Council Limits Home Residence

From The Indianapolis Star, Tuesday, March 16, 1926:  By a vote of 5 to 1, the Indianapolis City Council passed an ordinance last night prohibiting establishment of homes by Negroes or white persons in districts inhabited principally by persons of opposite color except with consent of a majority of property owners in the communities concerned.  Councilor Austin Todd sponsored the resolution on behalf of the White People’s Protective League.  Nearly one thousand spectators packed the council chamber and enthusiastically shouted and cheered at the passage of the ordinance.  After casting the “no” vote, Democrat Councilor Edward Raub said, “I don’t think this Council has the power under the law to put such an ordinance into effect.  The Council is limited under the law, let alone the constitutionality of the question.”  Later, Mayor John Duvall signed the segregation ordinance into law.   

“Council Limits Home Residence,” The Indianapolis Star, 16 March 1926, p. 1:6

New Elevator is Building

From The Indianapolis Star, Friday, March 12, 1926:  Construction has started on a mammoth grain elevator with a capacity of 1,000,000 bushels on the Big Four Railroad west of Sloan Av, near Beech Grove.  The grain terminal will be one of the largest in the Midwest with eighteen giant concrete tanks and an elevator workhouse. It will be leased to Early & Daniel Co, a large Cincinnati, Ohio grain dealer, which has a contract for storage, processing, and handling grain with the Indiana Wheat Growers Association, a cooperative marketing subsidiary of the Indiana Farm Bureau Federation.  Designed by local architects Bacon & Tislow and underwritten by Indianapolis financiers, the $300,000 (2024:  $5,425,458) project is being built by R. C. Stone Engineering and Construction Co, a St. Louis firm, and will be completed in time to receive this summer’s wheat crop.

“New Elevator is Building,” The Indianapolis Star, 12 March 1926, p. 23:6

Belt Work Speeds East Side Growth

From The Indianapolis News, Wednesday, March 3, 1926:  The rise of steel-reinforced concrete abutments and pillars at East Tenth St and the Belt Railroad as part of the city’s railroad elevation program will soon open East Tenth St into Sherman Dr and on east without the hazard of a grade level crossing by providing a safe passageway beneath the tracks.  This project is one of several intervals through the ten-foot elevation that has led to a record pace of progress in industrial expansion and further development of the adjoining residential district.  About 250 new homes have been built in the last year in the Shannon Park addition between Sherman Dr and Grant Av.  Farther east, other residential additions also are being rapidly developed.  Capitol Lumber Co, Marietta Glass Co, and Insley Manufacturing Co are among the industrial concerns expanding operations.   

“Belt Work Speeds East Side Growth,” The Indianapolis News, 3 March 1926, p. 1:8