Muncie Mall has been a fixture of East-Central Indiana life for more than fifty years. After news broke that the complex will be demolished, my brother and I made one last trip inside for a walk down memory lane. It wasn’t quite the nostalgic farewell we had hoped for. If anything, it was a pretty depressing visit.
Continue reading “One last trip to the Muncie Mall”
Some buildings don’t really disappear. Instead, they just learn how to hold new secrets. Pendleton’s elementary school campus is one of those places. At a glance, it’s a tidy, familiar part of town, reshaped over decades to meet modern needs. If you look a little closer, though, the outline of something older begins to emerge: the roof of the old Pendleton High School gym.
Continue reading “The shell of the old Pendleton High School Gym is hiding in plain sight”
Many of the buildings I highlight here are abandoned. Now and then, though, a second-chance story catches my eye. Ruby’s Cafe & Bakery in downtown Anderson is one of those rare wins: the old 8th Street landmark could have easily faded away! Instead, it buzzes with life.
Continue reading “Holy grounds: Ruby’s Cafe & Bakery in Anderson”
When I think of opera houses, my mind jumps straight to big cities with bright marquees like Sydney, Paris, or New York. The last place I’d expect to find one is tiny Pennville, Indiana. Still, the town had an honest-to-goodness opera house of its own, and the old building still stands today.
Continue reading “Pennville’s Pastime Theater”
Back when I was in school at IPFW, I took every which way from my parents’ house in Muncie to my crappy apartment in Fort Wayne. I often passed through Petroleum on State Road 1. Once day, I wondered where the east-west crossroads went and passed a boulder marking the site of the old Petroleum school. I was in the area not long ago and went by a second time.
Continue reading “The Petroleum Panthers”
There are a number ways to celebrate an important birthday. You could go out to dinner. You could buy a thoughtful gift. You could even play it safe with a tie. Or -if you’re a recently divorced family operating with five dollars, three kids, and an alarming amount of confidence- you could attempt to recreate early aviation history in the playground of an elementary school. Here’s how that turned out.
Continue reading “Three kids, five bucks, and the world’s shortest flight”
Indiana is known for its miles and miles of cornfields. Head a few miles south toward the Ohio River, though, and the land starts to roll, rise, and twist. Before long, you’re navigating hills that feel out of place in the Hoosier State! For now, you’ll find the old Switzerland County Home down there.
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Practically everyone in Central Indiana Pizza Kings. But have you really Pizza King’d if you haven’t been to Clara’s? Recently, I found out: you haven’t.
Continue reading “My first trip to Richmond’s Clara’s Pizza King”
Late last year, I followed Green Street Road out of Albany toward Dunkirk and was stunned to find the old Green Street schoolhouse reduced to a heap of fallen bricks. In hindsight, the collapse shouldn’t have shocked me since the front gable had been clinging to life for years. Nevertheless, it set my mind spinning about other rural schoolhouses that might be teetering on the same edge. One of them was Niles Township’s old District 9 school, known at different times as Smith or Lowe. Thankfully, it’s still standing- at least for now.
Continue reading “Somehow, Smith schoolhouse still stands”
Dead malls have become unlikely celebrities across Indiana and the Midwest. Departing national chains left behind huge concrete footprints that communities could never refill! Sadly, their empty storefronts are now photographed and debated almost as often as the courthouses and town squares that once anchored local life. In Marion, one mall sits in silence as it waits for a second act.
Continue reading “Then and Now: Marion’s Five Points Mall”