Hoosier History Live

As Hoosier History Live salutes Black History Month, our focus will be on a massive movement of an estimated 6 million people during a span of nearly 60 years. Beginning during the World War I era, African Americans migrated in unprecedented numbers from the South to cities in Northern states, including Indiana.

According to an article published in Smithsonian magazine, the waves of 20th century migration began with a move of Black families during the winter of 1916 from Selma, Alabama, to the North, a little-noticed start to powerful demographic shift that also encompassed a transition from agriculture to factory work. By the time it ended in the early 1970s, "a rural people had become urban."

Some historians use the term Great Migration to apply to the entire span. Others refer to the era from the 1910s to 1940 as the First Great Migration, and describe the 1940s to 1970 movement as the Second Great Migration.

To explore a range of factors and ramifications associated with this consequential migration, Nelson will be joined by Jakobi Williams, Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of African American and African Diasporas Studies and the Department of History at Indiana University.

Jakobi, who was born and grew up on the south side of Chicago, will discuss ways that state and local governments in the South attempted to restrict African Americans from leaving. He also will describe the challenges that confronted them in Northern cities after they resettled.

Since the early 1970s, demographers have documented a "reverse migration" among the U.S. Black population. As USA Today explained in a 2015 analysis, in recent years more African Americans have moved to the South than left it, returning to metro areas such as Atlanta and Charlotte.

Our guest Jakobi Williams, the author of From the Bullet to the Ballot (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) , suggests the PBS series Eyes on the Prize as a resource for those who want to learn more about the Great Migration.

Describing the beginnings of the Great Migration, the Smithsonian article notes: "To fill the assembly lines, companies began recruiting Black Southerners to work in the steel mills, railroads and factories. Resistance in the South to the loss of cheap Black labor meant that recruiters often had to act in secret or face fines and imprisonment."

The article describes attempts by public officials in the South to retain African Americans "by arresting them at railroad platforms on grounds of 'vagrancy' or tearing up their tickets."

According to the USA Today analysis, the three states with the largest population of African Americans at the end of the 1890s were Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. "By 1970, New York, Illinois and California had the most African Americans."

The reverse trend that began in the 1970s - the move of African Americans to the South - generally has been led by young, college-educated professionals and retirees, according to several sources.

As Hoosier History Live salutes Black History Month - as well as the Bicentennial era of Indianapolis - we will explore the life of the first woman of color to move to the new Hoosier capital in 1821.

Little had been known about Chaney Lively (1800-1858?), who came to the Indiana wilderness from Kentucky, until our guest researched her life for a cover story in 2019 for Nuvo, the alternative newsweekly. Laura McPhee, the former editor of Nuvo, will join Nelson to share details of her research about Chaney Lively, who arrived as the clerk and housekeeper for surveyor Alexander Ralston, who created the design for Indianapolis.

After Ralston died in 1827, Chaney Lively became the first African-American woman to own a house in the Hoosier capital. At that point the city consisted only of the downtown area known today as the Mile Square, which Ralston designed after coming to Indianapolis in the early summer of 1821.

"When the platted lots went for sale in October, he bought two lots on the first day: one for him and one expressly for Chaney," according to Laura's article. Chaney Lively inherited the property at Meridian and Maryland streets when Ralston died.

Laura notes that although Chaney Lively arrived as a free woman of color, she had been enslaved in Kentucky. "It's not clear where or when, but...Ralston purchased Chaney as a slave," Laura wrote. "Most likely, he bought her in Louisville, a major slave trading hub at the time he lived there in the early 1800s."

By researching accounts of Hoosier pioneers, including the multi-volume diary of civic leader Calvin Fletcher, who became the first practicing attorney in Indianapolis, Laura has determined that Chaney Lively was a highly regarded, well-liked resident of the city.

Hoosier History Live explored the life of Ralston, who had been born in Scotland, for a show in 2013; during a show in 2016, we delved into the life of Fletcher, a New England native who, in addition to becoming an attorney, was a banker, state legislator and the owner of vast tracts of property in central Indiana.

By the time Ralston died and Chaney, who lived with him, "moved into her own home in 1827," Laura wrote, "there were less than 60 people of color - men, women and children - living in Indianapolis out of a population of a little more than 1,000."

