USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana > Part 26
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Belonging to this same period is the origin of the City Hospital. As already related, the city, during an epidemic alarm in early days, was going to use the Governor's house, in the Circle, as a hospital ; but the alarm disappeared and nothing further was
141
CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
done. In 1848 another serious fright was caused by an outbreak of smallpox, in which a prominent In- diana politician died at the Palmer House, now the Occidental. A general vaccination was ordered, and a lot bought and contraet made for a hospital. The fright passed away, the citizens protested against a tax for a hospital, and the material was given to the contractor, with a bonus of two hundred and twenty- five dollars in consideration of his surrender of the contract. He built a three-story frame hotel with the means thus wasted by the city, and it is still in use on Market Street, near the Sentinel office. Again, in 1855, a smallpox seare occurred, and it was again determined to ereet a city hospital. A large tract of ground on the bank of Fall Creek, at the end of In- diana Avenue, was purchased, a house begun in the usual fashion of failure, and failed when the alarm subsided. But the affair was not allowed to die quietly or lie easily in its grave this time. Dr. Liv- ingston Dunlap, alluded to heretofore as a pioneer of the city, was a member of the Council, and kept the subjeet in a chronic state of resurrection till the house was finished, at a cost of thirty thousand dol- lars, in 1859. No use occurring for it, nothing was done with it, but as a resort for strumpets and thieves, and it was proposed to sell it. The Couneil decided that it was better to rent it, though it was not rented. Then there was a suggestion to make it a city prison or home for friendless women, or to let the Sisters of Charity make a hospital of it; but these projects were defeated. It was at last granted to an association of ladies for a " Home for Friend- less Women," but not being used, it was given rent free to somebody to take care of it. Few charitable schemes or means have lived through harder trials, and the hospital, now so important a feature of the city government, would probably have gone the way of other such efforts if the outbreak of the war had not compelled the national government to use it for its original purpose. The government made some considerable additions, besides improving the grounds, and these eame to the city, with the uses of the struc- ture settled by four years of occupancy, in place of the rent of it. A short time after the government returned it to the eity, Rev. Augustus Bessonics, the
pastor of St. John's Catholic Church, asked its dona- tion to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd as a prison for females. At the same time he asked the comple- tion of the eity house of refuge on the Bluff road, south of the city, of which a very substantial and costly foundation had been laid for a year or two and left unfinished for want of means, on ground donated by the late S. A. Fletcher; but the opposition of other denominations defeated these applications, and the hospital was left vacant for a few months, when furniture and supplies were obtained at the sale of government stores in Jeffersonville, a superintendent and consulting physician appointed, and the hospital opened July 1, 1866. The old government additions becoming dilapidated, the eity decided, about a year ago, to build two substantial and commodious addi- tions of briek, three stories high, and one was re- eently completed and opened for the admission of pa- tients. It may be noted in this connection that the house of refuge desired by the Catholic association was soon afterwards finished and put in charge of one of the Catholic charitable associations.
The hospital, during its occupancy by the general government, was under the charge of Dr. John M. Kiletun and Dr. P. H. Jameson, who, with their assistants, treated thirteen thousand patients there in four years. During the few months that intervened after the government ceased to use it as a hospital- from July, 1865, to April, 1866-it was occupied as a "Soldiers' Home," under Dr. M. M. Wishard. The first superintendent of the institution, after it had been completely organized and provided, and made ready for service as a city hospital, in fulfillment of its original purpose, was Dr. G. V. Woollen. The present superintendent is Dr. W. N. Wishard.
The Chamber of Commerce traces its origin to this period. A Merchants' Exchange was formed in June, 1848, bnt died in early infancy, and was succeeded by one formed in August, 1853, by a citizens' meet- ing, which appointed Nicholas McCarty, Ignatius Brown, John D. Defrees, A. H. Brown, R. J. Gat- ling, and John T. Cox a committee to make a con- stitution, prepare a circular and map, and obtain money. Douglas Maguire was made president, John L. Ketcham seeretary, and R. B. Duncan treasurer.
