CHAPTER 37Tickle Belly Hill

All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz 

This chapter explores the fun legend of Tickle Belly Hill in Garfield Park, and nobody knows about it better than the children who live near the park. 

They seem to be the first to learn about this distinguished park landmark (see photos below) before anyone else in a family new to the neighborhood.

I think it was my children who told me about the storied hill, a short, slightly bowed bridge over Pleasant Run on Conservatory Drive at the north end of the park near where today sits the new Indianapolis Fire Station 29. 

At first glance, it doesn't appear to be much of a hill or even a bow. But if you're in a vehicle that drives across the middle of the bridge's singular hump at almost any speed above a crawl, you'll understand how it got its name. 

My kids said that other children in the neighborhood insisted that when your car hits the hump, the vehicle makes a fast enough lurch that it gives riders in the vehicle a momentary "tickle" in their abdomen.

It’s something like you might experience on a Midway ride at the state fair, only not nearly as dramatic and certainly not sustained like in a fair ride. 

Sure enough, the first time I drove over the hump, I felt the "tickle."

The view in the first photo in this post looks southeast on Conservatory Drive toward the main section of the park; the second is from the peak of the hill looking into the park along Conservatory Drive. The third looks almost the same as the first, but it's not. It looks northwest and comes from the other side of the hill. 

The bridge is among several stone bridges designed by Daniel Deupree in the early-years development of the park.

Above and first five photos below: One objective of my Dec. 21, 2012, shoot was to see if my camera could capture anything that could help explain the tickle mystique of the Tickle Belly Hill bridge. The sideview photos in the first three photos here sort of illustrate that little hump in the middle of the bridge. The fourth photo below doesn't advance the research, but it did give me an unexpected nugget in the bridge's framing of the houses along Raymond Street in the distance. I made a range of images — perspective, closeup, closer up, and even a couple underbelly shots. I'm sorry to say the pictures didn't solve the mystique with anything definitive, but it was nice to get these anyway. 

   

The image immediately above is a southeast view from the top of the bridge, and the first shot below is another northwest view but from much farther back that the previous northwest view. The farther-reaching view enables you to see Fire Station 29 in the background. The road is blocked off to protect youngsters sledding on the hills to the right of the picture. 

The second photo below is another sideview of the bridge and hill, this time during warm weather, with a small portion of the top of the fire station at the left.  

You'll find images and references to Tickle Belly Hill elsewhere in this series. 

Next up, Chapter 38: Tilting and other unusual trees

Previously in the Garfield Park in Pictures series:

Introduction

Chapter 1: “America, We Remember”

Chapter 2: The Garfield Park Arts Center

Chapter 3: Bean Creek and Pleasant Run

Chapter 4: New Bean Creek pedestrian bridge

Chapter 5: Blake’s Garden

Chapter 6: Burrello Family Center and James Garfield statue

Chapter 7: Conservatory Crossing yuletide decorations

Chapter 8: Conservatory proper

Chapter 9: Conservatory permanent tropical plants and rainforest exhibit

Chapter 10: Garfield Park Farmers Market

Chapter 11: Fire Station 29

Chapter 12: Fireworks

Chapter 13: Four Seasons: Autumn

Chapter 14: Four Seasons: Spring

Chapter 15: Four Seasons: Summer

Chapter 16: Four Seasons: Winter

Chapter 17: The Golden Hour

Chapter 18: Interurban shelter

Chapter 19: Library branch and tennis courts

Chapter 20: MacAllister Amphitheater

Chapter 21: Motion picture and video shorts

Chapter 22: Music in the park 

Chapter 23: The Pagoda

Chapter 24: The Pavilion

Chapter 25: Railroad tracks

Chapter 26: Sledding 

Chapter 27: Special Events: 2022  Indy Irish Festival

Chapter 28: Special Events: 2010 Mexican Bicentennial and Revolution Centennial Observance

Chapter 29: Special Events: 2010 Native American Heritage Days

Chapter 30: Special Events: 2007 Reptile Show

Chapter 31: Special Events: 2009 Sand Sculptures

Chapter 32: Statues, monuments and memorials

Chapter 33: Stone bridges

Chapter 34: Sunken Garden

Chapter 35: Sunken Garden Fountains

Chapter 36A: Theater, Part 1

Chapter 36B: Theater, Part 2: The day he popped the question on stage

CHAPTER 33Stone bridges

All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz 

Many an open-aire painter has been struck by the artistic appeal of the decades-old stone bridges in Garfield Park, and none has been copied onto canvases more than the pedestrian bridge along Conservatory Drive as shown in the first few photos below. 

