Columbus, Indiana
Sep. 15th, 2013 04:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meretia posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
flaneursI moved down to Bloomington, about an hour south of Indianapolis, last summer. Indy's a neat city, but I keep finding myself going over to Columbus, about forty minutes east of here, when I want to walk around and look at a town.
I'm from Louisville in Kentucky originally (about an hour from Columbus), and I remember going to my best friend's grandparents' lake house in Columbus with his family a few times when I was six or seven. All I really remember about it was it being on a lake. But Columbus is actually apparently quite well known for its architecture.
The Cummins diesel engine company is based out of Columbus, and the story I've heard is that either its current owner or the one before it was a huge architecture enthusiast. So when the city needed to build some new schools and civic buildings, he said to them, "choose your architect from this list of ten architects I like, and I'll pay the architect's fees for you." So now Columbus, this town of maybe thirty thousand people in the middle of nowhere, is full of this fantastic 1950s/1960s Modernist architecture. And then I guess the people building things later decided to just go with it, because the city is full of sculpture just because and really unusual buildings that seem like they're being odd to fit in. I've gone down and looked at all the churches (there are three or four churches that are super Modern too) and civic buildings, but this is from when I went and just sort of wandered around downtown for a couple hours.
I forget exactly what I was trying to find when I first went exploring, but I had to go down a road I hadn't driven before. You go into Columbus from Bloomington on state highway 46, which forks when it reaches downtown. I went once before and took the right fork, where I pretty much just drove around and decided I should come back with my camera sometime. But I remember being really confused by the Cummins building, because it was so big, and also shiny and white. I couldn't figure out if it was a wall or a fence or what. What it actually is is a zig-zaggy ring shaped building that takes up blocks and blocks of the city and encompasses a small park.
Eventually I found a cross street that turned back toward downtown, so I parked and started walking around the Cummins building to see if I could figure out what the hell it was.
I eventually got brave enough to go snooping around near a door I found, but the place was closed since it was Saturday. I did find some funny bike racks, though.
Columbus loves their funny bike racks.
Actually, Columbus is just sort of a dork in general.
I eventually found the front of the building, which is behind the perimeter walkway off to the right. When I crossed the road, I was right outside the amazingly '50s Irwin Union Bank and Trust, designed by the same architect as the St. Louis arch.
Down the street a few blocks I could see this tower, but I didn't know what it was. It turns out to belong to the First Christian Church, designed by Eliel Saarinen. Also it was across the street from the public library, which isn't much to write home about (though Wikipedia says it was designed by I.M. Pei) but has some funky sculptures out front.
Looking through my Columbus photo set made me remember that I went out there looking for this neat garden attached to a bed and breakfast. Which, when I got there was closed for the season. During the summer. The garden was closed for the summer. But it was a really pretty old neighborhood of Victorian houses, so I walked around and found the high school, which I was shy of photographing since small towns tend not to like strangers with cameras taking pictures of their schools. Also I found St. Peter's Lutheran Church by Gunnar Birkerts.
No, actually I remembered wrong (this was in May). The library had windows that caught the evening light in a really awesome way when I walked back past it. That was neat. (though inside it's too big for its collection and super '70s-ugly. He designed the library at the university where I'm getting my masters, too, and it's cool-looking outside but unpleasant inside. It's eleven stories tall and has no windows above the third floor. I.M. Pei, I do not like your libraries.)
Giant mirror across the road from the Methodist (I think) church? Why not.
Nope, actually it's the AT&T Building. Which I guess is there for the purpose of being tricksy and casting some really interesting evening light on everything around it. And having these weird brightly colored smokestacks, I don't even know. I don't think AT&T is steam powered. Driving up the road I was parked on and walking around there, I kept seeing the smokestacks on some building back behind the ones nearby. I walked through the library parking lot to go look at the church, but it handily turned out to be right across the road from the thing I wanted to find.
And in the evening, it casts the most amazing light on pretty much everything in sight of it.
After that I was getting tired and roasted from walking around in the sun all afternoon, so I drove all the way up to the part of downtown four blocks away. Then I had to get out and look around because that was really cool too. Columbus is really, really Modern, but it's also a fairly old town, so you get this awesome mix of Victorian and Goofball over near the courthouse. For example, that's the courthouse reflected in the Public Building, which sort of a combination of government building, food court, indoor playground, and public meeting space. I think part of it might belong to Cummins too.
And they have a theater (shows and concerts, not movies) called the Crump.
And a children's museum with a happy door.
