by Michael Williams
Touring the bungalow neighborhoods of Indianapolis with Kipp Normand is a real treat. As an architectural reviewer for the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission he gets around the city a lot, and knows where to find the hidden gems.
“Look at the rafter tails on this one over here,” he says, pointing out the beautifully carved details on a home in the Johnson’s Woods neighborhood. “They are hard to see, but if you really look hard …” Indianapolis is filled with wonderful neighborhoods like this one, clearly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, but with their own regional twist.
“Look at the rafter tails on this one over here,” he says, pointing out the beautifully carved details on a home in the Johnson’s Woods neighborhood. “They are hard to see, but if you really look hard …” Indianapolis is filled with wonderful neighborhoods like this one, clearly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, but with their own regional twist.
Kipp feels the origin of the bungalow in Indianapolis can be found in the city’s oldest neighborhoods, like Lockerbie, acharming area filled with small, unpretentious Victorian homes. “Indianapolis developed mainly in the late-19th century, and at that timethere were many small, one-story, gabled-roof Victorian cottages — the predecessor to the bungalow here,” Kipp says. “If you take that basic floor plan — stretch it out and make the rooms a little bigger — you have a bungalow. As the city grew and expanded, developers would subdivide farmland and entirely new neighborhoods would go up.”
Bungalow neighborhoods began to appear around 1905, but the Craftsman influence,with deep porches, low-pitched roofs and wide overhangs, didn’t materialize until a few years later. Indianapolis doesn’t have a distinct bungalow
style of its own, like you might see in Chicago or Pasadena, but builders did seem to have a preference for old-world elements.
“The dominant style of bungalows in Indianapolis is a hybrid, a cross between the Craftsman influence and German revival styles,” Kipp says. “This was a very Germanic city, and many builders couldn’t resist adding German heraldic symbols and other elements to their designs. The medieval look was very popular here, but the more modern-looking Prairie Style was not. It just didn’t take here. Indianapolis is a fairlyconservative city and always has been, so you don’t see much in the way of modern architectural styles.”
This is true — Indianapolis doesn’t feel like the nation’s 12th-largest city. Instead, many of its neighborhoods have a suburban or country feel, some with winding or rambling streets, others with gentle hills and ravines. The design of the homes reflects the relaxed lifestyle and “good life” that the nation was looking for in the 1910s and ’20s. In fact, many homes here would fit in comfortably with the wooded, rolling hills of the southern part of the state, and seem to be custom-made for the popular art and furnishings that could be found in the region at the turn of the 20th century: furniture made by the Old Hickory Chair Company, Overbeck sisters’ art pottery and the pastoral landscape paintings by the Hoosier Salon of artists.
Many wonderful bungalows can be found in Indianapolis, both mixed into older Victorian neighborhoods like Irvington and Woodruff Place, and in the denser bungalow neighborhoods like Guilford/Winthrop and the Butler University area. They were built using a variety of materials, with wood frame dominating the earliest examples, but brick was also popular, particularly in the 1920s. Many homes have brickwork incorporated into their designs, either as part of the foundation or supporting piers, or in combination with wood clapboard. Stucco was used sparingly, though you do see it as an architectural accent and in some Spanish Colonial designs. Tile roofs were common on the more expensive bungalows, with wood shingles or asphalt roofing utilized on more modest designs.
Bungalow interiors were similarly well-constructed, with built-in bookcases in the living room, china cabinets in the dining room and generous woodwork throughout, trimmed in oak or a regional favorite — dark-stained poplar.
Perhaps Indianapolis’ best known bungalow is Tuckaway, a Craftsman-style home literally tucked away into a heavily wooded lot in the Historic Meridian Park neighborhood on the city’s north side. Built in 1906, it was enlarged and expanded by owners George and Nellie Meier in 1910 to accommodate the couple’s lavish social life. The history of the house is rich with stories of the country’s most prominent artists, writers and politicians visiting the home to be entertained, and more importantly, to have their palms read by Nellie, a renowned practitioner of what she described as “scientific palmistry.” Visitors included Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Disney and George Gershwin, who weren’t looking to have their fortunes told, but rather to have the lines on their hands analyzed and studied.