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
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Mr. Ignatius Brown prepared the map and circular setting forth the situation and condition of the city, and they were sent all over the country, for the first time giving the outside world some knowledge of the city's advantages as a manufacturing and commercial centre. After a beneficial existence of two years it died of inanition, and was revived in 1856, and con- tinued for two years more, dying, as before, for want of means. It was succeeded or revived in 1864 as the Chamber of Commerce, which, after a feeble life of a few years, began to develop under the great impulse given to business at the close of the war, and is now a powerful and permanent body of a thousand members, representing forty-five to fifty classes of business, of which eighteen are railroad and transpor- tation companies. Operating with it for a time was the " Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association," in 1868, and in 1873, for a year or two, a " Real Estate Exchange" was formed, with an especial eye to the development of real estate business. It died, how- ever, when the panic of 1873 culminated here in 1875.
Many of our leading educational and benevolent institutions date from the same period, from the adoption of a city form of government, in 1847, to the war. The Masonic Grand Lodge Hall, begun by the purchase in 1847 of the site it still retains, was completed far enough for occupancy by the Consti- tutional Convention of 1850, and dedicated the fol- lowing spring. The Widows' and Orphans' Society organized in December, 1849; the Northwestern Christian University (now Butler), removed a few years ago to Irvington, chartered in 1852; an Adams Express office was opened first on September 15, 1851 ; the grand hall of the Odd-Fellows was begun in 1853, and completed in 1855, at a cost of thirty thousand dollars; the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation was organized on March 21, 1854; in 1853 the free schools were first put in effective operation. These all remain in vigorous existence. Besides these a number sprang up, flourished for a while, and dis- appeared. Among these, those deserving notice now are the Central Medical College, organized in the summer of 1849, with a faculty composed of Drs. John S. Bobbs, Richard Curran, J. S. Harrison, G.
W. Mears, C. G. Downey, L. Dunlap, A. H. Baker, and David Funkhouser. Its location was the south- east corner of East and Washington Streets, its existence protracted for about three years. The In- diana Female College is another, opened by Rev. T. L. Lynch, on the southeast corner of Ohio and Me- ridian Streets. It was continued there by his sue- cessors till 1859, and suspended. In 1852, Dr. Me- Lean opened a female seminary on the southwest corner ot' Meridian and New York Streets, and con- tinued it successfully till his death, in 1860, when Professor Todd and others maintained it till 1865. In 1865 the Indiana Female College was re-estab- lished in the MeLean building, and maintained for two or three years, when the premises were sold to the Wesley Chapel congregation for the site of the present Meridian Church. A commercial college and reading-room were begun in 1851 by Wm. M. Scott, but they lived only a few years, the reading- room but a year.
Most of the existing considerable manufactures had their commencement in the same period. Pork- packing, previously a restricted and uncertain busi- ness, became enlarged by additional establishments. and by the increased product and trade of all. Iron had been rather an occasional infusion of trade than a permanent element. Grain- and lumber-mills mul- tiplied ; planing-mills made their first appearance, so did furniture-factories and coopering establish- ments, and agricultural machinery and carriage-fac- tories that kept carriages in stock. The opening up of means of transportation that were not dependent on freshets in the river or the condition of "cross- layed" roads gave a positive and speedy boom to all classes of business that was only inereased by the war. Naturally this dozen years was to be expected to prove encouraging, though no one did expeet such results so speedily.
The first course of lectures held here was in the early months of 1847. The " Union Literary So- ciety," composed at first mainly of pupils of the "Old Seminary," but in its later years enlarged by the addition of young men unconnected with the school, and finally absorbed by them, secured by the contributions of citizens means enough to obtain
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CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
the use of suitable places for free lectures by Dr. Johnson, rector of Christ Church, Rev. S. T. Gillet, Hon. Godlove S. Orth, and others. The same asso- ciation had previously obtained a lecture from Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, in his church, but it was a single address without a succession. In 1847 or 1848 the society, with the assistance of citizens as before, procured a short course of lectures from a Cincinnati clergyman, and occasional lectures were obtained from citizens. In May, 1851, John B. Gough delivered three or four of his noted temper- ance lectures in Masonic Hall. In 1853 the Union Literary Society, then in the act of expiration, ob- tained a lecture from Horace Greeley in the fall. The Young Men's Christian Association succeeded the following year, and had annual courses of lectures regularly for a number of years thereafter. A further reference will be made to these in a chapter on "Lec- tures and Entertainments."
