Some buildings sell goods. Others sell a feeling. Long before I ever thought about retail architecture and history, one anchor at Fort Wayne’s Glenbrook Square managed to do both: without me ever setting foot inside, Sears was a true landmark.
Continue reading “The landmark Glenbrook Sears, since eradicated”
Yesterday, my friend David sent me a few photos of a building at the northwest corner of Willard and Hoyt near downtown Muncie. I’ve driven past the place countless times over the years and never given it much thought. This time, though, was different: large sections of an exterior skin had been stripped away, revealing something few passersby have seen in years: intricate brickwork hidden underneath! Beneath all that siding sits part of the old former Muncie Brewing Company. Thanks to the recent work, a long-obscured piece of the city’s heritage is finally peeking back into view.
Continue reading “Muncie history hidden beneath some siding”
At first glance, Clinton County’s Parkview Home is nothing more than an architectural curiosity just northeast of Frankfort. Look a little closer, though, and the institution becomes something more: a survivor of fire, a product of evolving ideas about public care, and one of the last remaining threads in a statewide system that has all but vanished.
Continue reading “Indiana’s Clinton County Home”
After I got home from yesterday’s disappointing dry artesian well, a series of questions popped into my head. What does the inside of a flowing well look like when it isn’t flowing? Is the pipe clogged? Has it collapsed somewhere underground? Is there still water deeper down, waiting to find its way to the surface once it rains? Thanks to my Ko-fi supporters, I now possess a device poised to satisfy my local-history-and-artesian-well-related curiosities! Maybe I can find my thirty-year-old Hot Wheels Bugatti while I’m at it.
Continue reading “Into the Muncie Pike well”
I hadn’t visited a new artesian well since August 2025. The drought has been painful, but a reader named Jocelyn came to my rescue on Monday. In an email, she tipped me off to an artesian well that wasn’t on my map! I ‘d just gotten out of the dentist’s office pretty miserable and swollen, but the prospect of an undiscovered flowing well was too tempting to ignore. In a flash, I pointed the car toward Henry County and set off to investigate. If true, it’d become my fiftieth artesian well.
Continue reading “Finally- a new-to-me artesian well!”
Williamsburg, Indiana, is an unincorporated community platted in 1830. Situated around US-35 and the old Centerville Road, it’s about twelve miles northwest of the heart of downtown Richmond. I’ve passed the old Green Township school there countless times, but never got a chance to explore it until just recently. What a treasure! I’m glad I did.
Continue reading “A peek inside the old Williamsburg School”
I drive around a lot, and one of my favorite games is is trying to guess what places used to be. The other day in Elwood, that instinct kicked in hard when I came across Tops TrueValue Home Center. One look was all it took: beneath the signage, it was unmistakably a former Marsh Supermarket.
Continue reading “Not fooling anyone: this hardware store in Elwood used to be a…”
Almost exactly a year ago, I was wandering through Huntington County when I stumbled past the old Belleville schoolhouse north of Warren. As I researched, I read a Facebook post I can no longer find that asserted it was Huntington County’s last old schoolhouse! I took that as a personal challenge to find more, and wound up with eight. Here they are.
Continue reading “Eight schoolhouses in Huntington County”
Miller Cemetery is one of Delaware County’s most hidden pioneer burial grounds. Seated deep in what amounts to the wilds of Harrison Township, far from any public road and beyond private property, I’ve wanted to visit it for years! There was just one problem: as a red-blooded millennial, making cold calls to property owners ranks among my personal anathemas. Fortunately, my friend Kathi has no such compunctions: when I heard she was planning a visit, I jumped at the chance to tag along.
Continue reading “The hidden history of Miller Cemetery”
Tractor pulls are about as American as things get. Antique farm vehicles battle to drag a weighted sled down a track, and victory goes to the machine that pulls it the farthest! The competitions are especially popular across the Midwest and South, but I’ve never actually attended one. Still, I recently found myself participating in a smaller version when I used an ATV to drag an eighty-year-old tractor out of what I’d long assumed would be its final resting place.
Continue reading “My first tractor pull”