Indiana

Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was an important center for Indiana's Black community during the mid-nineteenth century. This church is also associated with the western expansion of the AME Church, an effort most embodied in the domestic missionary work of William Paul Quinn, the fourth Bishop elected to AME Church leadership in 1844. Quinn is notable in AME history for expanding the church between the Midwest and the Pacific Coast prior to the American Civil War, at a time when laws in these territories discriminated against and barred Black western migration.

The Whitewater Monthly Meeting House, built by the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, is representative of late-nineteenth-century Quaker architecture. It also serves as a physical reminder of a group that made major contributions to the development of Richmond and Wayne County in East Central Indiana.

Erected by noted Underground Railroad activist Levi Coffin as a residence for him and his wife Catherine, this Federal house sheltered upwards of 100 runaway slaves a year. The Coffins were members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which held a strong stance against slavery. Many Quaker families relocated from the South to Indiana and other northern states during the 1820s, seeking a new life that was not enmeshed in the slave-based economy. Levi and Catherine, along with much of their extended family, moved from North Carolina to Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana, in 1826.

The significance of the Debs House lies not in its architecture (its Queen Anne grandeur has been greatly modified over the years), but rather in its first occupant, labor activist Eugene V. Debs. At the age of 19, Debs joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (BLF) as a charter member and was immediately named secretary. With his gift for fiery oratory and writing, he rose rapidly to leadership on the national level as BLF’s Grand Secretary/Treasurer and editor of its magazine.

Located in the small town of Cayuga, on the western border of Central Indiana, the Colonial Brick Corporation was one of the country’s last remaining companies to make bricks using coal-fired beehive kilns. Originally established as the Cayuga Brick and Coal Company in 1904, and later the Acme Brick Company, the site has continuously produced bricks for a century.

Located in Evansville, Indiana, the James A. Margedant House, a protypical Usonian dwelling, was designed by noted architect William Wesley Peters, who became the first apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin in 1932. Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, Peters moved with his family to Evansville at the age of two.

When it opened in January 1939, the Evansville Greyhound Terminal presented riders with a streamlined, modern, even glamorous point of arrival, departure, or transfer, complete with clean restrooms, a restaurant, and lounges for comfortable waiting. In the period between the closure of the interurban electric light rail lines in the early 1930s and the completion of much of the Eisenhower interstate highway system by the early 1970s, long-distance travel was often difficult.

Angel Mounds is an archaeological site in Southwest Indiana that represents the Mississippian culture during the late prehistoric period. It is one of the best-preserved Native American sites in the United States. The fortified community was likely an important regional center that supported a large population and was the largest settlement in Indiana at its height.

Samara is one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most complete and intact Usonian houses. Named for the tiny winged seed that drops from the pine cones of the property’s many pine trees, the house’s design is an abstracted version of that seed, uniting the structure with its natural environment. It was built for Dr. John E. Christian, a young professor at Purdue University, and his wife, Catherine (Kay), who wanted a residence in the new wooded subdivision of Woodland Heights adjacent to the campus.

Purdue University president Edward C. Elliott (1922–1945) had long desired a modern music hall for the university, one sufficiently large for commencement ceremonies. With funding made available through the Public Works Administration, construction began on Purdue’s new music hall in October 1938. In fact, each of Indiana’s state universities built at least one major edifice using New Deal funding. Architect Walter Scholer, the consultant for Purdue’s Construction Office, had designed a number of buildings on campus, as well as significant buildings in adjacent Lafayette.