Automobiles Raise Rating of Alley as Thoroughfare

From The Indianapolis Star, Thursday, March 13, 1924:  The increasing use of automobiles has seen the demand for paving alleys account for more than half of the street improvements according to Elmer Williams, of the Indianapolis board of works.  With many people having some kind of automobile, alleys are more than a place to keep ashcans. Motorists want a mudless, smooth, paved alley so they can put the car to bed at night in a garage.  Even carless property owners with a garage or an old stable on an alley want it paved so they are able to rent the space for an automobile at $5 (2023:  $91) a month.  Requests for paved alleys come from all quarters of the city and since paving is with cement, the cost is much less than in previous years when brick was used.

“Automobiles Raise Rating of Alley as Thoroughfare,” The Indianapolis Star, 13 March 1924, p. 20:3

Auto Saleswoman

From The Indianapolis Star, Tuesday, March 4, 1924:  Laura E. Alexander is the only automobile saleswoman in Indianapolis.  She is employed with the North-Overland Co, 3011 Central Av, the city’s oldest distributor of Overland and Willys-Knight cars.  Prior to her affiliation with the North-Overland Co, she sold Overlands and Willys-Knights for the East End Overland Co, 2630 E. Tenth St.  In 1923, Alexander was one of twenty-one finalists in the Indianapolis Star’s Women’s Safety Driving Contest.  Contestants, competing for $100 cash prizes, drove any automobile of her choosing over a prescribed route through the business section of Indianapolis accompanied by three judges.  The judges noted any violation of the traffic rules and the driver’s ability to operate her motor car.  Contest winners appeared in a safe driving film made by the Ford Motion Picture Co for the Indianapolis police department. 

“Auto Saleswoman,” The Indianapolis Star, 4 March 1924, Willys-Overland Sec, p. 8:6

Net Fans in State Await Whistle to Start Great Derby

From The Indianapolis Star, Friday, February 29, 1924:  The shrill blast of the referee’s whistle will be the signal today for the start of Indiana’s great basketball derby.  In fifty-two playing centers the lithe forms of scores of sterling athletes, trained to the minute after weeks of preparation and careful coaching, will leap into the air for the advantage of the tipoff, and the annual thriller for the interscholastic hardwood championship of the Hoosier state will be underway in all its fervor.  Representatives of exactly 665 institutions carrying the hopes and fears of their constituents will race up and down the floor striving for the upper hand in various elimination rounds for two days to determine the first-round tournament winners.  One by one these will drop, until fifty-two undefeated quintets will remain as the outstanding performers of the original field.