high Shrine Room, where neon-blue ceiling lights and blue stained-glass windows set a solemn mood. From the War Memorial, I head over to Delaware Street to the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site, the 1875
robber and native son John Dillinger. The outlaw’s footsteps can be traced through a popular Indianapolis eatery and blues club, the Slippery Noodle Inn. Two bullets, from a .38 special and a .45 caliber, are lodged in an inside brick wall
Indians and Western Art showcases paintings and Indian treasures that include 3,000-year-old stone arrowheads, full-scale tepees and the centerpiece tri-painting panorama of the Grand Canyon. Next door, the Indiana State Mu-
At a whopping 472,900 square feet, the Indianapolis Children’s Museum is the largest museum of its kind in the world, with more than 120,000 artifacts, a five-level playgroud, a five-story glass sculpture by renowned artist Dale Chihuly and a family of dinosaurs busting out of the building.
Italianate Victorian house of the 23rd U.S. president. The 16-room home’s original furnishings include a desk Harrison used in the White House and his deathbed where he succumbed to pneumonia in 1901. On the walls are portraits of family members including Harrison’s grandfather, William Henry Harrison, the ninth president. “Of people who have traveled to presidential homes, many know nothing about Benjamin Harrison,” says volun- teer Marie Cameron, noting the one-term president served from 1889 to 1893. “He was a general and soldier, but foremost a lawyer, family man, patriot and a very religious man.” A more notorious but popular slice of the city’s history involves bank
and thought to be from either the Dillinger or Brady gangs who used it for target prac- tice during Prohibition. “They were just hanging out here because it was a place where no one would really be looking for you,” says business owner Hal Yeagy. Fatally shot by federal agents in Chicago, Dillinger was buried in a family plot at Indianapolis’ Crown Hill Cemetery in 1934. “The family had a procession here on a very hot day in July, and thousands supposedly followed them,” according to tour guide Tom Davis. Other favorite sons interred here include pharmaceutical company founder Eli Lilly and Benjamin Harrison. Two key museums sit along the Cultural Trail in White River State Park. The Eiteljorg Museum of American
seum traces the state’s natural and human history, from mastodons roaming the plains 11,000 years ago to early pioneers, Indian wars and industrialization. Walking into the museum’s atrium, I can’t help but notice the facade of the Oscar C. McCulloch School Number 5, once a public school. “During the devel- opment of White River State Park, the school was being demolished, and some- one got an injunction in the middle of the night and saved it,” says Kathi Moore, the museum’s communications director. “They decided to incorporate it into the architecture of the building.” Approaching the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, I can’t miss the 50-foot- high brachiosaur replica standing on its hind legs and poking its long neck
18 COAST TO COAST Summer 2013
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker