Article Archives: Building Blocks

Building Blocks is a monthly feature by historian Steve Barnett about historic properties on the east side of Indianapolis.

The Classic Suburb in Word

December 18, 2025 | by Steven R. Barnett

Visual arts are often the most prominent examples of culture, frequently overshadowing the written word. However, like its rich heritage in paint, Irvington has a significant literary tradition that has deep roots in journalism. Grace Julian Clarke, the daughter of former U. S. Congressman George W. Julian, came to Irvington … Read More

Irvington The Classic Suburb

November 26, 2025 | by Steven R. Barnett

Irvington was recently designated one of the cultural districts of Indianapolis, an official recognition that Irvingtonians have known for decades for the name “Irvington” proclaims culture. For 150 years Irvington, once the site of Butler University, has been known as the Classic Suburb, the home of artists, authors, and musicians. … Read More

The old southside

October 23, 2025 | by Steven R. Barnett

The Old South Side in the 1950s ran from South to Raymond Streets, White River to East Street and was a community of German immigrant heritage — Protestants, Catholics, and Jewish. My wife grew up on Talbott St. in a family of German ethnicity that had moved to the south … Read More

The First U Indy

September 25, 2025 | by Steven R. Barnett

In the dark woods, a plot of marshy ground was set aside in the original plat of Indianapolis as University Square. It was to be the site of the state university, but as the years passed another location was selected in Bloomington, Indiana and the square in the Hoosier capital … Read More

Excluded and Unwelcome

August 21, 2025 | by Steven R. Barnett

Two hundred years ago, Indianapolis was a village where English, German, French, and native Lenape was spoken in the log cabins and among the trees of the dark forest. Eighty years later, a daily worker “Parade of All Nations” — Serbs and Syrians, Hungarians and Romanians, Irish and Germans, Lithuanians … Read More