In addition to sharing details about the life of Chaney Lively, Laura will describe other Black residents who came to nascent Indianapolis. The population increased in the 1830s with the construction through the city of the National Road (now U.S. 40/Washington Street). When labor camps sprang up for workers on the road, Chaney Lively cooked and did laundry for many of them. She also took in boarders, according to Laura's article.

In 1836, Chaney married John Britton, a former slave who became a barber in Indianapolis. They were among the founding members of Bethel AME Church, which opened in 1841. In Laura's article for Nuvo, she concludes Chaney died in 1857 or 1858 based on a reference by Fletcher to her passing.

Since her departure from Nuvo in 2019, Laura has owned Pen and Pink Vintage, a book shop in the Garfield Park neighborhood specializing in books by women, Indiana authors and Indiana history. At Nuvo, where she was an editor and award-winning writer for nearly 15 years, Laura was known for her coverage of local news and social justice issues.

Laura says she decided to research Chaney Lively's life out of frustration at the scarcity of research undertaken by others.

She determined that when Ralston, who had no known family members in America, arrived in Indianapolis with 21-year-old Chaney Lively, she was described as "a mulatto woman." After Chaney's marriage to John Britton, she is rarely mentioned in diaries and memoirs of early settlers or in Indianapolis newspapers, Laura discovered.

But Britton, a civic leader in the Black community, was mentioned frequently. In 1845, he was a vocal supporter for justice in the death of their neighbor, a Black man who was attacked by a white mob. Britton also was an Indiana delegate to the 1848 Colored National Convention initiated by Frederick Douglass, according to Laura's research.

Chaney and John Britton had a daughter, Eliza. Since her Nuvo article was published, Laura McPhee has been searching for their descendants.

For another show in our periodic series that offers listeners an opportunity to call with questions about Indiana's heritage, our host, author and historian Nelson Price, will be joined by Charlie Hyde, CEO of the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site.

In between phone calls from listeners, Nelson and Charlie will interview each other about an array of topics, including how Benjamin Harrison, the only president elected from Indiana, handled an epidemic in 1892, his final year in the White House. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 1892 cholera epidemic has been the focus of recent articles in the national press.

During our show, Charlie will explain how President Harrison responded when a ship from Hamburg, Germany, one of the epicenters of the epidemic, was en route to the United States. The cholera epidemic began in April 1892 in India and quickly spread to Europe, all while Harrison was dealing with a health crisis in his own family: First Lady Caroline Scott Harrison was gravely ill with tuberculosis and would die later in 1892 in the White House.

In between insights from Charlie and Nelson about this episode and others, listeners are invited to phone the WICR-FM (88.7) studio at 317-788-3314 and pose questions about any aspect of the state's history; typically on Hoosier History Live, questions from listeners are limited to the final 20 minutes of the show.

As we continue to salute Black History Month, Nelson will also discuss the 28th U.S. Colored Troops, an African-American regiment from Indiana during the Civil War. Even before the regiment was formed in 1864, Black soldiers from Indiana had been fighting for the Union Army in an infantry unit from Massachusetts; that legendary regiment was depicted in the movie Glory (1989) starring Denzel Washington.

Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901), who became a brigadier general during the Civil War, initiated attempts during his subsequent political career to expand civil rights for African Americans; Charlie will describe these attempts during our show.

Charlie also will discuss the reaction in Indianapolis in 1888 when Harrison, a Republican, was nominated as a presidential candidate. It is the focus of a current exhibit at the presidential site titled The Night Indianapolis Roared.

Another topic during our show will relate to the recent dedication in Carmel of a sculpture and interactive kiosks in honor of Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981). The famous composer, who grew up in Bloomington and Indianapolis, is profiled in Nelson's book Indiana Legends, 4th edition (Hawthorne Publishing, 2005). Nelson had several interviews with Hoagy's son, Randy Carmichael, who died in 2018; Randy had been a Hoosier History Live guest seven years earlier. The sculpture and kiosks honoring Hoagy are near the Center for the Performing Arts, which includes the Great American Songbook Foundation.

Since our show in 2019 about the Indiana Medical History Museum, news has unfolded related to the museum, which is housed in a building that was part of the historic campus of the former Central State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Indianapolis that closed in 1994.

