This story appeared in the October 2024 print edition of Urban Times.
By CONNIE ZEIGLER, Contributing editor
I’ve been writing this monthly history column in Urban Times since 2007. Nine years later, in 2016, after a few people had encouraged me to turn the topics from the column into a book, I sent a proposal for just that to the Indiana Historical Society. The wheels of history turned slowly, but the historical society published that book based on History 301 in September 2024. The book is An Unusual Urban History of Indianapolis: The Unsung, Underappreciated, or Lost-to-Memory People, Places, and Culture of the Capital City.
Over the years the column allowed me to delve into different aspects of topics that I’d written about for other projects—my master’s thesis topic of Indianapolis Amusement Parks became a column on one of those parks, Wonderland, which once stood on East Washington Street. The thesis also informed other columns. I wrote about a divorce case that had been the focus of research I had done for an earlier master’s topic that I abandoned. And I had a collection of material that I’d uncovered during the years when I was working as an architectural historian identifying historic properties that might be affected by federally funded projects.
For the first two or three years the column was called “History 101.” Then editor Bill Brooks and I decided that this was not introductory-level material; we changed the name to “History 301” to better reflect the level of primary (contemporaneous) material research and my efforts to include Indianapolis history within the wider national or world story – what happened in Indianapolis during the 1917 Influenza Pandemic, was there an active communist party in Indianapolis prior to the Cold War, who are the artists, thinkers, writers, and otherwise famous people from Indianapolis who are largely known, if remembered at all, for what they did elsewhere? These are all topics I’ve explored in the column over the years.
Often I’ve written with class, or race or gender pushing the story along. Those topics allow me to look at everyday places and people who are not famous, but whose development or lives have run the machinery of this city’s history as much as any notable – Willis Mortuary, working women, Grandview Addition, Emerson Heights, even swimming. These are not stories about famous people, but they are stories of events and culture that helped make Indianapolis.
Some of the people who made appearances were well-known locally during their lives but have faded from memory – Indianapolis architect Leslie Ayres, golf course designer Bill Diddel, jazz chanteuse Flo Garvin and jazz drummer Dick Dickinson.
Bill Brooks has been generous in allowing me to choose whatever topics I want, to go where whim takes me with research with the caveat that, for the most part, the focus should be on the urban area of the city. I’ve generally stayed within Interstate 465 unless there was a compelling reason to head to the suburbs.
Bill’s openness to almost any topic keeps me interested in what will come next. Sometimes the road from my wondering brain inspired by a new movie, or a radio story leads me on a meandering chase that turns up nothing, but usually, it turns out, Indianapolis was also part of whatever weird trend I’m hunting for. We were part of the story.
Sometimes readers have contacted me with topic suggestions and some of those suggestions have turned into my favorite columns and essays in the book: wholesale grocer and amateur photographer William L. O’Connor’s granddaughter shared his beautiful pictorialist-style photographs, which showed me his homelife, starting with his engagement and continuing through his marriage. Archivist Alan January called to ask if I’d be interested in seeing the original plans of the first Marion County Courthouse that they had recently uncovered in the Indiana State Archives. You bet I was. It’s in the book. How about a story on the Knights of Columbus’ McGowan Hall turned into an juxtaposition between the KofC and the KKK. Most of these early years’ columns are not easily found online. The Urban Times has had almost as many websites as I’ve had computers in the last 17 years. To locate these older columns I scoured my own files and downloaded scanned copies from the Indianapolis Public Library (where all past issues of Urban Times can be found at digitalindy.com). Luckily Bill Brooks was able to locate images, sometimes originally sent to him 15 years ago, to illustrate the book, and Ray Boomhower at the Indiana Historical Society edited and found additional images as needed. It took a tiny village and more than 200 years of history to get these columns collected and into print. And in the meantime, I’ve written eight more years’ worth. History does not stop, folks.
Connie Zeigler holds a master’s degree in history. She enjoys digging up a surprising, forgotten story and sharing her pirate’s booty with Urban Times readers.