At that point I was ready to go home, so I packed up and went. I thought I photographed the courthouse that time, but apparently I didn't. That was apparently on my second time I went to wander around Columbus. Which I guess is good enough, since this post is already long enough.
I'm from Louisville in Kentucky originally (about an hour from Columbus), and I remember going to my best friend's grandparents' lake house in Columbus with his family a few times when I was six or seven. All I really remember about it was it being on a lake. But Columbus is actually apparently quite well known for its architecture.
The Cummins diesel engine company is based out of Columbus, and the story I've heard is that either its current owner or the one before it was a huge architecture enthusiast. So when the city needed to build some new schools and civic buildings, he said to them, "choose your architect from this list of ten architects I like, and I'll pay the architect's fees for you." So now Columbus, this town of maybe thirty thousand people in the middle of nowhere, is full of this fantastic 1950s/1960s Modernist architecture. And then I guess the people building things later decided to just go with it, because the city is full of sculpture just because and really unusual buildings that seem like they're being odd to fit in. I've gone down and looked at all the churches (there are three or four churches that are super Modern too) and civic buildings, but this is from when I went and just sort of wandered around downtown for a couple hours.
I forget exactly what I was trying to find when I first went exploring, but I had to go down a road I hadn't driven before. You go into Columbus from Bloomington on state highway 46, which forks when it reaches downtown. I went once before and took the right fork, where I pretty much just drove around and decided I should come back with my camera sometime. But I remember being really confused by the Cummins building, because it was so big, and also shiny and white. I couldn't figure out if it was a wall or a fence or what. What it actually is is a zig-zaggy ring shaped building that takes up blocks and blocks of the city and encompasses a small park.
Eventually I found a cross street that turned back toward downtown, so I parked and started walking around the Cummins building to see if I could figure out what the hell it was.
I eventually got brave enough to go snooping around near a door I found, but the place was closed since it was Saturday. I did find some funny bike racks, though.
Columbus loves their funny bike racks.
Actually, Columbus is just sort of a dork in general.
I eventually found the front of the building, which is behind the perimeter walkway off to the right. When I crossed the road, I was right outside the amazingly '50s Irwin Union Bank and Trust, designed by the same architect as the St. Louis arch.
Down the street a few blocks I could see this tower, but I didn't know what it was. It turns out to belong to the First Christian Church, designed by Eliel Saarinen. Also it was across the street from the public library, which isn't much to write home about (though Wikipedia says it was designed by I.M. Pei) but has some funky sculptures out front.
Looking through my Columbus photo set made me remember that I went out there looking for this neat garden attached to a bed and breakfast. Which, when I got there was closed for the season. During the summer. The garden was closed for the summer. But it was a really pretty old neighborhood of Victorian houses, so I walked around and found the high school, which I was shy of photographing since small towns tend not to like strangers with cameras taking pictures of their schools. Also I found St. Peter's Lutheran Church by Gunnar Birkerts.
No, actually I remembered wrong (this was in May). The library had windows that caught the evening light in a really awesome way when I walked back past it. That was neat. (though inside it's too big for its collection and super '70s-ugly. He designed the library at the university where I'm getting my masters, too, and it's cool-looking outside but unpleasant inside. It's eleven stories tall and has no windows above the third floor. I.M. Pei, I do not like your libraries.)
Giant mirror across the road from the Methodist (I think) church? Why not.
Nope, actually it's the AT&T Building. Which I guess is there for the purpose of being tricksy and casting some really interesting evening light on everything around it. And having these weird brightly colored smokestacks, I don't even know. I don't think AT&T is steam powered. Driving up the road I was parked on and walking around there, I kept seeing the smokestacks on some building back behind the ones nearby. I walked through the library parking lot to go look at the church, but it handily turned out to be right across the road from the thing I wanted to find.
And in the evening, it casts the most amazing light on pretty much everything in sight of it.
After that I was getting tired and roasted from walking around in the sun all afternoon, so I drove all the way up to the part of downtown four blocks away. Then I had to get out and look around because that was really cool too. Columbus is really, really Modern, but it's also a fairly old town, so you get this awesome mix of Victorian and Goofball over near the courthouse. For example, that's the courthouse reflected in the Public Building, which sort of a combination of government building, food court, indoor playground, and public meeting space. I think part of it might belong to Cummins too.
And they have a theater (shows and concerts, not movies) called the Crump.
And a children's museum with a happy door.
At that point I was ready to go home, so I packed up and went. I thought I photographed the courthouse that time, but apparently I didn't. That was apparently on my second time I went to wander around Columbus. Which I guess is good enough, since this post is already long enough.
