Gunnison Homes -- The New Miracle

I've written about Gunnison Homes before in this blog. See: http://cresourcesinc.blogspot.com/2010/07/former-gunnison-factory-new-albany.html.   Running across a newspaper article while I was doing research gives me an excuse to post up a bit more information. 

Gunnison Magic Homes was the first really successful pre-fab housing firm in the United States. By 1940, this Indianapolis Star article claims that it was the "nation's largest home builder."  In the pre-World War II era that may have been true. It's safe to say that the company sold thousands of homes over the course of its history.

From his factory, which still stands in New Albany, Indiana, Foster Gunnison produced pre-fab homes built with insulated plywood panels in an assembly-line system. Forbes called him the "Henry Ford of housing."  Raw materials arrived at the front door, the walls, ceiling and floors were factory finished, doors hung and "windows installed, washed and screened" as the panels moved along the conveyor belts and out the rear door onto trucks headed all across the nation.

This September 29, 1940, article introduced a new line of Gunnison Homes, the Miracle Home.   Demonstration homes were already built by this time in Indianapolis, South Bend and Jeffersonville, Indiana.  Unlike the Deluxe Home, which came in nine standard sizes ranging from four to seven rooms and retailing from $4,000 to $8,500, these new Miracle Homes were all four rooms. They could be installed with or without a basement and were sold on installment plans, approved for FHA loans, for $360 down and $25.60 monthly payments, including insurance and property taxes.

Indianapolis builder, Robert L. Mason was the local rep for the Miracle Homes.  It's hard to know how many of these little Miracles were built in the city, but the demonstration home shown in the picture at the bottom of the article and located in the 3500 block of North Keystone Avenue, still stands as you can see in this google maps pic. I wonder if its owners know the history of their house?

First Christian Church by Eliel Saarinen Opens May 31, 1942. Here are the goods.

I Stumbled upon two articles about the opening of Eliel Saarinen's First Christian Church  in Columbus, Indiana (at that time called Tabernacle Church of Christ), as I was doing research in the "Indianapolis Star".

Nearly everyone interested in modern architecture knows that Finnish-born Eliel Saarinen, chief architect, head of the architecture department and first president of Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, received the commission from William G. Irwin and his sister, Mrs. Hugh Thomas Miller, to design the small town's first piece of modern architecture.  This church ingrained a love of modern architecture in Miller's son, J. Irwin Miller, created a bond between J. Irwin and Eero Saarinen, and set Columbus on a path of modernism that continues to astound even today.

This first illustration jumped off the screen at me as the microfilm advanced. The tall campanile tower of First Christian was unmistakable and had me reversing instantly for a closer look.  [click on images to enlarge]

 
I learned a wonderful bit of not-so-trivial trivia when I read the caption under the drawing. Indianapolis's Pierre & Wright were the associate architects for First Christian. When Eliel Saarinen's name is on a project of course local firms drop by the wayside, but Edward Pierre & George Wright, whose work includes Perry (later renamed Bush) Stadium http://bit.ly/j5xloi,  the competition-winning design for the Indiana State Library building, and numerous others, were lights of modernism in Indianapolis. They would have been a logical choice to manage this project for Saarinen.

If you haven't taken the Columbus Architecture tour, which I highly recommend, then you may not know that the church was designed around a reflecting pool as mentioned in this article.  I wish I'd seen it when the pool still existed but in the 1950s it became a concrete courtyard due to leaking issues and damage caused by the reflection of the sun onto the tower--you get the essence of what was here, but it must have been an even more lovely spot when it was filled with water creating a mirrored image of the tower.

I like how the author talks of the church's "symmetrical balance rather than conventional symmetrical plan".  In person, the asymmetry strikes the casual observer but I think this writer is correct, this luminous church is an artful balancing act. 

