CHAPTER 6Irvington Neighborhood of Indianapolis

Because I spent the past two chapters on the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis, I decided to keep the Irvington string going with this chapter as well. 

I made several visits to Irvington in the years before launching Photo Potpourri, and not all of those were to photo-document the neighborhood. 

The earliest was in the late 1980s, when I entered and ran several of the Pleasant Run Run 5-mile runs held annually in late October in tandem with the Irvington Halloween Festival. A good friend, then-race organizer Garry Petersen, still lived in Irvington when I ran my first PRR, but he would soon move to Franklin, Ind. 

The most extensive stop I made in the neighborhood came on Sunday, May 25, 2008, the day before Memorial Day. I’d been to Irvington to run or volunteer for quite a few Pleasant Run Runs by this time, so I decided it was time to do a photo walk-through the neighborhood. 

It was inspiring to see the number of homes in Irvington that had flags displayed outside to honor military service men and women who gave their lives for their country, as illustrated in the photo leading off the post.

One of my early stops on the walk-through was at Irving Circle Park (depicted in the first two photos below), where a fountain (non-functioning at the time) serves as a focal point of a circular park just south of Bonna Avenue with South Audubon Road flanking its circumference and picking up its normal path on the park's north and south ends and University Avenue doing the same on the east and west.

A bust of Washington Irving, the early 19th century author, essayist and diplomat after whom the community is named, appeared at the park’s north end (at least, it was there in 2008 when I made my visit).  

A couple churches caught my eye during my walk-through, and my interest in them might have had something to do with my subsequent ongoing project to photograph churches for a primary gallery at my SmugMug website. One of the churches was Irvington First Baptist (above), which appears to have a stucco exterior of some sort. At Irvington Methodist Church (below), located in the center of the circular roundabout of Audubon Road just north of Washington Street, this set of doors and gray-painted concrete stairs caught my eye.  

Standing at the top of those church stairs, one looks north (above) and sees the view of Audubon Road circling in the foreground and Lowell Avenue forking left and right above that. The photo below is a closeup of the right fork of Lowell Avenue.  

This small-boulder property perimeter wall is not far from the north end of the Audubon Road roundabout. I'm sure it inspired me to pursue a similar composition while I was doing a photo walk-through of the Old Northside Neighborhood of Indianapolis in summer 2011. 

Going through the May 25, 2008, shoot in Irvington to compose this chapter, I was reminded how much I concentrated a good deal on composing images of incidental things (“incidental” for lack of a better word), such as the sculpture above, which was perched on a stone wall near the sidewalk entrance to a residence in the neighborhood. And the image below reminded me that at the time, I was processing my photos through a photo editing software by Microsoft. The software was equipped with a multitude of image-changing filters, such as the one I used on the snaking tree branch below. 

 

The trifecta of slender tree trunks leaning to the left above is what caught my eye in deciding to make the above composition, and the bicycles’ unusual vertical parking position — and location — is what caught my eye to make the photo below. 

For 18 years, beginning in 1998, Dufour’s in Irvington (above) provided non-fried casual fare — quiches and pot pies among them — to customers for breakfast and lunch in Irvington at the northwest corner of Washington Street and Audubon Road. It closed in 2016. The photo below is an image of the full northside of Washington Street in the Dufour’s block, with Dufour’s at the far right where the brown roofing ends. 

Above and below: Across Washington Street from Dufour’s and a block west is the Irving Theater, which survives today although not without sundry struggles along the way. At the time I photographed it in 2008, I believe it was being used periodically as a venue for music concerts. 

Above: EclecticPond Theatre used the upper floors of the nearby Masonic Lodge 666 to stage its productions in the early years of the millennium’s second decade. EclecticPond appears to no longer exist. 

Irvington was the second location for The Bread Ladies artisan bakery, opening in 2007, not long before I did my walk-around in Irvington. The business, owned by Donna Johnson and Donna Eckler, started as a vendor booth in the Greenfield Farmers Market in the late 1990s then grew to a stand-alone Greenfield store in 2002. At some point, the Irvington store closed; this spot at 4 Johnson Avenue, just south of Washington Street, today is occupied by Smash’d Burger Bar.  

Above: The fronts of businesses in the 5500 block of Washington Street in May 2008.

Above: Another composition of lawn sculptures (there are more such photos coming up). 

Much of Irvington is known for its old, but well-kept homes, so I figured I should include at least one more that caught my eye, as this one above did in May 2008. The close up of the welcoming sign below was in front of another home. 

Not exactly a flattering feature on a home (above), but the irregular horizontal slats made for an interesting photograph composition, I felt. The flag below also caught my eye.  

