Monday, March 18, 2024

CHAPTER 27
Special Events


2022 Indy Irish Festival

All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz 

The annual Indy Irish Festival in September dates to the early 1990s, and for the majority of its run, the Indy Irish Festival Committee staged its festival at Military Park in Downtown Indianapolis. The Covid pandemic forced the cancellation the festival in 2020 and presented a financial quandary for the committee because the festival had always relied on one year's festival revenue to support the next year’s. 

Despite the financial troubles, the committee staged festivals in 2021 and 2022, both in Garfield Park on the Southside of Indianapolis. The event offered family-friendly activities, including and especially those oriented for children -- such as storybook readings, games, books, crafts, animals and animal demonstrations. 

Alas, revenues were not sufficient to persuade the committee to hold a festival in 2023, and it was canceled. As of this writing, there has been no word whether the festival will be permanently shuttered. 

Photos in this post were taken at the 2022 festival in Garfield Park. 





















Sunday, March 17, 2024

CHAPTER 26
Sledding


All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz 

Because of its many hills, Garfield Park has a tradition of being a destination for children and even adults who enjoy sledding at the first sight of significant snowfall.

For many years, the hill at the north end of the park, about 80 yards west of Garfield Drive, was the place to go for sledding if you lived on the Southside. Sledders have since also ventured deeper into the park and used the hill behind the pagoda, between the arts center and amphitheater. 

And whether the location are the hills at the north end of Conservatory Drive, as shown in the first three photos below, or behind the pagoda, as shown in the final trio of images, many a child who lived in the neighborhood experienced their first slide down a hill on a sled in Garfield Park.



 



Saturday, March 16, 2024

CHAPTER 25
Railroad tracks


All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz 

The railroad along the west border of Garfield Park was built in the 1850s by the Jeffersonville, Madison and Indianapolis Railroad, and Garfield Park was then known as Bradley Woods.


Today, the tracks belong to Conrail, and the images in this chapter are snapshots of those tracks (or train alert lights) at various points along the park's western flank. All viewpoints look north toward downtown Indianapolis. 











Above and below: I used the railroad for a locale of a publicity shoot for a short-lived Indy rock band named After Dark in October 2006.  




I also used the railroad tracks as a locale for an assignment in a class I took through the Adult Learning program of IUPUI. The assignment was to integrate a fork (the dining utensil variety) into a photograph. The plastic MaxDonald's cup -- by a stroke of pure luck, the word "fork" was printed on the cup’s side -- was there on the tracks when I arrived that day, so I decided to integrate it into the composition. I believe the wild straw grass on the right in the photo above also was there when I arrived. Above and below are two frames from that shoot.


Friday, March 15, 2024

CHAPTER 24
The Pavilion


All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz 

Garfield Park’s centerpiece shelter, the big white pavilion, is in the heart of the park, between the amphitheater and arts center.

The park’s original municipal swimming pool was next to the pavilion for some 60 years. Today’s Garfield Park Arts Center, which is just west of the pavilion, used to be a community house, then a recreation center and bath house for swimmers to use during their visits to the pool. 

The pool was shuttered and covered over with a parking lot when the aquatics center opened next to Burrello Family Center in the late 1990s, during a major park improvements project. A few years after that, in 2006, came the transformation of the recreational center into the arts center. 

The pavilion, however, remains and is one of only two shelters in the park equipped with electrical power outlets (the other is the pagoda). The pavilion also is a valued covered-space facility for major cultural and arts festivals.  

The fact that almost all my photos of the pavilion were taken in winter ... is a mere (albeit admittedly odd) coincidence.