The second article makes note of the working partnership between Eliel and his son, Eero Saarinen, on the church. Eero, who would go on to design Columbus's North Christian Church and the Miller Home in Columbus, designed interior furnishings at North Christian for his father.  The church was a family affair: Eliel's wife Loja Saarinen, designed the tapestry, which was woven at Cranbrook.




[Both Eero Saarinen's North Christian Church--at left, and Eliel Saarinen's First Christian Church are National Historic Landmarks]

Most of the text from the second article was about the dedicatory service for the church.  It does mention the price tag: $650,000 in 1942, prompting the insupportable claim that it was "one of the most expensive churches of modern design in the world." 

Certainly for those with an eye for modernism, First Christian is one of the most beautiful churches of modern design in the world. 

Today, you can view the church through a Henry Moore sculpture, Large Arch, which sits just across the street. It was dedicated in 1971, five years after Eero Saarinen designed a rather large arch of his own in St. Louis.

You can read the successful National Historic Landmark nomination and the statement of significance for First Christian Church online: http://www.nps.gov/nhl/designations/samples/in/1stchris.pdf

Then, drive, fly or bus yourself to Columbus, Indiana, and see it in brick and mortar.  It's worth the trip.

Good Reason for Pride

This week I came across a 1958 newspaper article bragging about the bright future of modern architecture in Indianapolis.  Yes, that's right, in the 1950s there was good reason to be optimistic that Indianapolis might become one of the nation's showcases of modernism.

Two office buildings and a beautiful limestone-skinned J. C. Penney store by Skidmore Owings and Merrill were already completed or under construction; a glass curtain-wall City-County tower with limestone wings would open in 1961; a new State Office building by the Chicago firm, Graham, Anderson, Probst and White was scheduled to break ground, a complex of high rise apartment buildings by Perkins + Will, and a handful of other great projects were in the works or recently completed in the city.



Here's how we felt about our new buildings in 1958.  [double-click on images to enlarge].

Sadly, by the early 1960s the excitement over urban renewal, and apparently the federal dollars that helped pay for it, were drying up, leaving Indianapolis with a few good buildings but not much architectural future to count on. I'm not a fan of disrespecting Indianapolis, which is a trendy thing to do among the people who live here, but I'd like a good reason, like a few interestingly modern buildings, to make me and others feel really prideful in the city's architectural future again. Maybe that will happen.

Some History with our Culture?

 [An interurban ran right along Virginia Avenue. The track has been severed in the demolition of the street for the Cultural Trail]

[The cut for the Virginia Avenue leg of the Cultural Trail -- click images to enlarge]

A few years back Indianapolis began construction of a "Cultural Trail."  This trail links the "Cultural Districts" that the city's marketers thought up a few years before that.  The Cultural Districts include Mass Ave, Broad Ripple, Fountain Square, the Wholesale District, and the Canal District, and probably some other place I've forgotten.  Some of these places definitely have pizzazz  and all have some version of culture.  Anyplace where humans hang out probably has culture.  But a big part of capital-C "Culture," the stuff that defines and is defined by specific places, people and events, is history.  Arguably a shared history is the biggest factor in creating culture, in fact.

I like the Cultural Trail for bike riding. It's wide and smooth and safe.  And I love the natural landscaping used in swales beside the trail.  But I have a big gripe with the Cultural Trail's impact.   In the process of creating a wide, paved sidewalk with a lot of lights and way too many bollards and signs, the city is distracting from and even destroying parts of our history, which are probably more worthy of remembrance and reverence than anything the trail offers.   The trail is so distracting, with all its tchotchkes, that it becomes the focus of the view in the areas it travels through.  You might once have noticed the old commercial buildings on Mass Ave or the old residences on Walnut Street.  Now, you'll be noticing the Ikea style light fixtures and way too many silly metal bollards.

This year, my neighborhood of Fountain Square gets its leg of the trail.  I've been sure to walk along the construction/destruction zone often to gaze into the big dig as they tear up the street down to about 2 feet deep.  What can currently be seen on Virginia Avenue under the layers of modern concrete and asphalt pavement is the old big-bricks street and old interurban tracks still laid on their wooden ties.

