Indianapolis Collected: The Mystery of the Missing Mantels
Daisy McKay was only 16 years old when her parents broke ground on a fine brick mansion at the corner of 13th and Broadway. The new Statehouse was under construction at the time, and her father...
View ArticleIndianapolis Collected: The Secret in the Old Diary
Charlotte Jane Anderson died 17 years ago. A life-long Indianapolis resident, she left behind a cousin, a house, and a diary that chronicled every day of her life from January 1, 1947 to December 31,...
View ArticleIndianapolis Collected: How We Spent Our Summer Vacations
Summer break ended for many Indianapolis children last week as another school year got underway. Even if teachers no longer ask for detailed essays on “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” it’s likely...
View ArticleIndianapolis Collected: D.C. Stephenson’s revenge
On July 4, 1923, an aspiring Republican politician from the east side of Indianapolis stood before an estimated crowd of 10,000 people at Malfalfa Park in Kokomo and delivered an impassioned speech...
View ArticleIndianapolis Collected: Tribute to a “Hero in Overalls”
Classes were dismissed early on the afternoon of April 12, 1907, so that students and teachers at Shortridge High School could attend a funeral in the school’s auditorium, Caleb Mills Hall. The...
View ArticleThe Crumbling Crossroads of America
“Practically every great city has to be a geographic crossroads before it can become a great city,” the National Geographic Society wrote in its November 1925 bulletin. The crossroads of the sea at the...
View ArticleIndianapolis Collected: A Message from a Dead Friend
In May 1915, Argyra Friend was asleep in her apartment at 15th and Illinois when she had a conversation with her dead brother that was so vivid and real she questioned whether it was a dream. “The...
View ArticleIndianapolis Collected: The Worms crawl in…..
This week’s story has all the hallmarks of a classic horror tale. A slaughterhouse. A butcher. An insane asylum. And Coffins with Worms. It all started last Monday, when I got a terse email alert from...
View ArticleIndianapolis Collected: Free textbooks & the IPS music man
In the closing days of the Civil War, Indianapolis Public Schools superintendent Abram Shortridge found himself in a unique situation — an “adventure,” as he called it. Almost every position within the...
View ArticleIndianapolis Collected: The things we leave behind
There are two kinds of people who buy old houses, according to The New York Times: old house people, who know what to expect, and regular house people, who don’t. But I would argue that there is a...
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