Some of the developments concern the efforts of the Indiana Medical History Museum to identify the unmarked graves of patients who were buried in a long-neglected nearby cemetery. Last November, the museum issued a public protest when utility-related construction authorized by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department disrupted the interred remains of some patients who died between 1848 and 1905.

When Sarah Halter, executive director of the museum, is Nelson's guest, she will provide updates about the cemetery project. Some aspects have been resolved, according to Sarah.

The remains of the patients affected by the utility work have been carefully exhumed by archaeologists and will be reinterred elsewhere. But other aspects of the museum's cemetery initiatives have yet to reach a resolution. The cemetery is on land owned by the city and used by the police department for its horse patrol.

The cemetery initiatives are part of an expanded focus at the museum to humanize the former patients at the psychiatric hospital that Sarah will describe during our show.

They include, she says, "a new, permanent re-interpretation of our specimen collection that emphasizes the humanity of these specimens and tells the stories of the people from whom they came."

In addition to the museum's exhibits conveying the stories of patients at Central State, many of the personal stories now can be viewed online, with new accounts added periodically.

"We hope that these projects will not only re-humanize the patients, who were too often left out of the story, but also combat stigma and foster compassion and respect for all people, past and present, who experience mental health issues," Sarah says.

The museum is housed in a brick structure once known as the Old Pathology Building. During the 1890s, brain research considered groundbreaking for its era was conducted in clinical labs in the building, which also had an autopsy room and an amphitheater for lectures to medical students.

During our show, Sarah will describe the development underway of a project called Voices from Central State. Designed to be a "memory archive/forum," it will serve as an online platform for people with a range of connections to Central State to share stories and photos as well as engage in discussion.

Like a seasoned pop music act reuniting for another sold-out tour, host Nelson Price and his guest David Lindquist will join forces once again to explore tales from David's more than 22 years of writing about pop music and culture for The Indianapolis Star. But don't expect a rehash of greatest hits from their show last December. The two have plenty of fresh material to explore that they simply didn't have time to cover on the last go round.

The emergence of the Fountain Square neighborhood in Indianapolis as a nightspot destination, the opening of the Palladium in Carmel and the death of the owner of the Slippery Noodle Inn, one of the most distinctive venues for blues music in the country, all happened during Dave's long run at The Star, which ended last month.

So he will rejoin Nelson to share insights about those topics and others, including the increasing trend of featuring music concerts as part of major sports events such as the Final Four basketball tournament of the NCAA, races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Super Bowl that Indianapolis hosted in 2012.

Dave also will discuss one of the most challenging reviews he had to write. At the Palladium in 2011, a concert featuring country music star Glen Campbell was "mystifyingly bad," Dave wrote. He described how Campbell "came across as unprepared at best and disoriented at worst." Within about 10 days, Campbell's family revealed he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease six months earlier.

During our show last month, Dave discussed his interviews with John Mellencamp, the Indiana-based rock star. This time, we will focus on a drummer who had a long association with Mellencamp and whom Dave Lindquist included in his list of Indiana's Top 25 Musicians. Kenny Aronoff studied at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and performed during the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2009. Esquire magazine called Aronoff, who played with Mellencamp for 17 years beginning in 1980, "the most famous drummer you've never heard of."

In downtown Indy, the Slippery Noodle Inn opened in 1850 and had several name changes (along with a reputation that periodically was unsavory) until it was purchased in the early 1960s by the family of Hal Yeagy, who died in November. In Dave Lindquist's report about Yeagy's death, he quoted musicians who described "The Noodle" as "a major shrine to blues and live music."

During this show, Dave will discuss the Slippery Noodle as well as other concert venues, including the Murat Theatre and the lawn at White River State Park.

Our show comes just before Dave starts a new media endeavor. He will be the host on WTTS-FM (92.3) of a new weekly music program, The Beat with Dave Lindquist. His show, which premieres at 7 pm Monday (Feb. 1), will feature "fresh music from the local independent and underground music scene and music from familiar artists," according to WTTS-FM.

Later this year, a historic marker is planned for the birthplace in Brazil, Ind., of Jimmy Hoffa, the controversial labor leader whose disappearance in 1975 remains one of the country's major missing persons cases.

