Long time Indianapolis cyclist, Larsen Perry, told me about the bicycle ramp that is still on the stairs at the Athenaeum that lead down to the popular Rathskeller Restaurant there. When this began as a German athletic club in 1893, Indianapolis was a prosperous city swimming in the wealth of America’s first oil boom in the northeast part of the state.
Many of Its citizens were able to afford the ultimate extravagance of the day, the HiWheel bike. And one of them the Eagle Bicycle, you see me on the stairs with here, was so popular, due in large part to the legendary Carl Fisher, that Indianapolis was a stronghold for them per this page from my book How Indianapolis Built America.
It was also here in 1912, that Fisher held probably **the most important meeting of all time**, one that changed the landscape of the United States. A man who walked the talk of his boldness, he had started the first Auto Row in the world, when he built the first auto dealership where Krogers on Michigan St is now. He also had already helped to bring about the Indy 500 speedway.
The meeting he had arranged was so powerful, in fact, that by the time he was done telling his audience, many of whom had arrived by bike, that he wanted to build a road across United States from New York to San Francisco, he had raised several millions dollars to do so!
Katarina Paschall, a server at the Rathskeller, took the pictures of me going up and down the stairs with the Eagle, a bike we’d all be riding today (independent steering, the header was eliminated and they could climb hills) if it hadn’t been for another Indianapolis company. When the Diamond Chain Company of 1890 began mass producing chain, they made chain that had been invented in 1880 affordable. Because of Diamond Chain, it wasn’t long before two smaller wheels were doing the work of one and the bicycle that we know today pushed the HiWheel into the dust bins of history.
Here from my book, is the Diamond Chain story..
Other posts about Indianapolis history Martin Krieg created as he wrote "How Indianapolis Built America" are at this link HERE
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