When I was a kid, occasional trips through Elwood felt like miniature adventures because of the enormous, domed landmark at the corner of Main Street and South 16th. The building looked like a courthouse, but I knew that couldn’t be right since Anderson, Tipton, and Marion had that role covered. Later, I found out that the building was once Elwood’s City Hall. Even today, it rises above the rest of the small city’s skyline as a monumental presence.
Elwood was originally known as Duck Creek1 before it was laid out as Quincy in 18532. A post office was established two years later. The town expanded slowly at first, but growth picked up in the late 1850s after the new Cincinnati & Chicago Airline Railroad made its way through3. In 1869, officials discovered that another Indiana town in Owen County already claimed the name they were using. They went back to the drawing board and renamed the post office Elwood in honor of the son of one of the town’s early founders4.
The Muncie, Lafayette, & Bloomington Railroad was completed through Elwood in 1872 and led to more significant growth. Still, nothing changed the town’s trajectory more than the Trenton gas boom5. The discovery of natural gas turned the community into a thriving hub almost overnight! With abundant energy suddenly at hand, manufacturers rushed in to take advantage. Add in two major rail lines and a ready labor force, and the city’s population exploded! 751 people called the place home in 1880, but nearly 2,300 lived there by 1890. Elwood incorporated as a city the following year6.
By the late 1890s, Elwood’s population was approaching an astonishing 13,000 people. It was time for a new city hall. Officials hired J.F. Alexander & Son, a Lafayette-based firm responsible for the Indiana State Soldiers’ Home, Ball State University’s Administration Building, and the Lafayette Life Building. Alexander also finished the Tippecanoe County Courthouse after its builder was dismissed during the project7.
The Elwood City Hall was completed in 1899 for $35,0008. It’s a towering brick structure with an octagonal dome. Although the two-story portion of the building is shaped like a cross, it features single-story extensions that round the building’s footprint out into a rough rectangle. Thus, each of its major facades is made up of a two-story center flanked by single-story wings. The exterior walls are yellow brick with a limestone foundation defined by pilasters with Ionic capitals. Rectangular windows are topped by limestone lintels. A decorative limestone balustrade snakes around the edge of the roof’s surface.
The building’s tall, two-story center section contains its primary entrances, which stand along its north and west faces. More columns with Ionic capitals flank the recessed entryways, but the original doors have been replaced. The entire middle section of the building features a massive pediment with modillions along its cornices. Above, a square, third-story section that features the same architectural detail found across the rest of the structure supports the dome. An enormous octagonal lantern with a flagpole caps the top.
At first, City Hall housed nearly every municipal agency imaginable: police and fire departments, city courts, city council chambers, and even the public library! In addition, the building also featured a community meeting space with a stage9. Unfortunately, by 1997, most city offices made plans to move to Elwood’s Carnegie Building -the town’s old library- leaving much of the structure vacant10. That year, the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana placed the building on its Top Ten Endangered Landmarks list.
Eight years later, the keys to Elwood’s historic City Hall were handed over to the Robert M. Palmer, M.D. Institute of Biomechanics. The moment marked a preservation win thanks to the combined efforts of the Elwood Pipecreek Historical Society, Mayor Merrill Taylor, and Wayne Goodman of Indiana Landmarks11. An orthopedic surgeon and professor at the IU School of Medicine, Dr. Palmer founded the institute to help train healthcare professionals in diagnosing and treating foot-related issues12. Locating in Elwood location was a strategic choice since it stood just thirty minutes from both Muncie and Anderson.
I know little about the inner workings of Dr. Palmer’s institute, but its sign has stood in front of the old City Hall as long as I’ve remembered. In fact, it advertised continuing medical education seminars in the Elwood Call-Leader as late as 201813. Sadly, the grand old building has been reduced to storage space in recent years14, and has been for sale since August 2024.
Elwood’s old City Hall has weathered more than a century of change, from the height of the gas boom to its time as a bustling municipal center, and later, a beacon of historic preservation. Even now, with its future uncertain and a “for sale” sign out front, the building remains a towering symbol of Elwood’s ambitions, resilience, and architectural pride. I don’t know what’s next for the landmark that felt larger than life to me as a kid, but I hope someone sees something in it that I always have: a structure worth saving and a story still worth telling.
Sources Cited
1 Forkner, J. & Dyson, B. (1897). Historical Sketches and Reminiscences of Madison County, Indiana. book. Anderson, IN.
2 National Register of Historic Places, Elwood Downtown Historic District, Elwood, Madison County, Indiana, National Register # 02001175.
3 (See footnote 2).
4 The History of Elwood, Indiana (n.d.). Elwood Chamber of Commerce [Elwood]. Web. Retrieved June 29, 2025.
5 (See footnote 2).
6 (See footnote 1).
7 Architects Who Left Their Mark on Indiana (2016, July 1). Indiana Landmarks [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved June 29, 2025.
8 (See footnote 2).
9 Hamilton, B. (1997, May 21). City Hall, an endangered landmark. The Elwood Call-Leader. p. 1.
10 (See footnote 8).
11 Miller, M. (2005, November 14) Keys to Historic City Building presented to Robert M. Palmer. The Elwood Call-Leader. p. 1.
12 (See footnote 11).
13 Offering Continuing Medical Education in Lower Extremity Biomechanics (2018, January 9). The Elwood Call-Leader. p. 3.
14 Downtown Elwood City Building – 24,780 SF (2024, August 23). Crexi. Web. Retrieved July 4, 2025.
