Sunday, May 18, 2008

Downtown Indianapolis - 1968


Here's a noontime street scene from downtown Indianapolis in the summer of 1968.
I was walking east on the north side of Market Street between Monument Circle and Pennsylvania Street with my Honeywell Pentax, with 28mm lens, slung around my neck and a roll of Kodak Tri-X 400 ISO film loaded. Without raising the camera to my eye, I tripped the shutter. The young woman on my left obviously thought I was up to something.
The building on my left was the American Fletcher National Bank, which was bought by Bank One and later by Chase - a consequence of the people at the top realizing you could make more money selling banks than by running them.
If we had an unobstructed view east on Market, we could see where Market Square Arena would be built a few years later. It lived out its useful life as a concert venue and the home of the Indiana Pacers and was demolished a few years ago.
It might be interesting to know what became of the dozen people captured in this frame 40 years ago this summer. Notice that everyone is "dressed up" by today's casual standards - dresses for the women and girls, coats and ties for the men. No jeans, no t-shirts, no flip-flops, no scrubs or sleepwear.
When I was a kid, just a decade earlier, it was understood that you dressed up - put on good clothes - to go downtown in Indianapolis.

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