City Hall, Columbus, Indiana

Sunday
We had planned on getting up fairly early and getting some more hiking in, but it was a cool grey breezy morning, and instead we lay in a bit longer and had a leisurely breakfast before packing up the camper. As we took our long detour eastwards (avoiding the roadworks I mentioned yesterday), the weather improved and so we stuck with our original plan of stopping off in Columbus Indiana on the way home. Columbus, a relatively small town of around 40,000 is ranked sixth by the American Institute of Architects for architectural innovation and design, after Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Washington D.C. The events that led to this situation began in 1942 when the First Christian Church appointed the Finnish Architect Eliel Saarinen to construct a new church breaking with traditional structures. Then in the fifties, supporting the concept that the built environment is crucial to a quality community, the Cummins Engine Foundation offered to pay the architect's fee for any new school that was designed by an architect selected from a list supplied by the Foundation. Later, Cummins expanded this program to include a variety of public buildings. Other companies and church congregations also decided to seek out architects who would add to the community's quality of design, without the Foundation's incentives. Some of the architects used include names like Eero Saarinen, Harry Weese, Richard Meier and I.M Pei, famous (or perhaps infamous) for his design of the pyramid at the Louvre in Paris, and the John Hancock Tower in Chicago. We parked at the Visitor Center, and with the aid of a very good map supplied by the visitor center, showing all the significant buildings, we set off to explore those in the downtown area - there are many more to be explored out in the suburbs on a future date, when we're not towing the camper behind! The City Hall, shown in the photo, was built in 1981, and designed by Edward Charles Barrett.

One year ago: Fall display