Indiana Avenue Historic District

The Indiana Avenue Historic District is at the 500 block of Indiana Avenue, a diagonal street located between West Street, North Street, Michigan Street, and the Central Canal. [1] The Avenue was intentionally designed in the 1821 Indianapolis plat by surveyor Alexander Ralston. As one of the four diagonal streets which intersected the city’s regular rectangular grid, it provided a thoroughfare from the four quadrants of the city straight into the heart of Indianapolis. [2] Indiana Avenue was the home of several landmarks significant in Indianapolis’s black history, including the Lockefield Gardens public housing projects, the Ransom Place historic district, Walker Theatre, and the offices of the Indianapolis Recorder, the fourth longest running black newspaper in the United States. [3]

Due to a fear that the swampy White River near Indiana Avenue was the origin point of the mosquitos that had caused a devastating malaria outbreak in 1821, most of the area remained unsettled during the mid-1800s. [4] This cheap, unwanted land was then settled by immigrants and African Americans who could not afford to live in other areas of the city. After Reconstruction, the Avenue’s population rapidly increased as hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated from the South to Northern cities during the Great Migration. Indiana’s black population more than doubled as a result of the Great Migration, and the population of Indianapolis saw a fivefold increase. [5] The immigrant and African American populations of Indiana Avenue peacefully integrated, with immigrant and black-owned businesses working alongside one another throughout the second half of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century. As the black population continued to increase in the twentieth century, and downtown white-owned businesses refused service to African Americans, the 500 block of Indiana Avenue became the cultural center of Indianapolis’s black community. [6]

Indiana Avenue was its own self-sufficient neighborhood nestled within a segregated Indianapolis. In 1916, “everything that a person might need could be purchased in an eight-block segment along the avenue,” which included “33 restaurants, 33 saloons (including taverns and clubs,) 26 grocery stores (including meat and poultry shops,) 17 barbershops and hair stylists, 16 tailors and clothing retailers, 14 cobblers, 13 dry goods stores, as well as drugstores, pawnbrokers, pool halls, funeral parlors, and offices of lawyers, physicians, dentists, and real estate agents.” [7] The full physical needs of the black community were provided along Indiana Avenue, as well as their spiritual needs. In 1836, Bethel A.M.E. Church was established, and by 1848, the congregation had their own building. [8] In 1862, “supporters of slavery” burned the original building but by 1867, the Bethel A.M.E. congregation had raised enough funds to build a new site, which was the city’s longest-running black church until it was sold in 2016 after falling into disrepair. [9] Additionally, the Avenue was renowned as a “center of entertainment and recreation,” and its numerous clubs, dance halls, and taverns were a point of division among the black community. Many people enjoyed the various types of recreation provided along the Avenue, while others, especially black clergymen, decried the area as “a center of vice.” [10]

During the 1920s, Indiana Avenue became the home of an internationally recognized jazz scene that continued well into the 1940s and 1950s. Nightclubs and theaters such as the Washington, Columbia Theater, and the Walker Theatre exhibited renowned African American musicians and entertainers, such as Ella Fitzgerald and Cab Calloway. [11] Local musicians cut their teeth jamming onstage with jazz legends, and some became legends of their own right, like Wes Montgomery, Slide Hampton, David Baker, and many others. [12] Live performances were announced in the Indianapolis Recorder, with colorful headlines such as this one: “Ella Fitzgerald, Sunset Thurs. Nite: Jamtown’s Jumpiest Jivers With That Savage Rhythm, Fiery Beats, Torrid Tempos Will Put You in the Groove and You’re [sic] Feet Just Gotta Move!” [13]

In 1982, Indiana Avenue was cut off from the heart of downtown Indianapolis when the construction of the American United Life Insurance Co. building, now known as One America Tower, required the demolishment of the Avenue’s 200 block. [14] Indiana Avenue had originally extended down to Ohio Street just north of Monument Circle, but now ends at New York Street. Furthermore, many of the historic buildings along Indiana Avenue have been demolished to allow for the expansion of the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis campus, which now occupies all but the 300 and 400 blocks of the Avenue. [15] The cultural hub of the Avenue began gradually fading as Indianapolis slowly desegregated and the black community could spend their time and money elsewhere. [16] What was once a bustling cultural center is now largely a string of modern office buildings and parking lots. The Walker Theatre is one of the few buildings in the Indiana Avenue Historic District that still stands after a significant restoration project, and as such is one of the only indications of the Avenue’s heritage. [17]

[1] F. Eric Utz, Suzanne T. Rollins, and William Gulde, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Indiana Avenue Historic District, (Indianapolis, IN, Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana): 2.
[2] Ibid., 3.
[3] “The Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper Celebrates 120 Years,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Jul. 1, 2015.
[4] Steve Hall and Wanda Bryant-Wills, “A Stream of Hopes, of Dreams, of Promise,” Indianapolis News (Indianapolis, IN), Jun. 28, 1982.
[5] Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900: A Study of a Minority (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993): 211.
[6] Utz, Rollins, and Gulde, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Indiana Avenue Historic District: 3,9.
[7] Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, ed. Lana Ruegamer, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), 15.
[8] “Bethel A.M.E. Church Collection,” Indiana Historical Society, accessed October 18, 2019, http://images.indianahistory.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16797coll9.
[9] “Bethel AME Church,” National Parks Service, accessed October 22, 2019, https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/in1.htm.; Olivia Lewis, “Indy’s Oldest African-American Church Sold for Hotel Space,” Indianapolis Star (Indianapolis, IN), Apr. 8, 2016.
[10] Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, 31.
[11] Utz, Rollins, and Gulde, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Indiana Avenue Historic District: 9.; “3 Big Nights of Dancing Next Week – Z. Whyte Coming,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Oct. 26, 1929.; “’Stormy Weather’ At Walker Sunday,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Jan. 26, 1946.
[12] David Leander Williams, Indianapolis Jazz: The Masters, Legends, and Legacy of Indiana Avenue, (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014): 11, 16.
[13] “Ella Fitzgerald, Sunset Thurs. Night,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), May 17, 1941.
[14] Joan Hostetler, “Indianapolis Then and Now: West Ohio Street at Indiana Avenue/OneAmerica Tower,” HistoricIndianapolis.com, July 26, 2012. https://historicindianapolis.com/indianapolis-then-and-now-west-ohio-street-at-indiana-avenue-oneamerica-tower/.
[15] Williams, Indianapolis Jazz, 13.
[16] Ibid., 194.
[17] “Looking for Things to Do or See in Indianapolis?” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Mar. 28, 1997.

Student Authors: Allison Hunt and JB Bilbrey
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey

PHOTO & VIDEO:
Indiana Ave Restored, attributed to Kaxsalla, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:518_Indiana_Ave_Restored.jpg

Sunset Terrace on Indiana Avenue, Indiana Historical Society, M0513.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/dc018/id/59/rec/3