Hoffa, the powerful, long-time president of the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters, met with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 to make a donation to social justice work. Even so, Hoffa had "a complicated relationship with the civil rights movement," according to our guest, Justin Clark, digital initiatives director for the Indiana Historical Bureau.

For the historical bureau, a division of the Indiana State Library, Justin has produced and written a video essay about Hoffa's meeting with Rev. King, as well as other aspects of the life of the labor leader, who was convicted of jury tampering in 1964 and served nearly four years in prison. He vanished after going to a restaurant in Detroit to meet with men connected to organized crime. Despite extensive investigations for several years, Hoffa's body never has been found; he was declared legally dead in 1982.

Our guest Justin Clark, who has researched labor history, notes that during Hoffa's 14 years as president of the Teamsters, the union's membership greatly expanded. Hoffa crusaded to improve "the lives and working conditions of its members," Justin says.

Born in 1913, Hoffa grew up in a hard-scrabble family of four children in Brazil. When Hoffa was 7 years old, his father died, so his mother took a series of jobs, including as a cook in a local restaurant and as a laundry service operator. In 1924, the Hoffas moved to Detroit; he dropped out of school after the eighth grade to seek full-time work.

Although Hoffa primarily was based out of Detroit for the rest of his life, he periodically returned to his Indiana hometown, sometimes to support community endeavors. During the early 1960s, the Teamsters made a significant donation to Clay County Hospital.

His meeting with Rev. King also involved a donation, although the session seemed to be an "unlikely pairing" of two newsmakers, Justin notes. "One [was] a slick-haired, brash and controversial labor leader, and the other [was] a measured, eloquent and inspirational pastor."

During the meeting, Hoffa handed Rev. King a $25,000 check to support efforts for racial equality. Even so, Hoffa's history with civil rights was decidedly uneven. In the late 1950s, newspapers reported that he had discriminated against African-Americans in a local union chapter, according to Justin's research. In 1963, Hoffa did not support the March on Washington in which Rev. King was the final speaker, delivering his historic "I have a dream" speech.

In his new memoir, he describes himself as a "meek" boy who dealt with a severe stutter when he was growing up on the northside of Indianapolis. So John Mutz, now 85, seemed unlikely to carve out a career as a political and civic leader.

But even before his two terms as Indiana's lieutenant governor (1981-89), he was playing a key role in many facets of the modern history of his hometown, including the birth of Unigov, the consolidation of most aspects of city and Marion County governments that was considered revolutionary in the late 1960s.

When Mutz and other emerging political leaders, including Richard Lugar, started brainstorming about ways to invigorate their hometown - which in the mid-1960s was "regarded as a sleepy backwater," as Mutz puts it - their vision was not to unify city and county governments. According to An Examined Life: The John Mutz Story (Indiana Historical Society Press, 2020), they aspired to make the Hoosier capital the home of a public, state-supported university independent of either Indiana or Purdue universities.

To explore how that effort changed direction - as well as other aspects of political and civic history - Mutz will be Nelson's guest. A lifelong Republican, Mutz made headlines in September when he became, as the Indianapolis Business Journal put it, "the first prominent Indiana Republican to publicly rebuke Trump."

In announcing he would vote for Joe Biden in the presidential race, Mutz wrote: "I am not leaving my party. I am following my conscience."

Like Biden, Mutz has coped with a stutter that became apparent during his boyhood at Indianapolis Public School No. 84 and Broad Ripple High School, where he was a member of the class of 1953. In An Examined Life, he describes the city then as "insular" and the northside neighborhoods where he lived as lacking in diversity, noting he had only one Black classmate at Broad Ripple.

After achieving success as a political and civic leader, Mutz was asked to speak to camps and support groups for children who were, in his words, "trying to conquer their stutter." He adds, "These experiences were some of the most moving of my life."

In addition to his involvement in what became Unigov, Mutz also was among a group of leaders in the 1970s - eventually known as the City Committee - that settled on emphasizing sports as a strategy for spurring rejuvenation in downtown Indy.

Acknowledging in An Examined Life that almost all of those leaders then were men, he writes: "I am amazed that our society has still not recognized the untapped potential in women's leadership."