Yet another lawn sculpture (above), and two more decorative house features (first two photos below). 

I made two more picture-taking visits through Irvington after that May 2008 walk-around. One came in October 2009, when I decided to stop in at Ellenberger Park to capture the park in its autumn colors. The first seven shots below were among those I took that day.

By this time, I had already had started filling a gallery at my SmugMug site with pictures of interesting public benches that I came across in my sundry photo outings. I added this one (above and below) to the collection. 

 

Above and below: This was another bench that I think became part of the aforementioned collection. I also used this bench and vantage point to do a personal study of depth of field. The photo above was taken using an aperture of 3.2; the one below, 7.1. I wish I could remember what lens I was using, but I don’t remember. It’s possible it was my Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens.  

Two more closeups (above and below), again probably using the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro.

Above and below: I mentioned higher up that I was taken by the doors and steps leading to the main door to the Irvington United Methodist Church on Audubon Road in my May 2008 walk-around. But at that point, I didn’t show you any pictures of the church itself. Here are two that I took of the church in the autumn 2009 visit to the neighborhood. This building once served as the home of the Butler University president when the school was still operating in Irvington. This building and the Bona Thompson Memorial Center (see second photo below) several blocks away are the only buildings of the original Butler campus that are still standing.  

 

After leaving the 2008 Irvington Walk in the Park and Farmers Market, I swung by the Bona Thompson Memorial Center (above), 5350 E. University Avenue to grab this picture and the three below. The Thompson Center was once part of the Butler University campus, which had been located in Irvington before moving to its current, more expansive site on the Northside of Indianapolis. Today the Thompson Center is home to the Irvington Historical Society and its museum. 

   

Coming tomorrow: Chapter 7, Lockerbie Square Neighborhood, Indianapolis

Previously in Catching Up ... on pre-blog years:

Introduction

Chapter 1: Seek the Riot metal band

Chapter 2: City of Franklin, Ind.

Chapter 3: 2004 Memorial Day weekend tornado 

Chapter 4: 2006 Irvington Walk in the Park

Chapter 5: 2008 Irvington Walk in the Park

Key Petersen legacy to Irvington, Indy on display next month at the Bona

Runners and walkers who regularly participated in the annual Pleasant Run Run 5-mile run and 3-mile walk in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis through the years are likely to remember something that set the race apart from all other running events in the community -- the colorful PRR posters, T-shirts and winner plaques.

PRR co-founder Garry Petersen was the driving force behind that artwork. It's something he treasured so much that he kept copies of each year's posters, framing several of them to display in his house. It turns out, Petersen was a firm believer of posters to help promote a cause, and not just the PRR, whose proceeds he donated each year to the Marion County Children's Guardian Home in Irvington. (The home, which cared for homeless, abused and neglected children, was founded in 1898 and cared for needy children until closing about seven years ago.)

An advocate of urban forestry and the founder and longtime president of the Irvington Foresty Foundation, Petersen also used posters to call attention to and promote urban forestry and the annual Arbor Day observance.

After Petersen died last September at the age of 64, his family donated the PRR poster and plaque collection to the Irvington Historical Society. They handed the Arbor Day and urban forestry poster collection to the Indiana State Library.

At 1 p.m. Oct. 14 at the Bona Thompson Memorial Center in Irvington, the Irvington Historical Society will open a month-long exhibit of Petersen's PRR collection, which dates from 1983 to 1998, the year after Petersen officially handed over full PRR organizational responsibilities to Tuxedo Brothers Event Management. Posters continued to be issued for eight more years after that, but unfortunately, by 2007, sales waned dramatically. The 2006 poster was the final one issued.

PRR posters, winner plaques and some participant t-shirts were designed by two Indianapolis graphics arts firms -- Serigraphics and High End Graphics. Jeff Pate of Serigraphics, one of the artists who had a hand in the poster creations, provided helpful information in the research I did to prepare the text in this article.

The posters were featured in stories that ran in Running Times magazine and The Indianapolis Star daily newspaper in the 1980s. In fact, Running Times anointed the PRR as one of the "great races to run" in 1987 in all of the United States. The magazine explained that the "great race to run" designation meant that the race "usually is one of the proudest achievements of the city, serving as a highly visible and inspiring demonstration of what can happen when the city's government joins forces with its citizens in a project about which thousands of people are genuinely enthusiastic."

Mike Carroll, vice president for community affairs at Eli Lilly Co. in Indianapolis, was a member of the PRR's board of directors and race chairman in its early years. Carroll also was a former special assistant/aide to U.S. Sens. Richard G. Lugar and Dan Quayle, both R-Ind., and a former deputy mayor in the administration of Indianapolis Mayor William H. Hudnut. Petersen, an economic, municipal government and public policy consultant, got to know Carroll when the latter worked for Lugar, Quayle and Hudnut. The two hit it off well, and eventually they teamed up to work the PRR.