The first photo was taken during my visit to the park on Jan. 8, 2005. The next three were taken Dec. 29, 2012. A sliver of the Burrello Family Center is in the background on the left in the fourth photo. Below those are four monochrome conversions of subsections of the bridge, including an ornamental sphere near the end of a handrail. 

Landscape architect George Edward Kessler and park pagoda architect Daniel Deupree are credited for devising the stone bridge structures, which include, in addition to the Conservatory Drive pedestrian bridge noted above:

1) The legendary “Tickle Belly Hill” bridge over Pleasant Run at the north end of Conservatory Drive;

2) The bridge over Pleasant Run on Pagoda Drive near the Burrello Family and Aquatic Center; 

3) The span over Bean Creek north of the amphitheater near the arts center and amphitheater parking lot;

4) The bridges at the park’s south end, one just west of the tennis courts and the other on Southern Avenue, just outside the park.

I took pleasure photographing the bridges, as much as how oil painters placed their own impressions of them onto canvas, and I often would indulge in slightly different compositions to emphasize the bridges’ artistic qualities, as you’ll hopefully see in these images.

One such indulgence appears in the first image below in the deliberately skewed shot, taken Dec. 29, 2012, in which I elected to direct focus not only on the stone, but on two repeating patterns – that of the stone and of the snow-on-asphalt spacing. This is the bridge that Conservatory Drive motorists cross to get into the parking lot for the arts center and amphitheater.  

The dedication plaque on the far right is dated 1923 and lists Samuel Lewis Shank as mayor, John L. Elliott as city civil engineer and Todd & Reid as contractor. Also listed on the plaque are park commissioners C.A. Bookwalter, Fred Cline, A.M. Maguire and Sarah E. Shank. Locals will recognize Sarah Shank as the name of a golf course not far from the park.  

Below that is a side view of this same bridge. 

Above and below are pictures, taken at different times, of Tickle Belly Hill, a stone bridge over Pleasant Run at the north end of Conservatory Drive. The one above, taken Nov. 29, 2013, is a perspective shot, looking northwest with Fire Station 29 in the background, while the first image below is a closeup of the bridge’s underbelly, a photo taken Dec. 21, 2012. I’m not sure if the underbelly has any tickly characteristics akin to those of its upside, but I’ll go out on a limb and presume probably not.

The photo above is a head-on perspective of the same Bean Creek pedestrian bridge featured at the top of this post. This view, captured Jan. 8, 2005, enables appreciation of the stone architecture’s arcs and turns. The photo below, taken Dec. 21, 2012, is a midsection structure shot of the stone bridge leading to the tennis courts. This bridge spans Bean Creek near its southern-most point in the park. When standing on this bridge, one can see the Southern Avenue bridge (second photo below) to the south, just outside the park's southern perimeter.  

Next up, Chapter 34: Sunken Garden

Previously in the Garfield Park in Pictures series:

Introduction

Chapter 1: “America, We Remember”

Chapter 2: The Garfield Park Arts Center

Chapter 3: Bean Creek and Pleasant Run

Chapter 4: New Bean Creek pedestrian bridge

Chapter 5: Blake’s Garden

Chapter 6: Burrello Family Center and James Garfield statue

Chapter 7: Conservatory Crossing yuletide decorations

Chapter 8: Conservatory proper

Chapter 9: Conservatory permanent tropical plants and rainforest exhibit

Chapter 10: Garfield Park Farmers Market

Chapter 11: Fire Station 29

Chapter 12: Fireworks

Chapter 13: Four Seasons: Autumn

Chapter 14: Four Seasons: Spring

Chapter 15: Four Seasons: Summer

Chapter 16: Four Seasons: Winter

Chapter 17: The Golden Hour

Chapter 18: Interurban shelter

Chapter 19: Library branch and tennis courts

Chapter 20: MacAllister Amphitheater

Chapter 21: Motion picture and video shorts

Chapter 22: Music in the park

Chapter 23: The Pagoda

Chapter 24: The Pavilion

Chapter 25: Railroad tracks

Chapter 26: Sledding 

Chapter 27: Special Events: 2022 Indy Irish Festival

Chapter 28: Special Events: 2010 Mexican Bicentennial and Revolution Centennial Observance

Chapter 29: Special Events: 2010 Native American Heritage Days

Chapter 30: Special Events: 2007 Reptile Show

Chapter 31: Special Events: 2009 Sand Sculptures

Chapter 32: Statues, monuments and memorials

Snowmageddon II, aesthetically speaking

It has been a while since I've posted here. I actually have several shoots to account for, but today, I'm simply going to take the easiest -- which also happens to be the most current. Plus, it's yet another I accomplished with the handy iPhone I've been exploiting in most of the recent posts here.

