All Stories: 449
Stories
Spring Mill State Park
Each of Indiana’s state parks has something unique to offer and Spring Mill is no exception. Although currently encompassing over a thousand acres, the original 295 acres was purchased from a cement company for one dollar. Included in that purchase…
Covenant of the Immaculate Conception Monastery
The Convent of the Immaculate Conception Monastery, located on a hillside just east of Ferdinand, is the mother-house of the Sisters of Saint Benedict of Ferdinand. The Convent was founded in 1867 in downtown Ferdinand when four sisters arrived to…
St. Joseph Indian Normal School
The St. Joseph Indian Normal School operated from 1888-1896, and was owned by the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions in Washington, D.C. It was designed in imitation of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which was founded nine…
Mary Clark Historic Marker
An unfortunate issue that plagued Vincennes in the early 1800’s was slavery. Although it was prohibited through the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, individuals were still enslaved in the Vincennes area. In addition, slavery was made possible by a…
Meridian Hills Country Club
Meridian Hills Country Club was established in 1923 amidst a cavalcade of several other country clubs opening in the early 20th century both in Indianapolis and across the nation. With the growth of suburbanization during the early 20th century,…
Highland Golf and Country Club
The creation of Highland Golf and Country Club started in 1903. The club spent much of the early 1900’s growing and developing before coming together as the entity that it is recognized as now in September 1919. Highland was one of several country…
Country Club of Indianapolis
The Country Club of Indianapolis (CCI) was the city’s first country club. It was established northeast of the city in 1891 where the Woodstock Club is currently located and nearby the current Newfields site. It was one of several country clubs to…
Broadmoor Country Club
Jewish social clubs began to form in Indianapolis as the city’s Jewish population reached a steady 1% during the late nineteenth century and self-selection kept most Jews out of already established clubs and organizations. For instance, patterned…
Douglass Park Golf Course
Black Hoosiers in the 1900’s enjoyed the same leisure activities embraced by their white counterparts, but were systematically denied access to many of the venues associated with recreation. The Great Migration of African Americans from the south in…
Nappanee West Pavilion
The Chautauqua Movement spread across the United States in the late 1800’s. By 1900, around 200 independent chautauquas existed in the United States, ten of which were in Indiana. Lecturers and entertainers were booked across the country for…
William Hendricks House (Governor's Headquarters)
Many of the men who served on Indiana’s early state legislature built or purchased homes in the state capitol of Corydon. One of these men was soon-to-be governor William Hendricks. Hendricks purchased this home from Davis Floyd, a treasurer and…
Vincennes Fortnightly Club
The Fortnightly Club in Vincennes is an educational, social, and humanitarian club for women. Before women were allowed to vote (1917 in Indiana, 1920 nationally), clubs and organizations were the only accepted way for women to take an active role…
Mary Birdsall House
Mary Thistlewaite Birdsall was a premier suffragist and advocate of women’s right in the State of Indiana during the mid-19th century. Mary Thistlewaite married in 1848 (at the age of 19) and she and her husband, Thomas, became actively involved in…
Shirk-Edwards House
Marie Stuart Edwards, a leader in suffrage and other social movements, was born in 1880 in Lafayette. Her youth included many “firsts”. She was the first girl in Lafayette to ride a bike and the first to attend a women’s college. In 1904, she…
House Designed by Joel Roberts Ninde
Joel Roberts Ninde was a self-taught architect in Fort Wayne. Her first design was the house that she and her husband, Lee J. Ninde, lived in. She refused to live in his family home due to the dark and drafty rooms, and they could not find a home…
The Propylaeum
The Propylaeum was founded in 1888 by a group of seven Indianapolis women. The original purpose of the meeting was to find a headquarters for the Indianapolis Woman’s Club. However, the chairperson, May Wright Sewall (a nationally known educator,…
YWCA in Indiana
The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) has its roots in England as early at 1855. Two organizations, the Prayer Union and the General Female Training Institute, formed at the same time to provide a variety of services to young single women…
Booker T. Washington School
Constructed in 1905, the Booker T. Washington School served as one of two African American schools in Rush County. This two story, brick building housed grades 1-6 up until 1932, when it was closed by the local school board. The first floor of the…
Bethel AME Church (Indianapolis)
Bethel AME is the city’s oldest and one of Indiana’s most recognized Black cultural sites. Augustus Turner, alongside future Bishop William Paul Quinn, organized central Indiana’s Methodists in 1836. Congregants initially gathered in Turner’s cabin…
Crispus Attucks High School
Crispus Attucks High School was built in 1927 as the city of Indianapolis’ first and only African American high school. Despite protests from the Better Indianapolis League (a civic organization of progressive black citizens), the school board…
Alexander Taylor Rankin House
This is the home of Alexander Rankin, a known abolitionist, who built the house in 1841. He lived in the house for two years while he was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. His brother was John Rankin, the most well-known conductor along…
Farmers Institute
The Farmers Institute is the main building of a small campus of Quaker buildings located in a seven acre grove near Lafayette, IN. It is a wood frame building constructed in 1851 and enhanced by Greek Revival elements. The building housed the first…
Bethel AME Church (Crawfordsville)
The Bethel AME Church of Crawfordsville was built in 1847 and remodeled in 1892, located on West North Street. Like many other buildings in Crawfordsville, such as the Speed Cabin, Crawfordsville AME was a stop on the Underground Railroad. From…
Speed Cabin
John Allen Speed, a native of Scotland, immigrated to the United States in 1821. Speed and his family moved to Crawfordsville in 1834 and bought land at the southeast corner of North and Grant Streets to build their log cabin. An ardent…
Lyles Consolidated School
Lyles Station was founded in prior to the Civil War by Joshua and Sanford Lyles, former slaves from Tennessee. Joshua Lyles returned to Tennessee and encouraged other former slaves to come join him in Indiana. Many decided to do just that, and, at…
Leora Brown School
Originally known as the Corydon Colored School, the building was constructed in 1891 as an elementary and secondary school for African Americans. It may be the oldest African American school remaining in the state of Indiana. The grade school met in…
Carnegie Center for Art and Culture
The Carnegie Center is housed in the former Carnegie Free Public Library (constructed in 1902) and is a division of the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library. Staff at the Center have developed a permanent interactive exhibit about the Underground…
Lyman & Asenath Hoyt House
The home of Lyman and Asenath Hoyt was constructed circa 1850 of Indiana limestone in the Greek Revival style. The Hoyts lived in the house with their seven children until 1857 and were active in the anti-slavery movement and the Underground…
Levi Coffin House
Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965, the Levi Coffin House in Fountain City is a significant property in the Underground Railroad. Built in 1827, the two-story brick Federal style house was the home of Levi and Catharine Coffin and their…
Fort Ouiatenon
Fort Ouiatenon is a former French outpost and trading site that was built along the Wabash River and active from 1717 to 1791. Dr. Richard B. Weatherill, a popular physician in nearby Lafayette, IN, purchased the site of the fort in 1928 and had a…