[A clean cut shows the old brick street beneath the many layers of modern pavement]

There's a view at our culture!  This pavement and these tracks harken to the days when Virginia Avenue was a happening hub of German retail businesses, theaters showing silent films, grocery stores and artisans shops and traveling dramatic troupes.  A time when you could get on the interurban in Franklin and quickly arrive to spend the day in Fountain Square, maybe stopping at the farmer's market that used to be on South Street, or going on to downtown to shop at Ayres. The days before the interstate severed Fletcher Place and Fountain Square, before Fletcher Place even had a separate name, back to the time when Woodlawn Street might still be remembered as a reference to the Calvin Fletcher farm, Woodlawn, which he platted into building sites to create this entire area.

[more of the old Interurban line not yet yanked out and discarded] 

Today Fountain Square lays some legitimate claim to being an arts district.  There are a few galleries and there are lots of artists living and working here.  There's definitely culinary craft in our great locally owned restaurants and cool stuff in our handful of funky shops.  We're worthy of being a leg on a trail to connect up the downtown Indianapolis interesting spots.  But an even deeper view into our culture is briefly revealed now by construction  of the trail that will soon rip it from our past.

I think it would be great if the movers in this trail idea would take a step back from creating a uniform, generic sidewalk with a few bits of art installed along it and the occasional marker to SAY something historic happened here, to somehow preserving and revealing a small portion of the actual link to our history and formative culture, which they are currently digging up and destroying in order to install their cute pavers.

[See the old railroad ties beneath the brick street?]

I know that isn't likely to happen. Our history is being destroyed every day by the city and private interests.  And the Cultural Trail is a fun idea so it's not popular to dislike it.  Still,  it could be a truly great idea if it also preserved our culture in the process of marketing it.  Any chance you're listening, Brian Payne?

Enochsburg. Wow! look at these limestone houses! Oh, and the fried chicken is great!

A drive through southeastern Indiana took me into Enochsburg yesterday. Bordering Decatur and Franklin counties, Enochsburg, like much of this area, was settled by German immigrants.  Smaller than nearby Oldenburg, which was and is a Catholic community, Enochsburg's forefathers and -mothers were German Evangelicals. These stalwart immigrants built a stone church on a strong foundation in 1858.  The church still stands today, although the centerpiece of the community is probably the Fireside Inn, which draws a large regional clientele to its tasty fried chicken.

I've eaten my share of fried chicken, but these days it's the limestone church, houses and nearby bridge that fascinate me more. With apologies for my blackberry-snapped photographs, here's a little bit of what's charming about the countryside's built environment in this area.

 
Decatur County isn't, but should be, famous for its beautiful, arched limestone bridges.  A very early limestone industry sprang up in Decatur County (the foundation stone for the second Indiana State House came from Decatur County). This triple-arched bridge on County Line Road just south of Enochsburg is just one example of how the county made aesthetic and practical use of its limestone. Off to the west of this bridge on CR 150 S, is another example, a beautiful stone house.

Although there are metal numbers on the facade of this great vernacular style house that date it to 1880, I suspect it's an even earlier example. Probably from the 1860s.  Isn't she a beauty?

Travel north on County Line Road just a bit and there's another equally beautiful limestone house sitting on a rise, still partly sheltered by the cedar trees that were probably planted in an allee leading to the front door at one time. 

A number of limestone outbuildings remain at the modernized farms nearby and behind some of the more modern bungalows in Enochsburg proper.  These outbuildings attest to the easy pickings for scraps and overburden that were leftover from harvesting stone for proper buildings.  Limestone outcroppings are still visible along the creeks and waterways of the area, too.

