Most chain restaurants focus their branding on a few key visual elements: logo, font, colors. Take Starbucks, for example. It started in old-school, urban commercial storefronts like Seattle’s Pike Place Market, expanded to other big-city milieus, then went suburban into freestanding structures with parking lots and drive-thru windows. It adapted the interior model to shopping
Suburbia of 2026 might feel as middlebrow and car-dominated as it probably did in 1966, even if “suburbanization” was a novel phenomenon back then—a condition just emerging, of which social theorists were not yet fully aware. But the design of residential communities from sixty years ago reveals subtle if powerful differences, judging from the equivalents
As a metro area urbanizes, the old country homes built off of major highways become less appealing as residences and more appealing as commercial entities. This isn’t surprising; the quiet metamorphosis has taken place for decades. A subtle commercial conversion. People don’t want to live directly alongside throngs of fast-moving vehicles if they can help
Continuing the spirit of the previous blog post—surveying big buildings and extolling those that look good from all angles—I migrate this time for a brief look at a building in my hometown that has always captivated me and certainly achieves minor landmark status. Most other visitors to Indianapolis who have lingered in this neighborhood have
In a move that was probably a huge shock to about four dozen people, World of Beer (WoB), the craft beer aficionado’s dream chain, closed its Indianapolis location shortly after New Year’s Day 2024. Due in no small part to the devastating effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on the restaurant industry, World of Beer is one
The building featured in this final elegy has probably served as the thumbnail photo more than any other structure, in my nearly sixteen years of writing for this blog. I’m talking about none other than Sanctuary on Penn, FKA First Lutheran Church, FKA Mount Pisgah. The late Gothic building, on the National Register of Historic
The term “stub street” rarely comes up in conversation, yet enough people have a mental image of what it entails that it would be almost patronizing to explain what it means. However, those cognitive apparitions vary so greatly that I’m going to go right ahead and patronize. After all, a consistent definition of a stub
First Lutheran Church in the St. Joseph neighborhood of downtown Indianapolis is no more. It suffered catastrophic losses early in the morning of Christmas Eve due to a fire, and while the firefighting crew battled the blaze formidably, it was not able to prevent the roof from caving in, or most of the doors and
I’ll confess: a part of me wanted to feature The Hangar at Emerson Pointe apartment complex simply because I took such an amazing photo, completely unintentionally. I mean, look at that beauty! Doesn’t it look like the sort of professional rendering that marketing firm—or the marketing arm of a development company—might use to promote their
Many, many years ago I featured some heritage infrastructure in the quasi-autonomous Indianapolis enclave of Homecroft. If the most appropriate descriptor for a place like Homecroft is “quasi-autonomous enclave”, it goes without saying that it’s an unusual place. The community (which functions largely as a neighborhood) sits about seven miles south of downtown Indianapolis as
Most chain restaurants focus their branding on a few key visual elements: logo, font, colors. Take Starbucks, for example. It started in old-school, urban commercial storefronts like Seattle’s Pike Place Market, expanded to
Suburbia of 2026 might feel as middlebrow and car-dominated as it probably did in 1966, even if “suburbanization” was a novel phenomenon back then—a condition just emerging, of which social theorists were not
As a metro area urbanizes, the old country homes built off of major highways become less appealing as residences and more appealing as commercial entities. This isn’t surprising; the quiet metamorphosis has taken
Continuing the spirit of the previous blog post—surveying big buildings and extolling those that look good from all angles—I migrate this time for a brief look at a building in my hometown that
In a move that was probably a huge shock to about four dozen people, World of Beer (WoB), the craft beer aficionado’s dream chain, closed its Indianapolis location shortly after New Year’s Day
The building featured in this final elegy has probably served as the thumbnail photo more than any other structure, in my nearly sixteen years of writing for this blog. I’m talking about none
The term “stub street” rarely comes up in conversation, yet enough people have a mental image of what it entails that it would be almost patronizing to explain what it means. However, those
First Lutheran Church in the St. Joseph neighborhood of downtown Indianapolis is no more. It suffered catastrophic losses early in the morning of Christmas Eve due to a fire, and while the firefighting
I’ll confess: a part of me wanted to feature The Hangar at Emerson Pointe apartment complex simply because I took such an amazing photo, completely unintentionally. I mean, look at that beauty! Doesn’t
Many, many years ago I featured some heritage infrastructure in the quasi-autonomous Indianapolis enclave of Homecroft. If the most appropriate descriptor for a place like Homecroft is “quasi-autonomous enclave”, it goes without saying