Diners, Ducks & Drive-Ins - Indianapolis Roadside Architecture

Joan Hostetler is leading a talk on Indianapolis roadside architecture this Sunday, October 25, at the Central Library. It's part of the library's Culture, History, and Society: Historic Indianapolis program, so it fits right in with the rest of their local history series.

The session looks at the eye-catching buildings and businesses that popped up as automobiles reshaped the Indianapolis landscape throughout the twentieth century. Hostetler will walk through some of the city's most iconic roadside stops: the Tee Pee, Al Green's, Meadowbrook Diner, the Pole, Steer-In, and Wheeler's restaurants and gas stations. If you've spent any time driving around the city, you've probably seen these names or the buildings themselves, even if you didn't know the stories behind them. The talk is as much about the architecture as it is about the car culture that built it.

Hostetler is a local historian and the founding director of The Indiana Album, a community project that digitizes, catalogues, and shares public images of the state's history and architecture. That project is a big part of how this session works: attendees are encouraged to bring their own vintage photographs and postcards to be scanned during the session. So if you've got old family snapshots of these spots or a stack of postcards from a few decades ago, you can bring them along and have them added to the archive.

The setting adds its own layer to the afternoon. The talk is in the Indianapolis Special Collections Room (ISCR) on the sixth floor of the Central Library at 40 East Saint Clair Street. The original 1917 building was designed by Paul Cret and built of Indiana limestone in the Greek Doric style—it was once considered one of the most outstanding secular buildings in the US. The six-story glass and steel-framed addition that houses the room was designed by Evans Woollen and opened in 2007. The session runs from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM.