The New International Encyclopædia/Indianapolis

IN′DIANAP′OLIS. The capital of Indiana and its largest city, and the county-seat of Marion County; on White River, in the centre of the State, 183 miles southeast of Chicago and 111 miles northwest of Cincinnati (Map: Indiana, C 3). It lies 700 feet above sea-level, in a broad, rolling plain. The surrounding region is rich in agricultural and mineral resources, and in forest trees of exceptional beauty. Large natural gas and oil fields are tributary to it, and near by are coal lands 7000 square miles in extent. Besides there are found in the vicinity of the capital building-stone, marl, iron, and other minerals. Wholly an inland city, Indianapolis relies on railways for its commerce. Within 50 miles of the centre of population of the United States for the past two decades, its location has made it a great railway centre. Here terminate seven divisions of the Big Four system, six divisions of the Pennsylvania Railroad, two divisions of the Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Western Railway, the Lake Erie and Western, and the Monon, besides ten interurban electric systems. The railways bring their passenger trains into a handsome union depot, and the interurban lines have contracted to erect a large union terminal station to cost over $1,000,000. Freight passing Indianapolis is carried over a belt railway, 15½ miles long. It encircles the city. The street-railway system represents an outlay of about $9,000,000, with 125 miles of tracks, and a park (Fairview) containing 200 acres.

The city is noted for the beauty of its streets, ranging from 40 to 120 feet in width, and shaded mainly by hard maples and elms, and crossing at right angles. In the heart of the city is a circular plaza, once known as ‘the Governor's Circle,’ and now called Monument Place, from which radiate four avenues to the four corners of the city. The park svstem comprises 1250 acres, and includes Riverside, extending for five miles along both sides of White River; the Indiana Central Canal and Fall Creek; Garfield, Brookside, Military, Saint Clair, and University parks, and Woodruff Place. The most notable structure in Indianapolis is the Soldiers and Sailors' Monument, designed by Bruno Schmitz, of Berlin. It was erected by the State to commemorate the part Indiana bore in the wars of the Union. The monument is a shaft of stone and bronze 285 feet in height, surmounted by a figure of Indiana Triumphant. About the base are allegorical groups in stone representing war and peace, and beneath these are two great fountains. Near the monument are four subsidiary bronze statues of Gen. George Rogers Clark, Gen. William Henry Harrison, Gov. James Whitcomb, and Oliver Perry Morton. There is also a statue of Schuyler Colfax in University Park, and in the Capitol grounds one of Thomas A. Hendricks. A large fund has been raised for a memorial to Benjamin Harrison. The buildings most worthy of note are the Capitol, 492 by 185 feet, built of Indiana limestone at a cost of $2,000,000; the court house, city hall, Federal arsenal, new post-office (to cost $2,500,000), Christ Church, Manual Training High School and some of the common-school buildlngs, Columbia Club, Commercial Club, the Claypool Hotel, the Propylæum, a woman's building devoted to literary and social purposes, and, perhaps the finest of all, the public library, with 100,000 volumes. Three of the city's bridges possess more than ordinary beauty; they span Fall Creek at Illinois and Meridian streets and at Central Avenue, and are of stone.

Indianapolis is the seat of the University of Indianapolis, with an academic department known as Butler College, and departments of law, medicine, and dentistry. Here are also a Roman Catholic theological seminary, a negro Baptist college, a college under the control of the United Brethren Church, the Heron Art Museum and Art School, the State institutions for the education of the deaf and dumb and for the blind, a number of medical, dental, and law schools, etc. Public philanthropic institutions are numerous—a State reformatory for women, a State hospital for the insane, and many smaller hospitals, homes, and refuges for the sick and unfortunate. The public-school system includes, besides common schools, an academic high school and a manual-training high school, and a normal training-school. Its inventorv of assets amounts to $2,398,766; its indebtedness (July 1, 1902), $868,000; its annual budget (1901), $934,337. Although far inland, Indianapolis is a port of entry and a point for the receipt and distribution of foreign as well as domestic commerce. Its chief articles of trade are grain and its products, live stock, meats, and the output of its extensive manufactories—milling machinery, engines, drugs, vehicles, furniture, bags, woolens, starch, and terra-cotta.

The government of the city is vested in a mayor, a council of twenty-one members (fifteen elected by wards and six at large), and a police judge, all chosen biennially. Appointments to the subordinate administrative departments are made by the Mayor. A school board of five, elected by popular vote and serving four years, governs an independent school corporation through an educational executive, the superintendent and a business executive (termed business director) each serving four years. The municipal budget (1901), including school expense, balances at about $2,700,000. the main items being: For fire department, $194,000; for police, $160,000; for parks, $100,947; for light, $113,273; for public health, $54,154; for water, $90,000. The tax valuation of all property, at perhaps three-fourths actual value, is $129,000,000, and the total debt of the city, exclusive of school debts, is about $2,300,000. Population, in 1850, 8091; 1860, 18,611; 1870, 48,244; 1880, 75,056; 1890, 105,436; 1900, 169,164. The population in 1900 included 17,100 foreign born and 15,900 negroes.

Settled in 1819, Indianapolis received its name in 1821, and became the capital on January 1, 1825, the seat of government being removed from Corydon. The opening of the first railroad in the State from Madison, on the Ohio River, occurred on October 1, 1847, and gave the little town its first impetus. The growth since 1889, when the introduction of natural gas revolutionized manufacture in Indiana, has been remarkable. Here Henry Ward Beecher served as pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church (1839 to 1847); Benjamin Harrison made Indianapolis his home from 1856 until his death, in 1901. Consult: Indiana Gazetteer (Indianapolis, 1849); Nowland, Early Reminiscences of Indianapolis (Indianapolis, 1870); Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis and Marion County (Philadelphia, 1884).