We saw some other interesting buildings in New Harmony, including the Working Man’s Institute, founded by William Maclure in 1838. The current building is from 1894 and is still open to the public. Besides serving as a library, it also contains a museum of artifacts from the earliest period of New Harmony, as well as…
Tag: Indiana
Roofless Church, New Harmony, Indiana
I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of Phillip Johnson. There’s that whole Nazi problem, and the fact that a lot of his work just isn’t that good. The General American Life Insurance Building (now Spire) in downtown St. Louis is pretty cool, though. But we discovered the Roofless Church at New Harmony, and it’s…
New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony, Indiana, much like the Icarians in St. Louis and Nauvoo, was part of the wave of idealistic communities founded in the United States in the Nineteenth Century. Founded by George Rapp in 1814, the settlement was developed by Lutherans from Wurttemberg in what is now Germany. They didn’t last long and moved to…
Kansas City, Baltimore, Dayton, Louisville and Indianapolis Skyscrapers
Rounding out our survey of early Twentieth Century centerpiece skyscrapers, we look at a couple more, starting first on the other side of Missouri in Kansas City. The Kansas City Power and Light Building, built in 1931, was the tallest building in Missouri until 1976. Designed by the Kansas City firm of Hoit, Price &…
Two Unique Buildings, Indianapolis
The former Deutsches Haus, renamed the Athenæum during World War I due to anti-German sentiment remains a landmark in the Lockerbie or Germantown neighborhood of Indianapolis. There was some major restoration going on around the front of the building when I visited, so these historic photos show what it looks like overall. It’s perhaps a…
Two Midwestern Towns, 500 Miles Apart
The town of Rushville, Indiana, possesses one of the more exceptional courthouses out in the country that I’ve seen in awhile. Built in 1896, it still sports its central clocktower, which sometimes is removed, as was done in Kirksville, Missouri, after structural problems appeared. I really love the Damascus arch for the main entrance. The…
City Methodist and Other Places, Gary, August 2023
Oh my, I was expecting this by looking up recent photos on the internet, but nothing can really prepare you for what you see when you’re there in person. The roof over the nave of City Methodist Church has almost completely collapsed, and it is totally dangerous to get anywhere near this structure. The nearby…
Cathedral of the Holy Angels, Gary, August 2023
I visited the second of two cathedrals on my trip, the second that was closed when I visited, and the first of a diocese in Gary, reflecting the rapid growth in northwest Indiana after World War II. The diocese was only created in 1956 out of the diocese of Fort Wayne. The Cathedral of the…
Gary, Indiana, August 2023
I’m sure these two photos, above and below, are the classic “ruin porn” photos that most people seek out to take when they visit Gary, Indiana. And I’m not going to pretend that the city doesn’t have serious problems, and no one who lives there, I’m sure, is going pretend there aren’t thousands of acres…
From the Vault: Union Station, Gary
Update: Announced in August of 2023, the station will undergo an $8 million dollar renovation, which I covered in this post from September of 2023. The impressive Beaux-Arts edifice of Gary Union Station opened in 1910, only four years after the founding of the town it served. Abandoned since the 1970s, I find a certain…