Category Indiana

Tenderloin time at the Grill-A

Ted Shideler 10 Comments
Read time: 6 min.

The breaded pork tenderloin might be Indiana’s greatest contribution to civilization aside from corn, open-wheel racing, and Axl Rose. You can find one practically anywhere here, usually consisting of an expansive fried pork cutlet far larger than the bun tasked with containing it. The best I’ve ever had actually came from Chubby’s in Sevierville, Tennessee, of all places, but Indiana is its home. In tiny Markleville, the Grill-A fries up a pretty good one.

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Middletown’s First Church of Christ Chevrolet 

Ted Shideler 4 Comments
Read time: 3 min.

I love it when old buildings find new purposes, and churches seem especially good at making that happen. I’ve written about congregations taking over old Walmarts here and here, a Marsh Supermarket here, and even an Elder-Beerman in this post. Still, I’ve never seen one embrace a building’s past quite as cleverly -or cynically- as this. Look above the entrance: that used to be a Chevrolet bowtie! Add one little downstroke and- presto! It’s a cross. Why should a perfectly good Chevy logo go to waste?

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Richmond built a lake more than a century ago. Here’s what’s left

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 8 min.

If I had a time machine, my sixteenth priority would be traveling back to the turn of the twentieth century to warn East-Central Indiana’s boosters about one thing: stop trying to build resorts around manmade lakes. They make great fodder for history nerds today, but mostly because they almost never worked out. Gas Lake near Yorktown failed. Knightstown Lake near Raysville failed. Then there was Morton Lake near Richmond. It failed too, but there’s some intriguing infrastructure left over. 

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At last! More information about the old Cadiz gym

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 7 min.

Every now and then, I stumble across a building that refuses to reveal its story. For a long time, the gym that remained from the old Cadiz School in Henry County, Indiana, was one of them. I wanted to learn more about it, so I dug through newspapers, plat maps, and public records. I reached out to local historians and even emailed the building’s current owners! Still, it took the commenters on a random social media post by a Henry County historical group to finally answer the questions I had.

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Planet Fitness has closed. Five Points Mall is empty.

Ted Shideler 5 Comments
Read time: 6 min.

The interior of Marion’s Five Points Mall has been closed since 20191, but yesterday, city officials declared Planet Fitness -the mall’s last remaining tenant, which featured an exterior entrance- permanently shuttered due to hazardous structural conditions2. The building had deteriorated to the point that closing the gym was necessary for public safety3! With Planet Fitness gone, Five Points Mall is now completely vacant for the first time since the complex burst onto the scene as North Park Plaza in 19614.

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The Log Cabin Inn on the old Lincoln Highway

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 6 min.

If you’ve ever driven U.S. 33 between Fort Wayne and Goshen, you may have noticed a cluster of log cabins tucked alongside a curve just southeast of tiny Benton. They’re easy to pass without much thought, but travelers were meant to stop a century ago. Together, they’re the old Log Cabin Inn, an early tourist court built to take advantage of one of America’s most important roads.

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New Castle’s silent Thunderbolt

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 5 min.

Just south of Muncie, downtown New Castle is home to some compelling architecture. There’s the 1869 Henry County Courthouse for starters, but the city’s old YMCA -a four-story building erected in 19251 and designed in a restrained Renaissance Revival style- features an enormous bracketed cornice. The cornice does much of the architectural heavy lifting for the structure, but what sits above it is what intrigues me: a Federal Signal Thunderbolt 1000T tornado siren.

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Then and now: Indy’s Lafayette Square Mall

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 11 min.

I stopped by the shuttered Lafayette Square Mall in Indianapolis recently to take some photos and explore its last remaining store, Shoppers World. Then, as I was digging through the dusty directories of a fifteen-year-old laptop, I remembered that I’d been there when the mall was still sort of alive! Here are some before-and-after shots from 2018 and 2026.

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