Guided tours of the preserved Victorian home of poet James Whitcomb Riley, where he lived for the last twenty-three years of his life.
The James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home is running tours at 528 Lockerbie Street in Indianapolis. It's the preserved 19th-century home of the poet James Whitcomb Riley, located in the historic Lockerbie Square neighborhood. The house was completed in 1872 and remains one of the finest preservations of a Victorian, Italianate home in the US.
Riley lived here as a guest from 1893 until his death in 1916, spending the last twenty-three years of his life under this roof. The museum home opened to the public six years later, and donors helped preserve the original décor, furniture, art, and architecture. Among the things you'll see are ceilings painted by Italian artisans and the desk where Riley penned poems like Little Orphant Annie and The Raggedy Man.
Riley was a nationally renowned author and an Indiana icon who celebrated rural Indiana in his poetry. He was also a talented performer whose sold-out readings and anthologies drove his fame; he was said to read aloud from Charles Dickens every Christmas Eve. The house serves as a window into that life, with the original interiors kept largely as they were when he lived here.
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Tours run from 10 AM to 3:30 PM, and tickets range from $3.97 to $14.64. The home is at 528 Lockerbie Street in the Lockerbie Square neighborhood.
