First off, an update on the new plans for the Grain Dealers building: London Witte Group has hired
locally based Lynn Hines Design Associates to revitalize the space and preserve its "retro" appeal. The plans call for vintage-inspired
fixtures, flooring, wall coverings and furnishings. London Witte also expects to install energy efficient windows and new
mechanical systems. The buyer was represented by Resource Commercial Real Estate. The brokers, Tom Osborne and Matt Moore,
discovered the original hand-sketched rendering of the building (shown at right). The firm added color to the drawing and
plans to hang it in the lobby. More on the building is here.
And here's a second historic image: This is what the BW3 space discussed below looked like in 1938,
when it was home to a Woolworth department store. The photo at right (Click for a larger version) is from the Indiana Historical
Society. Thanks to the reader who posted the image in the comments section of yesterday's BW3 post. I'm told the building
to the left was destroyed in a fire several years back.
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AND, they need to add LARGE ceiling to floor windows at BW3 to complement the lovely Borders store next door.
http://www.indygov.org/eGov/City/DPS/IFD/History/Fires/grantfire.htm
I love reading the story about it. Could have been so much worse!
Doing a story on the Grant fire I think would be interesting to your readers. It greatly changed the face of that section of downtown including almost destroying the building you are currently located in. Its roof along with those across Washington Street caught fire. The fire almost wiped out most of the east side of downtown. Only through brave work of the firefighters did they contain it.
The Grant building (earlier home to the New York Store) was just to the east of the State Life building--as others have mentioned, the source of the big 1973 fire that destroyed both buildings.
Here is another great view from the IHS, looking east on Washington, showing both the Brant and State Life buildings, plus the Woolworth building before it was redesigned with the art deco facade in the 1930s: http://images.indianahistory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/dc012&CISOPTR=8590&CISOBOX=1&REC=9
Seriously, though, there is a piece by Jim Glass in that other Indianapolis newspaper (sorry Cory) about Modernism in Indianapolis architecture. It mentions the State Life headquarters (now Julia Carson Center) at 300 E. Fall Creek Parkway as a prominent 60's example of Modernism...so it makes sense that the State Life building would have carried another name by the time of the 1973 fire.
The building on Fall Creek Parkway was Standard Life. State Life's headquarters were in the building at the southwest corner of Washington and Delaware.
The client was right.
And one more thing: there's a multi-story building shadow across the center of the facade. Whatever cast that shadow is long gone, replaced by...a parking lot.