Fifteen years ago, Indianapolis artists and gallery owners organized a free bus tour of a few studios and galleries around downtown and Fountain Square. This quickly grew into the First Fridays “for people to make a night of enjoying art.” Today these monthly visits to city galleries and artists’ studios, including the Stutz Business and Art Center, the Harrison Center for the Arts, the Murphy Art Center, and others, are anticipated cultural outings by the community. While Indianapolis has had a rich heritage of talented artists, up until thirty years ago venues for displaying art were sparse.
More than a century and a quarter ago, Indianapolis artists began finding studio space in the older buildings along the city’s financial district — East Market Street. Rooms with high ceilings, good lighting, and affordable rent found Hoosier Group artists, T. C. Steele, William Forsyth, Otto Stark, J. Ottis Adams, and Richard Gruelle establishing studios where they could paint their American Impressionist style in what were then the Union Trust Building and the Hartford Block on the northside of Market Street between Pennsylvania and Delaware. Other artists quickly joined this art colony and they became “so closely associated in their life and work” that they “laughingly” referred to Market Street as “McDougall’s Alley” after a Greenwich Village area in New York City where artists had their studios.
Over four decades in rooms above the financial centers and amid the law offices, well-known and lesser known Indianapolis artists pooled their collective talent in the Market Street studios applying brush and palette to canvas and fingers and texturing tools to clay creating works that today may be seen in museums and homes, public spaces and gardens. Climbing stairs and riding elevators to their ateliers above the commercial bustle of the Circle City, artists like Frances Goodwin carefully formed the bust of Robert Dale Owen to be placed in a State House Rotunda niche; Paul Hadley perfected his Indiana State Flag design, and Myra Richards applied the finishing touches to her statue of James Whitcomb Riley for the courthouse grounds at Greenfield, Indiana. Later in his Market Street studio, Randolph Coats completed a portrait reproduction of Caroline Scott Harrison to hang in the hallway of the Benjamin Harrison Home.
There were limited opportunities, outside of the State Fair, for the public to see the works of the Market Street artists. An art critic or an occasional art patron may have visited one of the several studios, but gallery space was limited for many years in Indianapolis to the John Herron Art Institute; framing firms B. H. Herman & Co, 118 N. Pennsylvania, and the H. Lieber Co, 24 W. Washington St; L S. Ayres & Co and Pettis Dry Goods Co; and the Woman’s Department Club and the Columbia Club. The Central Library was also a venue. In the early years of the 20th century, the few commercial gallery spaces closed because of the “lack of daylight” with the “business district gradually growing skyward,” and some of those on Artists’ Row like Glenn Hinshaw and Carl C. Graf exhibited their works in their studios.
Carl Graf joined with Bessie Hendricks and Mary Chilton Gray in turning their studios over to the war effort during the First World War producing patriotic posters. During this time, Simon Baus moved his studio from his Irvington home to the Union Trust Building, 120 E. Market St, where in the ensuing years he completed many of his major portraits. The studios on Artists’ Row also provided an opportunity for artists to instruct others. China painters Alice R. Hadley and Dessa E. Mitchell in the early ‘teens conducted classes at their School of Design and China Decoration in their Union Trust Building room. Later, artists like Joe Henninger and Dan Daniels, in addition to working on their own works, also offered classes in painting and sculpture in their studio in the Farmers Trust Building, 150 E. Market St, where “two large north windows provide light.”
The Great Depression years saw a new generation of artists embracing the Regionalist point of view and painting the American Scene moving into the Market Street studios. Following their graduation from Herron, William F. Kaeser, Cecil F. Head, and Floyd Hopper shared space in the Union Trust Building and split the $10 (2017: $180) a month rent, and a few doors east in the Farmers Trust Building, Roger Frey, Charles Crawford, Bird Baldwin, and Helen Woodward honed their creative talents.
In addition to artists, over thirty architects had rooms along Market Street. Among the more notable designers were Herbert W. Foltz, whose works include the Irvington Methodist Church; Clarence T. Myers, small house planner; Donald Graham, architect of the Rivoli Theater and Millersville Masonic Lodge; Charles H. Byfield, designer of the Davlan Apartments, 430 Massachusetts Ave.; Arthur W. Fleck, Irvington Business Strip architect, 5600 block of E. Washington St.; Marrett L. Carr, architect of Audubon Court in Irvington; Everett I. Brown who designed over 200 Indiana school buildings; and George V. Bedell, the architect of St. Philip Neri Catholic Church.
Artists’ Row became a victim of the December Seventh attack on battleship row in 1941. Most of the artist on Market Street closed their studios and either joined one of the military services or went to work in a war plant. A few senior artists like Simon Baus continued to work in their studios through the war years, but this Indianapolis cultural district soon passed into memory. Baus was the last Market Street artist, leaving his Union Trust Building studio shortly before the historic structure, which once housed the law offices of Benjamin Harrison and rooms where James Whitcomb Riley penned his verses, was razed in 1953. Unfortunately, the buildings where more than 100 Market Street artists worked are gone, save for the Farmers Trust Building, 150 E. Market St. While few reminders remain today of Artists’ Row; maybe a fitting tribute to the Market Street Art Colony, while unintentional, is a five-foot sculpture by Adolph Wolter depicting Indiana history above the door at 120 E. Market Street.
