Columbus Architecture - Indiana Writer - Indiana Values

 Odd thing about Columbus, Indiana is how little other Indiana cities seem to follow its lead. It does its own thing, leaving behind a feeling of belonging elsewhere. We know about its architecture, yet all seems the eccentricity of the local big families.

Seeing the headline How a Tiny Midwestern Town Became a Mecca for Modern Architecture, I assumed it had to be about Columbus, Indiana. There could not be another small Midwestern city with outstanding architecture, could there? Clicking on the link, and going to Bloomberg, I was proved right.

The town’s reputation among architects took off in the mid-1950s, when its largest employer, the engine manufacturer Cummins, began covering the architecture fees for new modernist public schools through the Cummins Foundation Architecture Program (CFAP) — so long as the school board picked an architect from a list of modernists provided by J. Irwin Miller, who was then Cummins’ chairman and CEO. The foundation eventually expanded to cover the fees for any publicly funded facility in town.

Which also taught me a few things I did not know before.

First, I learned about another Indiana writer.

One Columbus native has now written the first monograph on the buildings that make Columbus a modernist mecca. American Modern: Architecture; Community; Columbus, Indiana by architecture writer Matt Shaw presents the town of 50,000 people as a postwar vision for a better city — which came about during a time when the federal government, corporate leaders and civil rights activists in the 1960s transformed US cities with mixed results.

Muncie has the Ball family and the Ball Foundation. Indianapolis has the Lilly family. Neither have taken quite the hand that the Cummins Foundation did. 

Bloomberg CityLab: In American Modern, you refer to Columbus as a “Little Great Society.” How did Columbus’ version of the Great Society compare to the federal government’s vision?

Matt Shaw: The community as a whole was able to reach a broad consensus, which was a big part of the Great Society and the process that they were trying to instill. Columbus did that really well with a coalition that wasn’t just diverse in terms of ethnicity and religion but also economic class. The War on Poverty was a big thing in the Great Society. Columbus took some of the ideas from it, including the idea that everyone could be lifted up by institutions and a strong public-private coalition. The schools they built are a strong example of that. There were kids living in rural areas but attending new schools that looked like they were from Manhattan. This wasn’t a New Deal approach, with jobs programs and a distribution of wealth, but instead about qualitative ways of helping everybody better themselves and creating a society that everybody can live in.

Which actually sounds very much like Indiana of another generation, this working with the communication.

What does the current era of preserving and adapting modernism look like in Columbus?

McCoy: The Miller family’s home opened to the public in 2011, marking a transition for Columbus without any of the Millers in town. Local leadership was able to convince Indiana University to launch a graduate program in architecture, which is now inside the former Republic Newspaper building by Myron Goldsmith. The Irwin Union Bank and Trust had always commissioned a designer to make a new branch in the county. With the banking enterprise being lost and the industry transition to online banking, those buildings had to find new uses. The best example is the one Harry Weese designed in 1961, which was turned into a coffee shop in 2021. Our organization helped raise $3.2 million for the First Christian Church’s clock tower, and we're working on the conversion of Eero Saarinen’s North Christian Church into a branch library.

Columbus relies on incentives and a community-based approach. There really aren’t any policies in place. There’s no historic preservation committee, no city-run landmarks committee like you see in Chicago or New York. Columbus has never had a historic preservation commission even though they’re quite common around Indiana.

It is that community-based approach that, in my opinion, is the most Hoosier. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. said he learned about socialism at Shortridge High School. Not quite Ayn Rand kind of thinking but I like it that way.

Effort to develop housing for homeless families in Muncie gains city council support 

Bob Scott, vice president of development for the Muncie Mission, one of eight agencies that came together to form a consortium to solve the homeless problem in Delaware County, told the council that the building is now owned by Full Gospel Temple, which uses the old school as an educational center and for community programs. The mission now has an option to buy the building and then make it available to the project’s developers.

This feels different for Anderson: Residents give input on Anderson's future.  Usually, it was some hare-brained idea dreamt up and foisted on the city. Maybe they learned their lesson when the reservoir idea took a dive. Still, Andersonians cannot seem to feel the need to get involved.

Several community workshops took place this week at the Flagship Enterprise Center, with more than 80 people providing input.

“We’re working on a vision together for the city of Anderson,” planner Allison Richardson with Rundell Ernstberger Associates, said Thursday. “We’re glad to see so many people interested in the future.”

She said the comprehensive plan would have limited impact on social issues if not connected to land use.

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