Currently Browsing: Historical Posts
The Original Push to Build the Highways Below-Grade: Guest Posted by Anonymous
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Historical Posts on May 24th, 2018 | 11 comments
As we have a week of numerous North Split public and committee meetings on our schedules, I can’t help but be frustrated by how quick stakeholders are to gloss over the historical implications of the original interstate development. There seems to be a general consensus that the interstate routing decisions were bad in retrospect – it tore up blocks of housing and the fabric of neighborhoods, resulting in an economic decline for numerous downtown neighborhoods. It pushed out families. It demolished historic buildings. It erased history. Yet discussions continue today about potentially...
Meet-Up: The North Split Public Open House
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Historical Posts on May 23rd, 2018 | 5 comments
Today, from 3-7 pm, INDOT will have their public open house for the North Split project. I am planning on attending, along with many other concerned local citizens. We are very worried about a wider, less attractive, and more intrusive elevated road right next to some of the most valuable real estate in the entire state. The meeting time and location are listed below:
When: Wednesday, May 23, 2018, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Presentations will be given at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Where: Biltwell Event Center
950 S. White River Parkway S. Drive
Below are a few of the less intrusive renderings that are provided on...
Urban Indy Turns 10: A Look Back, a Look Ahead
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Historical Posts, New Development on Apr 11th, 2017 | 8 comments
This website was born ten years ago on this date. When this blog first started, I was using actual film in an actual camera and scanning the photos. I took these particular photos to be developed at Cord Camera, which is now a fried chicken restaurant on Mass Avenue. I didn’t have a smart phone or a social media account, with the exception of MySpace.
Urban Indy continued on as a solo project for a few years, then in 2010 I had some meetings with other bloggers to try to restart Urban Indy as a collaboration. We had a few really solid years, and some of this blogs best posts are from that era....
City Market (Again): Maximizing the Tenant Potential.
Posted by Eric McAfee in Historical Posts on Dec 21st, 2015 | 34 comments
I first featured the plight of the City Market on my personal blog, American Dirt, back in 2009, when it was in dire straits, just as it had been for many years. Decades, even. It was a pretty grim place: most of the perimeter simply offered unnecessary seating, the central vendor stalls were only-half full, and the ambiance of the market was cavernous and sterile, even during the peak lunch hour. I specifically interviewed local businesses for their opinions on City Market—successful operations like Moody’s Meats and Goose the Market—but neither one had much positive to say: the former business...
Digital Archaeology through Google Street View
Posted by Eric McAfee in Historical Posts, Neighborhoods on Oct 21st, 2015 | 14 comments
“The apple that’s fresh is ripe to the core,
and I rot over time and I’m not anymore.” –Sloan & Pelling
I’m probably a day late and a dollar short on noticing the time-scroll feature available with Google Street View. Perhaps it’s been there for months—years even. I just figured it out its full potential few weeks ago. Most people might ponder what the point of it is: after all, if Google has provided a streetscape photo from 2015, why would we still need one from way back in 2011? But for those of us who use it on an almost daily basis, it represents a remarkable tool,...
