Stories Worth Celebrating in Maple Crossing
Maple Crossing is where the Crown Hill, Butler Tarkington, Meridian Kessler, and Mapleton Fall Creek neighborhoods come together. The area has a history nearly as old as Indianapolis itself: 38th Street was once named Maple Street, after the trees that surrounded area farms, and constituted a stop on the way for travelers between the city and the separate, northern town of Broad Ripple. Maple Crossing is centered around 38th and Illinois St, north of downtown Indy, and has been a focal point of the Harrison Center's place-based city and community-building efforts.
A few years ago, Maple Crossing was designated part of the Great Places 2020 initiative, a community development project that aims “to transform strategic places in Marion County neighborhoods into dynamic centers of culture, commerce and community.”
Lunch Time 2 by Lorie Lee. This sketch features the McDonald’s on 38th and Illinois, where people and cars can be found gathering at all hours of the day.
A process that typically accompanies the physical revitalization or development of a place is cultural gentrification—when a neighborhood is treated like a blank slate. When this happens, neighborhoods change in a way that, even if it doesn’t result in displacement, the long-term residents start to feel unknown. It might mean the street names get changed, the community boundary lines are altered, new businesses catering to new residents open, or there are changes in the aesthetics of the built environment. Streets in a city, even if the majority of the houses on it have been built within the last five years, are not blank slates. But if we’re not paying attention, cultural gentrification results in the history of the place and the stories of the people being lost. Culture is not a static concept; it is both the stories we pass on to our children and the stories we are actively writing.
These stories are worth documenting and worth celebrating.
Artists have both an opportunity and a responsibility to seek out and celebrate these stories. They have the means of portraying these stories, places, and people in beautiful and accessible ways. Art preserves and translates the history and culture of a community. Through a variety of mediums, our artists are trying to document and celebrate neighborhood histories and make them available to neighbors, both new and long term, to both residents and businesses, so as to make them a continued part of the city’s culture.
Visual artists have captured the iconic and the mundane of life in Maple Crossing, creating sketches, paintings, and photographs that have been featured in places like our galleries, in a pop up gallery at Deering Cleaners, and the creative placemaking installation at the Concord Building a few years ago.
The Concord Building by Justin Vining. This historic building that held many shops and restaurants over the years, was reopened back in 2017. In addition to retail spaces, it has become home to the Kheprw Institute.
Musicians have also written songs to tell the story of the community, including through a Hip Hoperetta, a place based musical history tour written and produced by Harrison Center interns. Episode 5 of the Music in Place podcast featured some of the songs from the Maple Crossing tour. One describes the North United Methodist Church, established in the area in the mid-1800s, with the present building at 38th & Meridian being dedicated in 1931 and where St. Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Sun” can be heard on the church's bells.
Untitled by Nick Boyum. Depicts the North United Methodist Church in the Maple Crossing area.
Other songs dedicated to Maple Crossing tell a range of stories, from the Cheatham and Moore Barbershop, which has been on Illinois Street for 40 years, to long term neighborhood residents, like Gladys, whose voice is recorded on one of the Hip Hoperetta songs, as she recited a poem she learned in grade school.
Listen to Music in Place Episode 5–all about Maple Crossing!!