Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Category: Preservation

  • School renovation re-revisited

    Regular readers of this blog may remember that my elementary school, built in 1931, has been undergoing extensive renovation and expansion over the past year and a half. The work is done and students again fill the hallways. But now the school is larger, air conditioned, wired – and, I hope, ready to serve for at…

  • Gas station to be built on site of Michigan Road log cabin

    An 1830s log cabin has been discovered on the Michigan Road in northwest Indianapolis. But a developer has started work to build a gas station on the site, making the cabin’s future unclear. The two-room cabin is part of a larger building on the northwest corner of 51st St. and Michigan Road. The cabin was…

  • Seeing through the Medora Covered Bridge

    The covered bridge at Medora, Indiana, as it underwent restoration.

  • Elias Conwell may have been a rascal, but he sure had a nice house

    One of my favorite stops on my 2008 Michigan Road trips was Napoleon, a little town in Ripley County, Indiana. A grand old home stands where the road intersects with Wilson St. there, and when I photographed it I wondered about its history. The home’s owner saw this photo in my trip writeup and e-mailed me to…

  • On Erskine Boulevard

    My parents moved our family from the cookie-cutter prefab neighborhood that was Rabbit Hill in 1976 to a larger, nicer home on Erskine Boulevard on South Bend’s southeast side. It was my first move, and I excitedly told everyone. My friends on the Hill were all sad to see us go, of course. But adults…

  • School renovation revisited

    The elementary school I attended, a beautiful building that looks like a castle, is currently undergoing renovations. I wrote about it once before, back in April, and shared some photos of the destruction. I was worried that their interior renovations were damaging some of James Monroe School’s character. I was in South Bend over Thanksgiving…

  • Grand old homes along Indiana’s National Road

    When you build a major road, people build along it to take advantage of the opportunities it brings. When that major road stands the test of time, as the National Road has in Indiana, you find some great old architecture along it. This home, for example, stands along the road in Plainfield. I’m no architectural…

  • The General Dean Bridge

    A suspension bridge in the middle of Illinois? Yup.

  • This post about the National Road in Pennsylvania is brought to you by the letter S

    I have this writer/artist friend who tries to get my engineering-school-educated roadgeek goat by saying things like, “Bridges are named after people who stir the soul, the poets and the artists! That’s why you never see bridges named after engineers!” In response, I usually make pshh noises and say things like, “Seeing his design built…

  • The Wilson Bridge on the National Road in Maryland

    Visiting Wilson’s Bridge on the National Road near Hagerstown, Maryland.

  • School renovation

    At first I thought everybody went to elementary schools that looked like castles, with red brick trimmed in white, slate roofs, copper gutters, and wooded yards kept well groomed. The arched wooden entry doors carried on the castle theme. (They were heavy! They were also replaced several years ago with modern glass and steel doors,…

  • The Fairmount House

    The Michigan Road begins in Madison with winding Michigan Hill and its Ohio River view and weeping limestone wall. The Fairmount House overlooks it all from the hill’s crest. Completed in 1872 by Aurelius H. Gibson, who made a fortune in barrel staves and lumber, this home is said to be filled with all the…