Beyond the Bay · Indianapolis
Old Indianapolis City Hall: A Civic Building With Several Lives
Indianapolis’s former City Hall has served as a municipal headquarters, museum, temporary library and, more recently, the subject of redevelopment plans.
By KLGBT News Desk ·
Old Indianapolis City Hall is a historic Indianapolis building whose uses have changed substantially over more than a century. Built in 1909 and 1910, the four-story structure was designed in the Classical Revival style. Its brick construction is covered with Indiana limestone, and the building measures 188 by 133 feet.
The building opened as Indianapolis City Hall in 1910. It remained the center of city government until 1962, when municipal offices moved to the City-County Building, commonly known as the CCB. That move ended the building’s original role but not its public life.
From 1966 through 2001, the former City Hall housed the Indiana State Museum. It later took on another temporary civic function while the Indianapolis Public Library’s Central Library was being rebuilt, serving as the temporary home of the Central Library during that period.
The building’s history is also tied to long-running questions about how Indianapolis uses its government facilities. In 2018, Mayor Joe Hogsett proposed selling the City-County Building to private developers and moving city and county offices back into an updated City Hall. The proposal anticipated changes involving criminal and civil courts, which were expected to move from the CCB to a new Jail/Courts complex. That plan was not implemented.
A later redevelopment step came on Aug. 29, 2023, when Hogsett announced that the old City Hall and the adjoining parking lot to its north would be sold to TWG, a development firm. The announcement identified a 32-story tower as part of the proposed project. The supplied information does not establish whether the sale was completed, whether construction began, or what the final project would include.
For Indianapolis residents, the building offers a useful way to understand the city’s changing public landscape. It began as a headquarters for local government, became a museum, then supported library services during a major rebuilding effort. Those transitions show how a prominent civic building can remain part of public life even as its institutional purpose changes.
The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. That designation places the building’s architectural and civic history in a broader preservation context, while the redevelopment proposals illustrate the continuing tension between historic public structures and new private or governmental uses. Its future, according to the supplied material, has been shaped by plans rather than a documented final outcome.
Source and reuse information This automatically generated backgrounder adapts text from “Old Indianapolis City Hall” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Indianapolis_City_Hall The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. The source article’s linked references are provided below where available. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.
Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://secure.in.gov/apps/dnr/shaard/welcome.html - https://secure.in.gov/apps/dnr/shaard/r/1cf9a/N/Old_Indy_City_Hall_Marion_CO_Nom.pdf - https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/74000029 - https://web.archive.org/web/20180422144910/https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2018/04/22/old-city-hall-could-become-indianapolis-new-city-hall-again/534051002/?from=new-cookie - https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2018/04/22/old-city-hall-could-become-indianapolis-new-city-hall-again/534051002/ - https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP Image rights Photograph description: 24 June 2021 - Indianapolis, IN - US Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh speaks to LGBTQ Community Leaders including Emma Vosky, left, and Kendall Lockwood, right, at Baby's restaurant in Indianapolis, Indiana. Official Department of Labor Photograph*** Photographs taken by the federal government are generally part of the public domain and may beused, copied and distributed without permission. Unless o Creator: US Department of Labor. License: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AL-21-06-24-A-004_(51269108439).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.