A Visit to Columbus - Indiana That Is"

Wednesday, August 5, 2015
This afternoon the four of us traveled south to a city that bills itself as "unexpected.unforgettable." Columbus Indiana is a city of about 45,000 yet it is ranked 6th in the U.S. for architecture innovation with over 70 buildings and public works of art by noted architects and artists.

It all started when the North Christian Church needed a building back in the early 1960's and commissioned Eero Saarinen to design the building. The CEO of Cummins Engines, J. Irwin Miller, said his company would pay for the architect as long as it was from his list of well know architects. He agreed then to do this for new local schools, businesses, and other churches after the North Christian Church was completed.

One of the intriguing parts of this church is the way they designed their parking lot so you can barely see the cars from the church.  Each row is hedged so the cars pull up to hedges that are high enough to block a view of them.  The area around the lot is full of trees although it appeared a bad storm had been through recently as many of the trees were down or huge branches broken off.

Anyway, back to the story of the town.  Eventually architects, landscape architects and well known artists requested opportunities to complete projects in the city.  And the result is a very unique town that draws visitors from all over the world.

We ran into some problems getting there because of construction and an accident on the expressway that ended up closed, but after much changing of directions we managed to get there and stop first at the Visitor Center (note the "artsy" bike racks in front - and also all over town)

to see a film, get maps and see the Chihuly chandelier that hangs in the window.

And four of these "blossoms" are below it in the long 2 story window.

Everyone had come hungry as we'd mentioned the beautifully refurbished ice cream parlor, Zaharakos, in the center of town so the first thing we did was walk over there for lunch and of course ice cream

Behind us you can see the "Welte orchestration" that provided music to patrons.  In fact, it still does on occasion.  In the side room which is treated like a museum of items from ice cream parlors there are some other orchestrations on display as well as soda fountains.

These are a couple of the fountains from the 1800s. They are very ornate - just neat to see.

And here is another one

This room is used for private parties so also has tables and chairs and a marble counter and dispensers along the opposite wall

We then just spent some time wandering through the downtown area looking at the various refurbished old buildings as well as the landscaping and newer more modern buildings.  Beautiful flowers were everywhere in huge pots on the lamp posts and grouped at each corner

This was an older home near where we were parked

This is the very modern city hall

This is the nearby county court house with the Veterans Memorial square beside it.

The Veterans Monument is very interesting.  It is made up of many pillars that either have names of area men and women who lost their lives while fighting or engraved letters written home by them along with the name of the writer and where they died.

You can see Bette inside reading letters if you look closely up above.  This is what she was seeing

Right around the corner is this building called the commons with a variety of entertainment offerings including a huge children's play area

And this interesting art object called "chaos" with several moving parts 

Just a couple of blocks away is the Cummins Engine Headquarters along with several other of its buildings all beautifully landscaped. The shot below is aimed toward the cafeteria area with an outdoor fountain and these beautiful walkways are all around the outside of the building except at the main entrance. where there is a huge engine 

Inside are displays of engines including ones similar to what is in our motorhome along with this exploded engine 

And some cars and trucks with Cummins engines like this race car

On our way back to the car we walked through this little mall area

toward the library

(note the tree and garden on the second floor)

Across the street is this church - the arch art piece is in the mall at the front of the library

Next door is the huge old Irwin home (where the CEO of Cummins had grown up) which is now a bed and breakfast.  It has beautiful gardens we could peek through the fence and see.  They are open to the public a couple of times a week for a charge

It was getting late so we left the city having seen only a very tiny piece of it and headed back to our RVs ready to rest a bit and then call it a night.