The Hoosier women whose leadership he praises include some who have been previous Hoosier History Live guests, such as U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker and another former lieutenant governor, Sue Ellspermann.

He calls Lugar, who was elected mayor in 1967 when Mutz was serving in the Indiana General Assembly, a "first-class intellect." In An Examined Life, Mutz describes how they, along with other political and civic leaders, met at a private home to develop ways to invigorate Indianapolis. They had noticed that Jacksonville, Fla., and Nashville, Tenn., had consolidated their city and county governments; the move appealed to Lugar, Mutz and their colleagues because they felt Indianapolis and Marion County officials were "duplicating work or not working collaboratively."

In 1969, legislation that allowed Unigov passed in the general assembly. Among its most intense opponents, Mutz writes, was his mother-in-law, who was serving then as the Marion County recorder.

A few years later, Lugar insisted that Market Square Arena, which became the home of the Indiana Pacers, be built downtown, bucking a national trend - as well as lobbying in central Indiana - to locate sports stadiums in the suburbs. The opening of Market Square Arena in the early 1970s is considered a major early milestone in downtown's revival.

After his two terms as lieutenant governor ended in 1989, Mutz became a philanthropic and business leader. That included stints as president of the Lilly Endowment until 1993, followed by president of Public Service Indiana, which then was the state's largest electric utility.

His memoir, An Examined Life, was written in collaboration with political historian Ted Frantz, director of the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives at the University of Indianapolis.

To mark the start of the new season for the Indiana Pacers , we will time travel more than 50 years back to explore the history that led up to their debut game against the Kentucky Colonels in the Coliseum at the State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. The new team was part of an upstart professional league, the colorful American Basketball Association (ABA), and before any of the players had even scored a point, much civic, social and sports history already had been made.

Two previous pro basketball teams based in Indianapolis had died. One of them, the Indianapolis Olympians, went down in scandal.

Efforts at putting together the Pacers team had met a variety of challenges. Unsuccessful attempts had been made to woo household names in Indiana - including former high school basketball sensations Oscar Robertson and identical twins Tom and Dick Van Arsdale - to be part of the Pacers organization. And some of the African-American players who had been signed to the team encountered challenges finding housing in the Hoosier capital due to the racial discrimination that was unfortunately common at the time.

To explore the rich history of the early era of the Pacers - including the years immediately following the team's first game in 1967 - Nelson is joined in studio by veteran sports journalist Mark Montieth in this encore of a show originally broadcast in 2017. As a boy growing up in Indy, Mark listened to the debut Pacers game on the radio. He is the author of Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis (Cardinal Publishing Group).

In the early 1960s, Mark writes, the Hoosier capital was growing, "yet it had no national sports identity beyond the Indianapolis 500."

Civic and business leaders wanted to change that. The result was a team that won three national championships in the ABA, which eventually merged with the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a sportswriter at The Indianapolis Star, Mark Montieth covered the Pacers for 12 of the team's NBA seasons.

Early games in the ABA often were raucous, and fighting among the players was common. Several of the early Pacers were regarded as wild characters, including fan favorites Bob Netolicky and Mel Daniels.

The starting salaries of early Pacers players? According to Reborn, one aspiring Pacer signed a contract for $10,000 (that would be about $78,000 in 2020), with the possibility of a $2,000 bonus.

The ABA was distinctive for its red, white and blue basketball and the introduction to the pro game of the 3-point shot. "The Pacers were born and raised in a league and an era unlike any other in the history of professional sports," Mark writes in Reborn.

The future of the team and of the league were considered so uncertain that Bobby "Slick" Leonard (the former high school basketball star from Terre Haute who later coached the Pacers to the national championships) was so wary of giving up a secure job as a salesman for class rings that he didn't initially seek the coaching opportunity.

Some early players were essentially being offered second chances to achieve hoops glory. In high school and college, Netolicky was "more motivated to have fun than to play basketball" and had exotic pets such as an ocelot and a boa constrictor, according to Reborn. His eventual teammate Roger Brown had taken a factory job on the night shift after his links to a gambler ended opportunities as a player in college and with the NBA.

