Nestled in the hillside at 5427 E. Washington Street, on the west front of Indianapolis Public School No. 57, is a one-story brick and glass building that until recently housed the Hilton U. Brown Early Childhood Center. For the past decade and a half, it provided special education services for school children. Prior to this use, the building was a branch of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library.
In July 1956, the Hilton U. Brown Branch Library opened its doors to the students and adults of the greater Irvington area. The Modern Style rectilinear flat-roofed building, designed by the architectural firm of McGuire & Shook, was the first structure specifically built to house the Irvington branch library’s collection of over 23,000 volumes. The building and furnishings cost $151,152 (2014: $1,298,720.03). The new library structure was named for long-time Irvington resident Hilton U. Brown whose career with the Indianapolis News began as a reporter, and continued through city editor and general manager. He also served as president of the Butler University board of trustees for over fifty years.
For Irvingtonians, the Brown Branch Library was the culmination of the Classic Suburb’s struggle to have its own public library. From Irvington’s earliest days, the young and old of the community have held libraries in high regard. When George W. Julian moved from Centerville, Indiana into his new Irvington home at 115 S. Audubon Road in 1873, he said it was to be near the Indianapolis public library which at the time had only one location in the city. A library did come to Irvington in 1875 when Butler University made the suburb its home, but its use was limited to scholars. Housed in the same building as the chemistry laboratory, Butler administrators were concerned that some experiment would go awry and “POOF!” the library would go up in smoke. These concerns were finally alleviated when the family of Bona Thompson, a Butler alumnae of the class of 1897 who had died two years later, offered to have a library building erected in her memory.
Edward C. Thompson, Bona’s father, did not believe that the library was to have an exclusive use, so he readily agreed to the suggestion that besides being a college reference library the new Butler library could also serve as a public circulating library. So, when the Bona Thompson Memorial Library opened in January 1904 it became the Irvington branch of the Indianapolis public library system with librarian Retta Barnhill in charge — “Books called for in the morning which are not in the library will be sent for at the city library and be able to be obtained in the evening.” The Irvington Branch Library got its own identity ten years later when a storeroom was rented at 5518 E. Washington Street thereby enabling the library’s collection of 4,700 books to be more accessible. A few years later in September 1921, the library moved into larger quarters when the two-story house on a lot west of School 57 was purchased. Known as the Carvin House for the family of Orville Carvin, the structure had been built in 1890 for Butler mathematics professor Dr. William Thrasher. The first floor was for adult readers; book cases and book shelves wound through the dimly lit first floor rooms. Climbing the staircase immediately inside the front door, young readers made their way to the second floor rooms where the children’s books were kept. Climbing those steps many times, I would peer over the railing into the rooms below anxious for the day I could explore the titles lining those shelves
This was to be a “temporary” library for the 2,000 registered borrowers until an appropriate facility could be built. Budgetary priorities, however, postponed this goal until by the mid-1950s, with the Irvington Branch Public Library now serving 15,000 card holders, the School 57 PTA and the Irvington Union of Clubs called upon the Indianapolis School Board, who had responsibility for the public libraries at the time, to replace the old house because it was “greatly inadequate and presents serious hazards to the health and to the safety of our children, who use the library daily.”
The dreary old house came down and the light and airy Brown Branch Library with its blond wood desks and chairs served the Irvington community for over forty years under the guidance of librarians Hortense E. Kelly and later Lois Leamon. The new millennium ushered in a new Irvington Branch Library facility which today, under leadership of librarian Sue Kennedy, serves thousands of patrons annually with access not only the printed word, but to all the gadgets of our technological age.