The 1991 photo appearing in the text of this column above, provided by Garry's wife, Terri, shows Garry (far right), Mike Carroll, Terri, and the Petersens' son, Erik, then just shy of a year old. The three adults are wearing PRR gear in preparation for that year's running of the race.

I remember Garry speaking highly of Carroll in our early interactions, which started in spring 1986. So it was with a bit of trepidation that I called Garry on Sept. 11, 1992, from the IndyStar newsroom when I heard about a two-plane crash near Greenwood (Ind.) Municipal Airport. Authorities were reporting that all five people aboard a twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2 carrying Carroll, three other Indianapolis civic leaders and the pilot had been killed, along with the pilot of the other aircraft, a single-engine Piper. Two others in the Piper were seriously injured. The crash occurred shortly after the MU-2 took off from the airport; the Piper was trying to land.

Carroll's death deeply affected Petersen. It happened so close to that year's PRR that Petersen had no time to prepare anything special to commemorate his friend at the race except for adding the phrase "Let the light be passed" to the t-shirts. The following year, 1993, he commissioned the special 3D poster you see in the photo leading off the post (click on the photo to bring up a larger version). It bears the longer tribute line: "Let the light be passed so the vision is never lost."

Above: The first poster, issued for the second PRR in 1983.

Garry moved from Irvington to Franklin, Ind., in the mid-1980s. He continued to run the PRR into the mid-1990s before handing it off officially to Tuxedo Brothers Event Management after the 15th anniversary race in 1996. The event is staged the last Saturday in October and runs in conjunction with the long-running annual Irvington Halloween Festival. In 2016, Tuxedo Brothers renamed the running event the Pleasant Run Vampire Run to better partner with the Halloween festivities.

The PRR always sponsored a spaghetti dinner at the Irvington Presbyterian Church on Audubon Avenue on the night before the race. For a while, they even used posters to promote those dinners. The example in the photo at left is from 1987 or 1992, years when Oct. 30 fell on a Friday.

Paula Schmidt, the historical society and Bona Thompson Memorial Center volunteer who is preparing the Petersen PRR poster collection for next month's exhibit, also will show what she said is endearingly referred to as the PRR "Franken Trophy." I vaguely recall Garry talking about this amusing sidebar in which a team trophy was awarded to the city of Indianapolis for its support of the race at some point in the early years.

The original trophy can be see in the photo immediately below, a group picture taken with Mayor Hudnut (seated, center) holding a proclamation for Pleasant Run Run on Sept. 23, 1986, a month before that year's race. Petersen is in the photo as well, at the far left. With Paula Schmidt's help, I found this photo at the Institute for Civic Leadership and Digital Mayoral Archives website, housed by the University of Indianapolis. It was called Franken Trophy because of the parts that would be added to it later -- a la Frankenstein. I'm not sure if Garry was aware of what happened to it in the 20+ years or so after the hardware transformed into Franken Trophy. If he told me, I've since forgotten ... but it would have been many years ago. Maybe someone reading this post will know some or all of the story, and provide it in the comments section.

Apparently, in the years thereafter, someone in city government got the idea -- maybe as a joke or prank -- to physically embellish the trophy. A middle section and a larger base were added, increasing its size by about 75 percent (its present stature is shown in the photo at right). Then it apparently was forgotten about and/or misplaced for many years, resurrecting only within the last few years.

Below are some more samples of the Petersen PRR Collection through the years. The artwork on T-shirts early on included an iconic runner (pictured at left), and it was decided quickly that the runner would be carried over to shirts issued in subsequent years.

If you pull up a large version of the very first poster below, you'll notice a small, pseudo-emoji of sorts -- Paula called it a "cartouche" -- at the bottom right. She said this was the way the artist (either from Serigraphics or High End Graphics) chose to sign that artwork. I found it on a few other posters.

The exhibit runs through mid-November at the Bona Thompson Memorial Center, 5350 University Ave., which sits on property that was the original campus of Butler University.  The site is about three blocks southeast of the intersection of Emerson Avenue and Washington Street.

Memorial Center and Historical Society staff are volunteers, so if you can possibly assist with a donation, I know they would appreciate it.

As always, click on any image if you'd like to see a larger, sharper version of it. This is particularly useful when accessing the blog using a mobile device. To view a full gallery of images featuring the Garry Petersen PRR poster and artwork collection, click on the link in this sentence.