The Midwest has been slammed this winter with an inordinately heavy volume of snow, and Central Indiana has been no exception. After each of the two most severe snowstorms, temperatures took a nose dive into the single digits and subzero realm. And that made it difficult to get out and photograph the beauty of snow, even though most of us have pretty much lost interest in the weather's aesthetics right about now.

This afternoon, two days after Snowmageddon II, I decided to walk six blocks or so to my bank branch, and on the return trip, went through Garfield Park, where the bulk of these images were taken. I didn't set out to photograph when I started my journey; but the spirit moved me once I hit the park. Parks tend to do that to me; perhaps, if you're a photographer, you know what I mean.

All of the images you see here were taken with an iPhone then pulled up on the computer at home for post-processing. Most of them needed a fair amount of shadow boosting and a slight increase in saturation; a few required cropping.

I don't know that there were any that stood out to warrant the lead-off position above; I chose the one I did because it included a vehicle that had just driven past me ... and a runner on the right side of the road. The last four pictures below are of the neighborhood south of the park.

Above and below: I present these because there used to be a tree in a radically diagonal growth pattern in the middle of the area of the center of the above picture, one that I included a year ago or so in a collection of trees in the park I referred to as "tilted." It's not there anymore. But in the nearby Bean Creek, I spied a very tall, angular tree (below), which looks very much like the tree that used to be in the above meadow. Another of the park's tilted trees appears in the image second below. 

Above and below: Two views, from just slightly different perspectives, of the park amphitheater, the MacAllister Center.

Above and below: Two views, again from slightly different perspectives, of the arts center. 

Above and below: Another pair of "two view" -- this time, of Conservatory Drive, looking east toward where one would turn into the conservatory itself. 

Above: Pagoda Drive looking east, from its junction with the Southern Avenue access. 

Above: Looking north from near the pedestrian roundabout at the south end of the park.

Above: Again looking north from a point south of the one immediately above, this time to include the monument that welcomes vehicle traffic entering the park from Southern Avenue.

Above: Homeowners along Southern Avenue must often look out at the park from their front windows. This image attempts to give homeowners an idea what the park might see if it looked across the street at them. 

Bridges add to Garfield Park's charm

The basic architecture used on bridges for vehicular traffic in Garfield Park is quite similar. I don't profess to be an engineering or even materials expert, but the construction of the original spans -- which constitute all but one -- appears to involve a concrete base and concrete or limestone block in the rails.

With the exception of the arched, Ticklebelly Hill span over Pleasant Run at the north end of  Conservatory Drive (featured here two posts ago) and another over Bean Creek farther south on Conservatory Drive that has been closed to vehicular traffic for as long as I can remember, the bridges are relatively flat. This image leading off the post is one of two pedestrian-only bridges over Bean Creek in the park. Both are either right off Conservatory Drive or not not far from it; the one pictured above and the first several below is the northernmost one.

The latter bridge mentioned above -- the now pedestrian-only crossing off Conservatory Drive -- seems to have been a favorite of photographers and en plain-air (open-air) painters over the years. Perhaps that's because it's off the main road, and therefore, there's little likelihood of disruption while painting or setting up photo compositions. Many of the paintings I've seen of the bridge are from the angle seen in the lead photo of today's post and in the fashion illustrated at this blog post.

There are a half-dozen or so bridges in the park, two crossing over Pleasant Run and the remainder over Bean Creek. The newest is the pedestrian bridge over Bean Creek just west of the Sunken Garden. It was installed and opened in 2009, returning to park-goers a shortcut they had been denied for quite a few years after the old, decrepit original was removed but not initially replaced. The one bridge not pictured in this post (or in a previous post from the Dec. 21 shoot) is the vehicular-traffic span over Pleasant Run at the west of the park on Pagoda Drive.

To view a full gallery of shots from the Dec. 21 shoot in Garfield Park, visit my site at SmugMug.

Next Up: A final post on the Dec. 21 shoot.

Above and next four below: Different views of the older, northernmost pedestrian bridge over Bean Creek. 

Above: A concrete sphere is used as an adornment on the same pedestrian bridge pictured above. 

Above and below: This bridge over Bean Creek takes traffic to the parking lot of the Garfield Park Arts Center. In the photo below, the 90-degree patterns -- those in the stone rail and the ones on the sidewalk created by snowfall -- caught my eye on the road surface portion of the bridge. 

Above and next two below: Different views of the newest bridge in the park, the pedestrian span over Bean Creek just outside the Sunken Garden (background in photo above). 

Above: The southernmost vehicular-traffic bridge in the park lacks the concrete or limestone block rails. It spans Bean Creek before leading traffic to the parking area alongside the tennis courts and the south entrance to the Sunken Garden.

Above: Standing on the bridge pictured in the previous photo, one sees this bridge over Bean Creek on Southern Avenue, which serves as the park's southern boundary.