Downtown Muncie’s tallest building is also its most unusual. Every year, incoming Ball State students and Muncie transplants wonder about the 165-foot monolith at 329 East Jackson Street, curious about the unusual shape of the top of its tower. Although the original iteration of the building dates to much earlier, the building’s tallest part was completed in 19701 to house microwave antennas as part as AT&T’s Long Lines network. Recently, I finally found some photos of them in action.
The Long Lines network was a transcontinental telecommunications system. The original iteration of Muncie’s Bell Telephone building was two stories tall2. A 100-foot lattice tower was added to its roof in 19653 to beam a signal nineteen miles south to Anderson4. Once AT&T ended the Long Lines program, the microwave antennae were removed in 19945. I was four then and, needless to say, don’t remember them at all.
Here are some microwave antennae still installed on a Long Line tower near Lawrenceburg, Indiana. I’ve never ascended a tower to measure them (although I was once invited to), but I’ve read that they’re about the size of a Honda Odyssey minivan. Towers that accompanied central offices like Muncie’s generally shielded them, and that’s why the strange skyscraper downtown was designed the way it was.
The first photo I recently stumbled across that shows the AT&T Building -then, the Indiana Bell Building- in its full microwavean regalia came from John Disher’s fantastic blog about Muncie’s old Rivoli Theater. In the waning days of the landmark’s history, Disher documented the building from top to bottom! Looking northeast from the top of the Rivoli’s fly loft, many of the landmarks visible forty years ago are still standing today. The gigantic, car-sized microwave horns, obviously, are not
The next photo I found was uploaded to the Yorktown Indiana Historical Alliance Facebook page by Larry Broadwater. Taken in 1988 from the corner of West Jackson and South Walnut, it shows a sliver of the old Pazols Jewelers storefront to the left (north), the Senate Block and what’s now Muncie Power Products to the right, and the AT&T Building much as it stands today- except with its microwave antenna intact, of course.
Photos from that basic vantage point are surprisingly common, it turns out. Where have I been? Here’s a 1971 Dick Green image looking east down Jackson Street from High Street, from about where the MITS station would be built sixteen years later6. The horns are a little tough to make out in black-and-white, but they’re there.
My friend Jim Grey took this April 2023 photo from about the same spot. The horns are missing and a new sign’s on the tower, but this stretch of Jackson Street bears a remarkable resemblance to its appearance fifty-five years ago.
I found one more image with the AT&T Building’s microwave horns in the Delaware County Historical Society’s Mike Mavis Collection, and it dates to about 1981. Mike had a photo or postcard of everything! Ruth Chin’s photography studio is to the left and the Indiana Gas Company Building (now Muncie Power Products) is to the right of center
Here’s the building today, or at least, as it appeared in 2024. I’ve been on a lethargic mission to visit every one of Indiana’s Long Line tower sites and central offices since, wow, 2023. Out of 102 sites, I’ve got twenty-five left in the south and southwestern corners of the state. The majority of the towers I’ve seen are rural, but some, like those in Indianapolis, South Bend, and Terre Haute stand prominently in the middle of town! Muncie’s definitely fits that bill, too, and here’s hoping these photos of the tower in its heyday answer the burning questions that Muncie newcomers have been asking for years.
Sources Cited
1 New Bell Telephone Building Look (1969, October 30). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1.
2 Penticuff, D. (1997, June 15). Tower talk. The Muncie Star Press. p. 45.
3 Moran, L. (1966, July 7). New Area Phone Services Due Oct. 16. The Muncie Star. p. 1.
4 Long Lines Map and Information (n.d.). Web. Map. Retrieved November 14, 2023.
5 (See footnote 2).
6 Parcel 1109491010000 (2026). Office of the Assessor. Delaware County [Muncie]. Web. Retrieved September 16, 2026.
I have always wondered about this building and the lack of windows. What’s inside, what happens in this building?
It was basically where all the area telephone lines came together and served as a central office. The microwave horns up to beamed longed distance calls to Anderson as part of a nationwide network. I think the tower in Anderson, still standing off of Raible, relayed the signals to Noblesville and Marion. Or maybe Noblesville and Point Isabel.
Most of the central office buildings were similarly fortified with no windows just due to how critical the infrastructure was at the time. South Bend’s looks a lot like Muncie albeit larger, and Indy’s dwarves them both. Others in Fort Wayne, Hammond, Elkhart, Lafayette, and Terre Haute are smaller but also lack windows.
Fiber optics made the long line microwave network obsolete. I know AT&T people still work in the building downtown, but I’m not sure what they do. I’d imagine it serves as a wired internet hub.
Ted, I have some additional information about the building for you. I’ve worked for AT&T for 28-years, most of it in Muncie. I’m providing you my email address.
That would be awesome! Thanks!