Sasaki and Assoc. from Boston MA, worked on the design of the original master plan for White River and the Old Canal Channel downtown. Ray R Irvin and Assoc. is listed on the master plan as part of that team. We had countless meetings, presented designs and displayed our design work to the public at every opportunity. The Old Canal downtown was a semi-dry ditch full of trash and blown in waste. I also worked with then Mayor, Bill Hudnut, and Jim Ridenour, who was chairman of the White River State Park (WRSP) planning commission. Ridenour had been the National Parks Director and founder of the Eppley School at Indiana University.
The original plan for the Indianapolis Zoo, also being built at that time, was to put a concrete wall between the Zoo and the White River. I found that totally not in keeping with our celebration of nature and wildlife and Indianapolis’s only remaining natural resource, so the WRSP commission hired Angela Denosia (sp?), a Landscape Architect from California who had worked a lot with natural large stone formats of native stone art and design. She proposed an Indiana natural stone wall that would serve as a backdrop for the zoo and afford a promenade along the White River.
The Indiana Lime Stone Industry donated 1,188 stones (boulders), “flawed stones that builders had rejected” and they were trucked two at a time from all over southern Indiana. They had them lined up on the east side of the river where the old paper company was located. Angela then moved many of them to where they are now where they serve as the backdrop for the zoo. Along the path behind the zoo that resulted, we etched into the rock the story of the Indiana limestone industry and all the nation’s great structures, such as the Empire State Building, Lincoln Memorial, Grand Central Station and the Pentagon, etc, that were built with Indiana limestone. Where the path gets close to the road, we built a small semi-circle theater for gatherings and talks about the White River environments.
There is so much to the creation of the places people walk through every day in enjoying the beauty of present day Indianapolis. Few, however, know how they came to be and the fights it took to make them real. Perhaps they are just meant to stand as the products of uncounted people’s visions for their city.
I used to say that no city in Indiana has been more true to the state seal than Indianapolis. Even though we cut down all the trees and ran the buffalo off, Indianapolis is working hard to rejuvenate its natural surroundings.
I also used to say if there was a river movie about Indianapolis it would be called a Sewer Ran Thru It. That’s unkind but it took that kind of language to raise peoples attention to what they really had. Over 156 sewer outfalls, 14 municipalities up stream from Indianapolis using the water, treating it and returning it to the river the source of 70% of Indianapolis’s drinking water.
But you must try and see beyond the negatives and look at the possibilities. Out of this, we created the Greenways system, the Indianapolis Zoo, White River State Park, Central Canal trails, the Indy Canal and embraced our mistreated remaining natural resource, the White River. Soon, because of the massive Dig Indy project large rainfall will no longer cause excess runoff to drain into the White River.
It is important to understand that if Indy had not turned its back on the White River for most of the 20th century none of what you see today would have happened, it would be developed till it was not viewable. So what destroyed the River saved the River. The pain of nearly losing what we had caused public sentiment to want to see its wonder and majesty restored.
And today the value created, the public’s commitment to use and respect our White River and its tributaries is beyond heartwarming and a point of pride for a great city and it’s people.
I was called a visionary but the vision was supported by thousands of people who saw the possibilities and supported and added their ideas to what they saw. I say, ‘enjoy Indy it’s been a tremendous pleasure to have been a part of its once again now being seen as one of America’s truly great cities!’.
Ray Irvin, Mr Greenway, profiled HERE –
Other posts about Indianapolis history Martin Krieg created as he wrote "How Indianapolis Built America" are at this link HERE
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