In February 2011, while out on a winter landscape shoot, I came across an odd-looking structure at the far southwest corner of the park, not far from both Southern Avenue and the railroad tracks that cross Southern.
I didn't know what the structure was, but I did know from what I was seeing and from the pictures that I took that the building had seen much better days. My first thought was that it might have been a picnic shelter, although I wasn't positive because it struck me as extremely narrow for a shelter house. I present some of the photos I took at that time at the bottom of this chapter.
But I start with pictures of the structure that I took in June 2016, when I was back in the southwest quadrant and noticed that the structure I'd seen several years earlier had been restored or possibly even replaced. But it STILL didn't look like a picnic shelter.
So after taking these pictures, I went online at home and did a little investigative work. I learned that the structure I'd seen was a passenger shelter that was part of the old Indianapolis interurban transportation system and was believed to be one of the last wooden-splayed arched trolley shelters in the Midwest. It's so rare, in fact, that it is listed in the National Register of Historic Landmarks.
No wonder the city did nothing to rush into fixing what I had seen in 2011! But fix or replace it, it most certainly did.
The trolley system of transportation, also known as streetcars (and the interurban in Indianapolis) had its halcyon days in the U.S. between the two world wars. They fell into disfavor and eventually disappeared as individual automobile ownership became increasingly prevalent. The shelter in Garfield Park was near a stop on an old interurban route along Southern Avenue. (See photos below, which show a bench just off the Southern Avenue curb, where interurban riders probably sat and waited during pleasant weather).
Efforts to restore the shelter began in early 2014, three years after I was first there. The finished work includes new roofing, new support beams and a new concrete foundation (which sounds to me like a total replacement). Restoration was supported by the National Park Service Historic Preservation Fund administered by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources Division of Historic Preservation.
Also participating in the project were the city of Indianapolis Parks Department, the Indianapolis Parks Foundation, Friends of Garfield Park Inc., Indiana Landmarks, Efroymson Family Fun and the Indianapolis Trails Fund Inc. Coordinator of the project was Indy Parks' Tina Jones, park planner for historic landscapes and greenways.
Please note that you can click on any photo in this post to view a larger and sharper version.
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