For the third in our ‘Urbanography’ series, I thought I would write a few words about a book that I first read many years ago (more than I want to count or admit to in print), Indianapolis, The Story of a City.

Despite it’s terribly unimaginative title, this book by Edward A. Leary was the one that first opened my eyes into the realm of urban and regional planning. I was a barely a teenager at the time, but I found the history of my hometown to be quite fascinating. In particular, the fact that Alexander Ralston, an understudy of Pierre L’Enfant. had designed the new capital city’s original mile square. Also intriguing, was the fact that the city was nearly named Tecumseh instead of Indianapolis. The ‘Tecumseh Colts’ does not quite sound right to me, though the ‘Tecumseh 500’ is not bad.

As it turns out that Indianapolis has benefitted from more than one cutting edge city architect or planner. In addition to Ralston, George Edward Kessler left his landscape architecture legacy in parks and boulevards all over the city, as well as some of the lovely arching concrete bridges over Fall Creek and the Central (Water Company) Canal. Kessler Boulevard was named for him in 1929.

The city was also an early pioneer in mass transit with its vast network of interurban lines radiating out from the city center. Sadly, the foresight that made the city the “Interuban Capital of the World” did not anticipate the negative impacts that individual car ownership would have on the system, nor the future rebirth of street cars as a viable alternative.

The city was also a leader in the unified/regional government movement of the 1970s with the merger of the city with most of Marion County under then Mayor, now United States Senator Richard Lugar.

While not a potential prize-winning contribution to literature, the book Indianapolis, The Story of a City will always have a soft place in my heart as the publication that initiated my career aspirations toward urban and regional planning.