Other Pacers history facts:

• Although Reborn indicates that it remains unclear who originally suggested "Pacers" as the team's name, initial announcements referenced the harness horse racetrack at the Fairgrounds near the Pacers' home court at the Coliseum (a pacer is a type of racehorse). Initial reports also referred to the Indy 500, which features a pace car.
• The team's colors, blue and gold, have remained the same for 50 years and are a tribute to the state's official colors - as seen, for example, on the state flag.
• Seven of the 12 players on the starting roster were African American. "That amounted to a bold statement in 1967," Mark writes in Reborn. "Most NBA teams were adhering to an unspoken color barrier that kept rosters half-white at the bare minimum. Even the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers, representing the nation's largest and most cosmopolitan cities, conformed."

As Hoosier History Live kicks off our 13th year on the air, our spotlight will turn to a historic milestone for Indiana's largest city.

Many historians consider Jan. 6, 1821 to be the official birthdate of Indianapolis (it's often called Founders Day for the city) because that's when the Indiana General Assembly approved the site selected for the new state capital. They also approved the new city's name.

So it's an ideal opportunity to present another program in our periodic series saluting the Bicentennial era that stretches from June 2020 to May 2021. The celebratory era began with the 200th anniversary of a meeting on June 7, 1820 at a cabin owned by pioneer John McCormick in what is now White River State Park. At that meeting, which also is sometimes called the city's birthdate, state officials selected the site they would recommend to the legislature.

For this show, we will explore several topics, including some related to upcoming events on Founders Day, exhibits, lost landmarks and how the legislature handled the historic act that approved the site for Indianapolis. To explore more about the latter, our guest, Indianapolis-based Jordan Ryan of The History Concierge, recommends what she calls an "underused resource:" the Indiana Historical Legislative Documents collection.

Jordan is an architectural historian and archivist who formerly served as the coordinator of the Indianapolis Bicentennial collecting initiative and exhibit for the Indiana Historical Society. In that capacity, she helped organize exhibits at the Indiana History Center related to our topics, including a "Lost Landmarks" exhibit that will open Jan. 9.

Major landmarks that have been demolished during 200 years of Indianapolis history - and that we will explore with Jordan during our show - include the following:

• The English Theater, Hotel and Opera House on Monument Circle. Built in stages beginning during the 1880s, the majestic structure, which included the largest theater stage in the state, was a showplace in the Midwest for nearly 70 years. Amid a public outcry, it was razed in 1948 to make way for construction of a JC Penney department store. Many architectural historians consider the loss of the lavish English Theater and Hotel, with its frescoed walls, massive pillars and an exterior balcony for public figures to address audiences on Monument Circle, to be the most regrettable demolition in city history. (During the 1970s, the J.C. Penney store that replaced it was closed. In recent decades, the site has been an office complex that, until last year, housed the headquarters of Anthem Inc., a health benefits provider.)

• And the Indianapolis Cyclorama, a distinctive, circular structure with a dome that was built after the Civil War with the singular purpose of showcasing a gigantic, 360-degree mural that was a public attraction. It was a painting of the Battle of Atlanta created by a team of artists who traveled to Georgia to observe the site of the bloody conflict. In 1903, the Cyclorama exhibition hall was demolished. Since then, its site at Market and Illinois streets – about one block from the Indiana Statehouse – has been used in several ways. Currently, a hotel in the Hilton chain is located on the site.

Founders Day events on Jan. 6 will include Lost and Demolished: Preservation Through 200 Years of Indianapolis History, a virtual program co-hosted by Indiana Landmarks and the Historical Society. The Historical Society also has a "You Are There" exhibit about the pageant and other festivities that celebrated the Centennial of Indianapolis in 1920. Hoosier History Live explored the Centennial celebrations - as well as the ways Indy marked its 175th birthday in 1971 - during our show kicking off the year 2020.

Some of the lost landmarks we will explore during our show - including the Cyclorama and English Theater, Hotel and Opera House - are featured in Indianapolis Then and Now (Pavilion Books, 2015 revised edition), a visual history of the city co-written by Nelson, our host, and Joan Hostetler.

