Lights in the Darkness

On Saturday (7-10) I thought it would be nice to take Amy out for the afternoon. Nothing fancy or expensive, just some old fashioned Indy exploration. Sometimes I like to look for interesting places that I've passed by a hundred times but never seem to find the actual time to visit. The Morris-Butler House Museum is one of those types of places.



The house was built between 1864-65 in the Old Northside Historic District of Indianapolis. It's a block or two west of College & 13th. There are tours scheduled every hour. The cost is $5 per adult. Amy & I were the only ones on the tour.

The Morris-Butler museum had been restored as close to its original state as possible and it was quite beautiful. However, one of the rules was that photography was ok, using a flash was not. I didn't have a tripod, and it was pretty dark in there so I was bummed that I wasn't going to get any interesting photos...


But then I saw the first of many beautiful hand painted or etched glass encasements for the lighting and thought it could be fun to do a little series of these colorful beacons in the dark Victorian mansion.



In 1964, the house was nearly destroyed to make way for I-70 when Eli Lilly intervened in and provided funding for restoration. Apparently he grew up a block or two away from the house and had known the Butlers and was quite fond of the building.



The house was then open to the public in 1969. The Indiana Landmarks Society staffs the house for tours and hosts events and art galleries. Hoosier Salon has a gallery in the basement.


We spent about an hour there walking and chatting with the tour guide about life back then, and had a really great time. It may have been one of the more memorable ten bucks I spent this summer (aside from cliff diving)





After the house tour, we continued down to the Mass Ave. district which ended up being a really great time too. I'll maybe blog about that in the near future if I find the time.