on the local, state and national levels.

Lady Bird Johnson, a famous cultivator of historic and native plants and beautifier of national highways, wrote the forward of the report that became the impetus for national preservation and the preservation act. In her words, “…the buildings which express our national heritage are not simply interesting. They give a sense of continuity and of heightened reality to our thinking about the whole meaning of the American past.”

The National Historic Preservation Act gave the Secretary of the Interior the responsibility to expand and maintain a National Register of Historic Places. And Section 106 of the act gave teeth to the preservation movement. It was a legal mandate to consider historic preservation in federal planning and required that those working on federally funded projects had to take into account the effects of the projects on historic properties.

The preservation act called for the creation of governor-appointed State Historic Preservation Officers and required them to have staffs and offices and matching funds to oversee the preservation movement on the state and local level.

Each state’s historic preservation officer would oversee a statewide survey of historic resources. Since the mid-1970s, the Indiana State Historic Preservation Officer has overseen surveys of most of Indiana’s counties (about 3/4ths of the state has been surveyed). That survey is technically called the “Indiana Historic Sites and Structures Inventory” (IHSSI).

Often conducted by graduate students, sometimes with little experience in evaluating historic properties, the IHSSI uses a standard form to collect info on properties’ materials such as windows, siding, foundation, and to postulate a date of construction and a style name for the building’s architecture, as well to record known history of the property. Surveyors are also asked to give the property a rating on a scale ranging from contributing to notable to outstanding.

Contributing properties are at the low end of the range. They retain enough historic integrity (original materials and design) to display their historic nature, but they may have lost some original materials, had additions of non-historic materials or they might simply be an unremarkable example of a common type. Small bungalows often fall into the latter category.

Notable properties have high historic integrity and may or may not have historic significance either as an architectural type or for their association with a person or event. Typically more research would need to be done on these notable properties to establish their significance and raise them to an “Outstanding” rating.

Outstanding properties have high integrity and their significance is known—either because the architecture is remarkable or because some historic event or person is associated specifically with the property, or because it is representative of a historic trend.

The information compiled by the IHSSI is published in book form in the county interim reports. Marion County has individual interim reports for each township. Unlike other county interim reports, though, Marion County’s township reports only list the properties rated notable or outstanding. The properties rated contributing in the IHSSI were not included in these report to keep the size of the reports smaller.

The National Register of Historic Places is a separate entity from the IHSSI and the interim reports. However, properties that receive an outstanding rating in the IHSSI and the interim report are considered eligible for listing on the National Register. But they aren’t listed until someone completes a nomination form and the State Historic Preservation Officer’s staff and the State Review Board both approve it and then send it on to the National Parks Service for review and approval.

The National Register recognizes the best of the best properties. Properties listed on the National Register may be individual buildings, districts, sites, objects or structures. They have both historic integrity and significance for architecture, or an association with a historic trend or events, or an association with a person of importance, or because the property might yield further information (though the latter is usually significant only for archaeological sites).

Properties that are listed (and also those that are deemed eligible for listing but are not yet on the National Register) acquire the protections provided for in the National Historic Preservation Act.

Any federally funded project that might have an effect on the properties must take them into account and try to avoid an adverse effect. If that adverse effect is unavoidable, then the project managers will enter into mitigation with the State Historic Preservation Officer’s staff and try to work out an agreement on how to mitigate the effect, which basically means coming up with a way to essentially repay the community for affecting its historic resources.

A National Register listing doesn’t in any way impede what a private citizen wants to do to his or her property. If you live in a National Register Historic District, such as Lockerbie Square, the Old Northside, Herron-Morton Place, Meridian Park and Ransom Place, there are no restrictions placed by the National Register on what you do to your home or commercial property. This is true if you own a property that is individually listed, such as the Athenaeum, or if you own a property that is within not individually listed but is within a listed historic district, such as the Jungclaus Campbell Co. in the Massachusetts Avenue Historic District.

-----If you live in a LOCAllY designated historic district, you are governed and restricted by the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, not by the National Register listing, as to how much, if at all, you can change your historic property. This local organization is the only protection that historic properties receive from their private owners tearing them down or painting them purple or pulling out all their original windows to install sliding glass doors, etc. The powers of the local IHPC are built upon the foundation that our architectural heritage is important to all of us and that private individuals are simply temporary stewards of buildings that can last for generations.

Although the nuances of historic preservation and its terminology can be confusing, we who live downtown reap the benefits of districts and individual properties, which are preserved for all of us to enjoy. For, as the National Historic Preservation Act attests, these resources are our “irreplaceable heritage.” Preserving them means that their “…vital legacy of cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, economic, and energy benefits will be maintained and enriched for future generations of Americans.”

Historic properties are inherently “green,” for they require no new-construction energy. And they help us better understand who we are and where we came from as a people and a community. We can be thankful that Lyndon Johnson listened to his wife about that idea. We can only hope that our current leaders will have as much foresight.

Dear Diary, I'm in love...with some houses on the near Northside

A few weeks ago I took a drive through the relatively new redevelop-ment project called Martindale on the Monon. I got excited. So I took another drive through, and then another--with my camera.

There is something going on in that neighborhood that makes my heart go pitter pat. New ultramodern design, blended with old homes getting a facelift, and with a fair number of new decent contemporary-traditional homes is making that a nice place to visit and I just might want to live there. I'm not moving yet, but if I were looking for a new place to settle in Indianapolis, this is where I'd be looking.

The development itself is interesting, with a mix of market-rate and affordable housing, which comes with the possibilities of grant money for rehabs or new builds. The Martindale on the Monon project will sell lots or sell houses built to their specs. These houses are nice.

But the stars of the development are the very modern dwellings and the modern adaptations of some of the older buildings that have begun to dot the streetscape. According to Cindy Higbee at Martindale on the Monon, some of these homes are architect-designed, some are owner-designed. Take a drive down 16th St. and have a gander at the fabulous rehab of what appears to be an old firestation. The design touches that make this a stand out---super cool frosted glass entry doors along with groovy house numbers and a stainless mailbox have converted this abandoned building into a hip new home while maintaining original window and door openings and the building's historic integrity.


Across the street from the rehabbed fire station is one of the 'hood's modern, new homes. A cantilevered second story, shed roof, and a facade wall that has the look of a shogi screen make this house a sexy eyecatcher.



At 16th and Cornell is another modernist-statement residence. This 2-story brick has a center bay that projects above the flat roof and a cantilevered canopy over the entry. And the square, flat-roof garage is almost cooler than the house.


A bit north, Redev Group designed a tall, skinny house with side walls and roof clad in galvanized metal. Huge corner windows must make this home a stunner from the inside as well as the exterior.

Another gem in the neighborhood is the home designed by Mark Beebe at the corner of 19th and Bellefontaine. This small house reminds me of a teak box. Shed roof, boxed entry portal, and even the rear landscape design make it a stunner significant enough to be featured on the 2008 AIA home tour.

The neighbor-hood also features a stellar modernist rehab of the old National Auto Company into the Project School. The inspiring industrial building is a lesson in paying homage to old design with good redesign and reuse.

Martindale on the Monon is still sprinkled with its fair share of rundown, abandoned homes, commercial and industrial spaces. (Note to developers: if you get your hands on that little pagoda former gas station, please don't ruin it! Reuse, reuse, reuse!)


This is a neighbor-hood ripe for the picking and if I were you, I'd go grab a lot or an old rundown building and make something fabulous happen. Your neighbors have already gotten a good start on that!