"The cohesion has to be there, in order to make anything they want to work through. Programs to increase connectivity and improve walkability are a part of the effort.įormer residents know it's too late to replace what they've lost, but they hope it can be rebuilt for the next generation. "These folks have been members of this community for years and years and years, so this is a picnic I try to make every year," he said. Mayor Joe Hogsett said he's trying to restore a sense of community to neighborhoods. Heglar also lived in Lockefield and drove from Columbus to be at the reunion.įormer residents now savor their fleeting moments together on the second Sunday in July. "It dissipated," Allen's friend James Heglar said The cohesiveness we had as a community, a family, a group," Allen said. But then after that, everything splintered and fractured. Now we just come together for this event," Lockefield Civic Organization director James Bailey said. Now we just keep in touch with each other. Nearly a dozen new buildings have been added, and the IU expansion has become IUPUI. These days, the remaining buildings have been turned into a luxury apartment complex. Most of the complex was eventually torn down in 1983 to make room for an IU Medical School expansion. Over subsequent decades, city leaders refused to renovate. "When you haven't seen them in a while, and then you come back together, it's a feeling you can't explain." It was like we're all kin to each other," former resident Jerry Allen said. In 1938, the complex opened 748 modern apartments for low-income Black families. Lockefield was Indy's first public housing project. They were rehabilitated, and 11 new buildings were constructed with 493 total units, 199 of which are in the historic structures.INDIANAPOLIS - On Sunday, families gathered in Riverside Park for the annual Lockefield Gardens reunion. The 7 remaining original buildings were designated as an official Indianapolis historic district that same year (see Historic Districts). Under this plan, all but seven of the original buildings would be demolished, replaced with new construction, and the remaining original buildings renovated.ĭespite determined opposition from local preservationists and interested citizens, the demolition occurred in 1983. In 1980, as part of a general proposal billed as a revitalization of Indiana Avenue, the neighborhood-based Midtown Economic Development Industrial Corporation (MEDIC), IUPUI, and Wishard Memorial Hospital agreed to a plan to vacate some of the lands the development occupied, primarily for the expansion of the university. Hugh Dillin interpreted the plan as a means of perpetuating residential-and thus educational-segregation. In the 1970s the city attempted to devise a redevelopment program for the complex, but federal Judge S. Units became vacant, and the development fell into general disrepair. With new housing options open to more affluent members of the African American community, and with many residents being excluded from Lockefield by new income restrictions, the development gradually lost residents. Lockefield Gardens maintained this central role until the 1950s when there was national pressure to make housing available to Blacks in what had traditionally been white residential areas. The apartment complex formed the heart of the African American community just northwest of Mile Square. Initially, Lockefield was racially segregated, but it offered Black residents a community-oriented place to live. Monthly rents ranged from $20.80 for a three-room apartment to $30.10 for a four-room group house. Opened in February 1938, Lockefield Garden Apartments offered comfortable apartments at a reasonable price.
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