In 1855 came a financial disturbance that amounted to nearly a panic. It grew out of the condition of the currency and the banks. The Legislature, in 1852, had passed a "Free Banking" law, authorizing the issue of bills by private banks on the security of our State bonds, or those of any State approved by the State officers. Under a lax construction of this act, or the laxity of its provisions which no construction could tighten, a large number of banks had grown up all over the State, some well fortified with securities of circulation, some indifferently, and some hardly protected at all. For a while their issues all went off freely at home, though a good deal distrusted out- side of the State. The State officers had exercised less than due care in distinguishing between the securities offered, and some of a doubtful character had been accepted, and issues upon them thrown into the current of business. Governor Wright, who had come to doubt the operation of the act, determined to test the strength of some of the banks by sending them their bills to redeem in gold. One in Vermil- lion County, in the slang of the day, " squatted." This began an impulse of distrust and discrimination which culminated in 1855, and continued after the Governor had been succeeded by Governor Willard. Free bank paper became the plaything of brokers.
One would refuse it, another would take it; one would accept it to-day and refuse it to-morrow. Banks that redeemed on demand, or in any way maintained fair credit, as some did, were called " gilt-edged," and were good with all brokers and business men. Others of a less assured character were discounted at any rate that a broker pleased. The brokers, in fact, fixed the value of the currency of the free banks, and the daily papers of the city made their first essays at " Money Articles" in noting the fluctuations. They made three classes,-the absolutely good, the uncertain, and the bad,-and these changed, the lower once and a while rising into the upper, but the general tendency was downwards. Gradually the weaker banks were closed up, the stronger became better established, and the disturbances disappeared till in 1863. When national banks were first organized, their notes were not considered any better than the others, but they possessed the vast advantage of being equally good everywhere. That was not the case with free bank paper, which sometimes failed in a man's pocket when he was out of the State, though pos- sibly still current at home, and left him in as un- pleasant a situation as that of " Titmarslı in Lille." The free banks of Indianapolis were the Bank of the Capital, Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank, the Central Bank, the Traders' Bank, and the Metropolitan Bank.
In this connection may be noticed the appearance of the first permanent theatre in a building erected for it, the Metropolitan, now the Park. There had frequently been temporary theatrical establishments in improvised buildings, but in 1857-58, Mr. Val- entine Butsch built the Metropolitan, on the corner of Washington and Tennessee Streets, a favorite loca- tion for circuses in earlier times, and opened it in the fall of the latter year. It did not prove remunerative till the outbreak of the war collected large bodies of idle men here, either as soldiers organizing in camp or as hangers-on of the army. Then it improved so greatly that ten years later the same enterprising gentleman purchased an incomplete building on the southeast corner of Illinois and Ohio Streets, and converted and completed it into the Academy of Music, which was burned some half-dozen years later. Of the earlier dramatic enterprises here, those of an
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
occasional character in temporary quarters, and those later than this period of the city's history, an ac- count will be given in a chapter assigned to such entertainments.
Municipal Government .- The history of the city and county during the war will be treated in its own division, and since the war so much of it is a matter of recent occurrence, within thousands of mem- ories, that no attempt will be made to present it except in the details of the different special topics to follow. These, except as to their early history, have not been sought to be presented, as any intelligible account must bring remote periods together in a body that would break up entirely the course of the general history. A sketch of our manufactures, to illustrate, would have to mass together all material facts between the steam-mill in 1832 and the car-works in 1882, a period of fifty years, and to thrust such a mass into the course of the general history would make an irre- coverable disconnection. It would be the same with our schools, churches, press, banks, entertainments, and other special subjects vitally connected with the city's history, but readily separable from the general narrative.
