Indianapolis reinvents historic landmark

The Indianapolis catacombs have been a focal point of city history for decades, acting as a popular tourist landmark. As part of a larger redevelopment plan proposed in 2022, Indianapolis began an excavation project to unearth the catacombs in an effort to make them more accessible to the public.

Founded in 1821, the Indianapolis City Market was originally a farmers market. The catacombs, which exist below the City Market and Tomilson hall, are approximately 20,000 square feet of underground passageways which were originally used to transport goods for the above ground market. In its early years, the City Market served as a critical local course for food and essentials. In 1972, the city market was expanded in order to modernize the area while also preserving its history, and officially became an Indiana historic site in 1974. With various periods of restorations and disrepair, Tomilson Hall, and the city market as a whole, went through many iterations of change and reinvention.

Moving into this new era, Indianapolis hopes to reinvent the space, restoring its place as a focal point of community culture.

“The $15 million West Plaza will feature green space, outdoor seating and an unearthed portion of the catacombs to allow visitors to interact with the structures that formerly served as passageways to transport and store goods from the market. To make way for the plaza, the far west building of the City Market campus, which formerly housed a coworking space, will be demolished,” according to an IndyStar article.

This style of restoration is not an uncommon practice. Other historic cities across the U.S., like Boston, have done similar projects of “adaptive reuse” of these monuments in their city’s history.

“I am a fan of adaptive reuse,” said Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, a professor of anthropology and museum studies at IU Indianapolis. “I think it's much more exciting when historic structures are preserved because they're still valued and used as opposed to sort of an enshrined icon that just stands there in some pristine form.”

While Indianapolis has not always been conscious of its city’s history when renovating, Kryder-Reid believes the plan for the catacombs is a step in a positive direction.

“I think Indianapolis has had some episodes where it really didn't value historic fabric, the whole sort of history of ‘urban renewal,’ where there was just wholesale demolition of historic buildings, and tearing things down to clean up for the Pan Am Games and the World Games in ways that are really regrettable,” Kryder-Reid said.

Although this kind of excavation may pose some concerns from an archaeological perspective, the building is relatively new, making the excavation potentially less destructive than that of other older historic sites.

“Archaeological investigation is destructive, typically. I think in this case, it is because of the urban context and the relatively recent demolition of the buildings. It's more of a choice of what remains are you valuing or not, so removing the overburden of late 20th century urban fill may be seen as not being a loss of important context,” Kryder-Reid said.

Like any excavation process, there is a balance between preservation and placemaking. Placemaking is more than just creating a space, but “an effective placemaking process capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, as it results in the creation of quality public spaces that contribute to people’s health, happiness, and well being,” according to Project for Public Spaces.

“We lost some really important structures and just the opportunity to have historic districts. We know how valuable that can be for housing, tourism, identity and placemaking. If this is an opportunity to peel up some kind of very banal paving blocks and reveal some of the historic fabric, I think it's a cool moment,” Kryder-Reid said.

In many cases, some are sacrificed in the name of the other. What is being done with the Indianapolis City Market may be more akin to placemaking than preservation, but that doesn’t make it an inherently negative choice.

“If your ultimate goal was to preserve these arched ruins as long as possible in perpetuity, perhaps leaving them covered would be a better sort of conservation choice,” Kryder-Reid said. “If you're balancing that goal, preserving these foundations kind of in perpetuity versus having them open to be part of a public space to enjoy, to animate, to revitalize downtown, to help attract people in a way that makes the market with the new vendors they have planned, that's an exercise in placemaking. Using some historic fabric that maybe it's exposing it to more wear, but it's, you know, it's not a 2,000-year-old ruin.”

Although the market has been closed to the public since March 1, 2024, the city has recently unveiled a more extensive roadmap for the redevelopment. This includes two primary stages, with the first phase focusing on the foundation and establishing financially sustainable housing and design, while the second phase focuses on the restoration of the City Market house itself and modernizing the infrastructure to accommodate modern vendors.

Abigail Godsen (she/her) is a junior majoring in Applied Information Sciences with a minor in Classics. She is Campus Editor for The Campus Citizen. When she isn’t writing, Abby likes to cook, do crossword puzzles and drink a lot of tea. She can be summoned using anything shiny or books.

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