Also during this show, Nelson and our guest Jordan Ryan will discuss some of the names that briefly were proposed for the new state capital before the General Assembly approved "Indianapolis." Alternatives included naming the city Tecumseh as a salute to the great Native American leader, a Shawnee chief who was based in Indiana. Even though Tecumseh and his warriors fought white settlers in battle, admiration for his leadership skills was widespread on both sides.

After the site and name for Indianapolis were approved in 1821, surveyors Alexander Ralston and Elias Fordham were hired to design the city; their plan also will be described by during the show.

Related to some of these developments in 1821, on Jan. 6 the Indianapolis Bicentennial Commission will offer a Founders Day virtual activity for students in third through sixth grades. The lesson involves the original city plat map, called the Ralston Plan, and an invitation for students to design their own city maps; details are posted online.

On the shores of Lake Michigan at the Indiana Dunes, five distinctive houses - including the legendary House of Tomorrow - are the focus of nearly as much public interest as the famous sand dunes. They also are the focus of this encore show originally broadcast in 2018. Designed as showplace homes for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, the houses were brought by barge to the resort town of Beverly Shores, Ind., after the fair closed.

During the 80-plus years since arriving at their permanent location, the former exhibit houses - which include residences known as the Florida House and the Cyprus House - have had their share of ups and downs.

That's particularly true for the House of Tomorrow, which was built to embody futurists' ideas about how Americans would live during the 21st century. With floor-to-ceiling glass walls, the 12-sided house had the world's first General Electric dishwasher, an automatic garage-door opener and central air conditioning. Its first-floor service area even included a small airplane hangar, on the assumption that personal air travel would be common in the years ahead.

"In the midst of the Great Depression, the House of Tomorrow ... offered millions a hopeful vision of a brighter, easier future," noted Indiana Preservation, a publication of Indiana Landmarks.

Perched on the Dunes, the five former exhibit houses are the only remaining structures from the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, which had a "Century of Progress" theme. Since the mid-1960s, the houses have been part of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Owned by the National Park Service, the houses are leased to Indiana Landmarks, the historic preservation organization. Landmarks, in turn, subleases them to tenants who agree to maintain them.

Four of the houses - including the pink Florida House, which has patios with sweeping views of Lake Michigan - are in good shape. But not the House of Tomorrow, which fell into shocking disrepair during the 1990s and is currently unoccupied. A fund-raising campaign is underway by Indiana Landmarks to finance a $3 million restoration, with the house leased upon completion. It no longer has an airplane hangar. Some of the restoration has been done, but no work is currently underway.

Todd Zeiger, director of Indiana Landmarks' northern regional office in South Bend, is Nelson's studio guest to describe the colorful saga of the five distinctive homes in Beverly Shores.

At the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, 1.2 million people paid 10 cents apiece to tour the House of Tomorrow.

In 2016, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the house a "National Treasure," a label reserved for "significant structures in dire straits," according to a story in the Indianapolis Star. Because of their location on the Dunes, the houses take a beating from Mother Nature; wind, sand and the harsh winters of far-northern Indiana conspire to make preservation an on-going challenge.

The town of Beverly Shores was created during the late 1920s and early '30s by two brothers, Chicago-based developers Frederick and Robert Bartlett, as an exclusive resort for "affluent individuals interested in escaping their crowded urban environment," according to Beverly Shores: A Suburban Dunes Resort (Arcadia Publishing) by Jim Morrow, a preservationist in northern Indiana. The town, which has a population today of about 600 residents, was named for Robert Bartlett's daughter, Beverly.

"The House of Tomorrow's nationwide publicity made it an extremely attractive promotional addition to Beverly Shores from Robert Bartlett's perspective," Morrow wrote. "Bartlett had the house sited high on a dune overlooking the lake to take advantage of its transparent walls."

Chicago architect George Fred Keck designed the House of Tomorrow, which the press in 1933 described as "America's First Glass House."

The Florida House was designed by a Miami-based architect. The pink, Modernist-style house at the Chicago World's Fair captivated visitors, many of whom were living in houses built in Tudor, Queen Anne, Italianate and other architectural styles prevalent during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

For virtual tours of the "Century of Progress" houses from the 1933 World's Fair and their restorations, our guest Todd Zeiger of Indiana Landmarks recommends these online sources:

• A Century of Progress - overview
• Our Fair House: Restoring Indiana's Century of Progress Homes