The first special subject is naturally that of the city government, of which something has already been said. The first municipal organization was in 1832. From that time the history of the county and that of the city are measurably separated. The changes up to the time of the adoption of the city form of government have been already noted ; those since, till the addition of a Board of Aldermen, may be very briefly stated. In 1853 the general charter law was adopted, by which the elections were changed from April to May, the terms of all officers to a single year, cach ward given two councilmen, all elections given to the people, and the mayor made president of the Council, as he has continued to be ever since. In 1857 the Legislature amended the general charter act, which made the terms of all officers two years, and vacated half the seats in the Council each year. In 1859 an amendment made the Council terms four years instead of two. In 1861 the First Ward was divided and the Ninth made of the eastern half, and a similar division of the Seventh made the
Eighth of the eastern half. In 1865 a new charter was put in operation, which made all terms of office two years, ercated the office of auditor, and made the auditor, assessor, attorney, and engineer elective by the Council. In 1867 this was changed so as to create the office of city judge and give to the people only the choice of mayor, clerk, marshal, treasurer, assessor, and judge. The offices of auditor and judge were abolished in 1869, the duties of auditor going to the clerk and those of judge to the mayor. The charter remained unchanged till 1877, when the Board of Aldermen was created; then the terms of couneilmen were made one year and of aldermen two years. In 1881 a change was made, giving a term of two years to both and changing the time of the city election from May to October. The nine wards of 1861 remained unchanged till 1876, when they were increased to thirteen. When the Board of Aldermen was created they were increased to twenty- five and a councilman assigned to each one, while the whole were divided into five districts with two alder- men to each.
In noting these political indications of the growth of the city it may be noted that the first addition to the territory of the city was made by John Wood, the banker, in June, 1836. In 1854 and 1855 Blake, Drake, Fletcher, Mayhew, Blackford, and others made considerable additions. Mr. Ignatius Brown estimates that between sixty and eighty ad- ditions had been made up to 1868. Taking into account the enormous additions and subdivisions of additions made during the real estate speculations after 1868 up to 1875, the whole number can hardly be less than one hundred and fifty. Not a few of these have since relapsed into their original condi- tion to avoid city taxes, but the territory of the city still is very nearly three times as large as the dona- tion and a dozen times as large as the original plat of the town. The city assessments for taxes since the organization of the city government are as follows :
Year.
Taxables.
Year.
Taxables.
1847
$1,000,000
1855
$8,000,000
1850
2,326,185
1856.
9,146,000
1852
4,000,000
1857
9,874,000
1853
5,131,682
1858
10,475,000
1854
6,500,000
1859
7,146,607
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CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
Year.
Taxables.
Year.
Taxables.
1860
$10,700,000
1872
$34,746,026
1861
10,000,000
1873
61,246,3111
1862.
10,250,000
1874 ..
67,309,193
1863
18,578,683
1875
69,251,749
1864
19,723,732
1876
60,456,2002
1865
20,913,274
1877
55,367,245
1866
24,835,750
1878
50,029,975
1867
25,500,605
1879
48,099,940
1868
24,000,000
1880
50,030,271
1869
22,000,000
1881
51,901,217
1870.
24,522,261
1882
52,612,595
1871
27,908,820
1883
53,128,150
The present assessment of the county is about $75,000,000. That of the city constituting two- thirds of it, the fluctuations of the latter have caused equal variations in the other. The tax-rate of the county is 70 cents for all purposes ; that of the city $1.12, which is the limit. Something of the extent of the real estate speculative fever in 1873 may be judged from the fact that the sales in 1872 were reported by the Board of Trade as double those of 1871, and those of 1873 doubled those of 1872, amounting to over $32,500,000. Since that time there has been no such inflation of speculation. In 1864 an ordinance required the issue of a " permit" from the city clerk to authorize the erection of a building. In 1865 it was found that 1621 buildings were erected; in 1866, 1112; in 1867, 747 ; in 1870, 840; in 1873, 600. Since then the decline has been heavy and continual until within the last two years. The decrease in the number of buildings, which will be observed, was more than compensated by the in- creased value till the general financial disturbance broke down building of all kinds almost entirely.