Finally, like the German settlers before us, we reach Enochsburg's grand limestone church.  Placed on the highest spot in town it was once the figurative center of community and culture.  It's a beautiful old building; marked 1858 on the gilded tablet in the facade.  Perhaps less of a draw these days than the Fireside Inn's fried chicken, this church reminds us why Enochsburg is here and how our ancestors made the highest use of a local material.

Muscatatuck State Mental Hospital / Army Urban Combat Training Grounds

The Muscatatuck State Hospital opened in 1920 as the Indiana Farm Colony for Feeble Minded Youth.  It was one of several state hospitals serving Indiana's mentally disabled. According to the idea lab at Purdue University's webpage http://idealab.tech.purdue.edu/muscatatuck/home.html the hospital initially served only male youths. They lived in three farmhouses on this property near both Muscatatuck River and Brush Creek.   Like the architecture at all of Indiana's state mental health institutions this campuses's architecture is wonderful.

In the 1920s and 1930s the first dormitories went up on the campus and the first women became inmates. These dorms and most of the other existing buildings went up in the midst of the Art Deco Movement and they are grand representations of that style. These photos, captured with my telephone  don't do justice to the marvelous Deco genre expressed in aluminum details and yellow brick walls.

The hospital building is an Art Deco gem built in the 1940s.

The state hospital stopped treating the mentally ill in 2005 and became an Indiana Army National Guard training center.  Today, the campus holds acres of shipping containers, FEMA trailers, a inexplicable mosque, steel girders supporting concrete block half walls, and topsy turvy structures creating an intentional look and feel of a bombed-out town. 

In the midst of this intentional chaos, the original buildings retain their streamlined machine-age stylishness.

I went to Alert Indiana and found a round barn--and a state bank.

Alert, Indiana, sits at a lonely crossroads in the southwestern corner of Decatur County.  There's very little reason to visit.  Once you find, it you can see why not many people live there. My father, who has lived all his 82 years in the county and now spends a good portion of his time with my mother on daily "country drives," says it's been 60 years since he last drove through Alert.  We drove there yesterday to look for a building shown in the 1882 Atlas of Decatur County.



Alert was important enough to merit its own map in that Atlas (that's it above).  In 1882, it was a town of about 100 souls (probably triple the number who currently call it home), the second largest in Jackson Township after Sardinia, which had twice as many residents. The town had one local merchant, J. W. Spears, who was also Alert's biggest  landholder and a breeder and purveyor of fancy chickens.  Spears' general store, shown in the 1882 lithograph below, no longer stands. Though his house appears to still be the one that's falling down in the spot shown on the lithograph.

The location of the former Spears store is now occupied by a Masonic lodge constructed in the 1920s when the town still had enough residents to populate Alert Lodge #395. Sadly the lodge building has been worked over extensively and badly in the years since it membership died off or left town.

But there are a couple of buildings in Alert that are cool enough to justify the drive there. 

The first is a round barn right at the edge of town (of course the edge of town is only four buildings from the center of town).  Sitting on a rusticated concrete block foundation this barn must date to around 1910.  It's horizontal siding could use a coat of paint but look at those great 9-light windows, not to mention the fabulous cupola on top. Its original owner must have been proud of the state-of-the-art choice he made when he opted for an innovative cutting-edge round barn. Perhaps he was sold on the idea by Benton Steele, Indiana's renowned round-barn designer/builder/promoter. In 2011, the shiny new standing-seam metal roof is a happy sign that someone feels proud of this beauty again.

A round barn was a representation of modernity and innovation in agriculture. Just a couple of doors north of this barn is Alert's other interesting building. On the main street of this town centered on one rural intersection, this bank building was a built environment metaphor for growth and potential when it was constructed around 1900.  The limestone frieze in the bank's brick facade announces it the "Alert State Bank."

Nowadays,  the Alert State Bank is someone's house--a nice reuse of the town's fanciest remaining building---aside from the round barn, that is. 

In this tiny corner of Decatur County, Indiana, be Alert, there's interesting stuff in unexpected places.