Current Tuckaway owner Ken Keene Jr., who purchased the bungalow in 1972, has painstakingly restored the house to its past glory. The results are magical — the house doesn’t appear to have changed at all in the last century, from the pictures on the walls to the ice card in the kitchen window. “This neighborhood had been practically deserted when I bought the house 31 years ago; it was just terrible,” Ken says. “But when I saw Tuckaway for the first time through a dense overgrowth of shrubs and trees, it seemed as if I had entered another dimension. It was very ‘Disney-esque.’ I just stood there and said, ‘I’m home.’ ”
The house was a treasure trove of autographs, letters and palm prints when Ken bought it, but most of the original furnishings had already been sold. His goal was not to rehab or update the house, but to respect both the original design and the history that took place there. Now, filled with mica lamps, Oriental rugs and other decorative arts of the period, the house feels like a window to the past.
“What I’ve tried to do is a preservation,” Ken says. “I’ve redecorated and cleaned, but not much more. Of course, money is a big part of this — if you don’t have any and you are an artist — it’s a good thing. What could have happened was that I might have changed things — and made terrible mistakes. Instead, I’ve learned to appreciate it for what it really is. It’s now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”
Ken’s neighborhood has made great strides as well, due in part to a strong community association. “We are a very well-organized neighborhood, and we do a lot together,” he says. “We raise money for the beautification of the area, and believe me, that was not what it was like when I first moved here. This whole block was in jeopardy of being torn down, and now it’s a wonderful area.”
Like many large cities, Indianapolis went through growing pains in the 1960s and ’70s and some neighborhoods suffered. Today, however, the city is on the rebound, going through a building boom that has brought new life to even the city’s poorest neighborhoods. David Kiernan, a Realtor who grew up in a bungalow in the city’s Haughville neighborhood, is pleased to see the changes taking place.
“The revitalization of downtown Indianapolis really led to the neighborhood’s comeback,” he says. “Because once that happened, pride returned to the city and its neighborhoods. At first change took place in little pockets and smaller neighborhoods, and then it began to happen in a bigger way. Fall Creek Place is a good example of this kind of revitalization. Fall Creek always had terrible problems with crime and drugs, but now they are building new houses there intermixed with the old houses, including a vintage bungalow model. People are coming from all over to live there, and from all age groups. The development is doing well.”
Located near downtown, Fall Creek Place could serve as a model for the redevelopment of blighted areas. Once pockmarked by vacant lots and abandoned buildings, it now is filled with activity, including the renovation of old houses and families moving into new ones. The vintage character of the neighborhood is retained by controlling the design of new construction, requiring homes to blend in with the existing home stock.
And north of Fall Creek Place, Kipp is doing his part for neighborhood change in a 1920s bungalow purchased six years ago in the Guilford/Winthrop neighborhood. He’s restoring his home with the attention to detail you would expect from someone who makes his living monitoring design in the city’s historic districts — complete with a working 1930s stove and refrigerator — and filling it with art and artifacts he has found in the city.
“Many first-time home buyers have come to this neighborhood because it gives them the opportunity to put some sweat equity into a house and see a return on their investment,” Kipp says. “And this is a very diverse neighborhood, too. There are older people who have been living here for years, families with kids, and young people. In fact, a local magazine has now labeled the area as the new hip neighborhood for artists and musicians.”
Attracted to his bungalow neighborhood for both its affordability and its homes, Kipp hopes the vintage character and charm remain intact as new residents move in. “It’s the attractiveness of the architecture that draws people to these old neighborhoods,” Kipp says. “If the houses get torn down or re-muddled — in the name of progress — it would be a real loss.”
Hopefully, with so many committed to preserving Indianapolis’ historic neighborhoods, the city’s distinctive architecture will be enjoyed for generations to come.
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