The first street improvement made by the city was in 1836-37. At that time the national government was metaling the National road through the city, and the occasion offered a very obvious motive to the trus- tees to do something for their sidewalks. The some- thing was not much, but it accomplished some brick pavements and some grading down of inequalities. About that time, too, some shade-trees, principally locusts, were set out on the street then and for a good
many years called Main Street, and in various parts of the city. Some of these old locusts were standing on the corner of Meridian Street for twenty years. On the other streets they remained longer, and a few are still standing in scattered localities. A general plan of street improvement and drainage was made by James Wood, in 1841, upon an order of the Council, but nothing was done with it at the time, though later it was partially carried out where prac- ticable at all. The sidewalks of Washington Street were widened from the fifteen fcet of the original plat to twenty, and those of the other streets from the original ten to twelve, and later to fifteen. Pave- ments were occasionally made, but more frequently graveled walks took their place all along the interval from 1836 to 1859, and the grading and graveling of streets went on too; but the first substantial im- provement was bowldering Washington Street from Illinois to Meridian, From that time onward street improvement has gone on with little interruption,- some of it of a costly kind, as the block pavement of Delaware and other streets, which soon wore out and required replacing by bowlders. A recent effort has been made to replace the bowlders of Washington Street and the blocks of Market with Medina stone, but the cost of that material makes it unlikely to displace bowlders on any but streets largely occupied by wealthy residents. In 1855 an attempt was made to number the houses on Washington Street, but it was indifferently done, and nothing further was at- tempted in that direction till 1858, when A. C. How- ard, on a Council order, numbered all the streets ; but counting only the houses then erected, the faulty plan was soon disclosed, and in 1864 he renumbered them on the Philadelphia plan of making fifty numbers to a block. The most extensive and costly improvement, however, has been the sewage system, adopted in 1870. It began with a main sewer of eight feet in diameter from Washington Street to the river, down Kentucky Avenue. A branch was carried up the bed of the canal from the avenue to Market Street, which effaced the canal that far. Another branch was carried along South Street to Fletcher Avenue, and down that avenue to its ter- mination. Since then a branch has been constructed
1 An act of the Legislature this year required appraisement at cash valuation, and all real property advanced all over the Statc.
2 The effect of depreciation following the panic of 1873. 10
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
on Illinois Street, Pennsylvania Street, and other streets, and the trunk line extended to the ereek at Noble Street to connect with a line to the Female Reformatory. In 1868 a fifteen-cent sewage tax was levied, and a sower on Ray Street, from Delaware to the ereek, was made, terminating under Ray Street bridge, at a cost of sixteen thousand five hundred dollars. The later and larger affair cost one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. The contractors were Wirth & Co., of Cincinnati. Their competitors were Symonds & Hyland, who were alleged at the time to have offered the city more favorable terms, and their rejection by the Council caused open charges of cor- ruption to be repeatedly urged in some of the city papers. The other street improvements-the street lamps, railway lines, and the water supply-have already been referred to, and do not belong to an ac- count of works prosecuted by the city. In 1871 the perils of crossing the union tracks on busy streets caused the erection of an iron viaduct on Delaware Street, some six hundred feet long and high enough under the upper span for the easy passage of engines and cars. It was but little used, however, and in 1874 was taken down and the iron used in making canal and creek bridges. In 1873 a more effective relief, it was thought, would be given to the crowded business of Illinois Street at the west end of the Union Depot by a tunnel extending, with its ap- proaches, from near South Street to near the middle of the block north of Louisiana Street. It was built at a cost of forty thousand dollars,-so stated at the time,-with two wagon-tracks, in separate arches, and an elevated foot-passenger track on each side some three fect higher. The latter were soon found to be used for vile purposes, and were closed. The main tunnel was maintained in good order, but surren- dered wholly to the street-railway company, which has two tracks in it. In heavy rains the tunnel is so flooded as to be frequently impassable for a time. The amount of street-work done in twelve years-from 1836 to 1848-may be judged from the fact that it had all made a debt of but six thousand dollars, and that only because the city would not bear a tax heavy enough to pay its way. An election was held in 1849 to determine whether a special tax of ten cents
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