Six Neighborhoods - City of Indianapolis and Marion County

NeighborhoodBeginningsIt wasn’t too long ago – only a little more than a century anda half – that the area now home to the six neighborhoodsof the Mid-North area was completely undeveloped. It waspristine land completely distinct from the town that hassince come to be known as Indianapolis. There’s even alegend that the hill on Watson Road was once known as the“High Ridge” of a stream running through to Fall Creekfrom the “Short Ridge” where the high school now stands.Legends aside, there’s documented history indicating that,toward the middle of the 19th Century, much of the areahad become farmland with a few small areas beginning tobe thought of as stopping places between Indianapolis andsomewhere else.One of these stopping places was at a very small communitylocated near what is now Illinois and 38th Streets.Although it has since become known as part of CrownHill neighborhood, it was then known as Maple Town orSugar Grove (for the many sugar maple trees that grewhere). Horse-drawn carriages would stop there on theirway to vacation in outlying Broad Ripple. Eventually thisstopping place became Mapleton, and a post office wasestablished in the 1850s.During the next decades, a street railway system ran alongIllinois Street to Crown Hill Cemetery, and its turnaroundwas to the west. Once part of the Indianapolis and WestfieldGravel Road, Illinois Street is probably the oldest street inthe neighborhood. In 1891, the railway system extendedeast along Maple Road when the Indiana State Fairgroundswas built.Meanwhile, more farms and single-family homeswere built and small residential areas were developedthroughout the area, first west of Meridian Street, theneast, some along Maple Road, some closer to what we nowknow as 30th Street. Fall Creek Parkway was designedby prominent landscape architect George Kessler as ascenic boulevard and part of a city-wide network of parksconnected by beautiful parkways. The bridges that stillstand today, along with pedestrian promenades along thecreek made the area very attractive to visitors.By the first decade of the 1900s, when the advent ofautomobiles made the area more accessible, more familyvacation homes were built and developers subdividedparcels of land to create small communities here andthere. Particularly in the neighborhoods now known asCrown Hill, Highland Vicinity, and Meridian Highland,the homes were laid out according to a gridiron subdivisionconcept which attracted homeowners who did not haveto depend on public transportation. The area becamehome to many of the city’s most prosperous, especiallyalong the Meridian Street corridor between Fall Creekand Maple Road. Charles W. Fairbanks, Vice President ofthe United States, built his mansion at 30th and Meridianin 1913. Plumbing and sewage lines were extended tothe neighborhood in 1914. The next year, the Governor’sresidence, in the prevalent Tudor Revival style, was builtat 101 W. 27th Street.By the end of the 20s, several large churches includingThird Christian Scientist, Tabernacle Presbyterian,Church of the Advent (Episcopal), Our RedeemerLutheran, and Parish Church of the Advent (later TrinityLooking north across the Meridian Street bridge over Fall Creek toward the Mid-North areain 1920. Six years later the Marrott Hotel was built where the “Kelly Tires” billboard stands.Photo from Bass Photo Collection, Indiana Historical Society.10Six Neighborhoods. One Vision.