This house always intrigued me as a kid. I’m not sure why. I passed it often – or frequent enough – usually in the car or on my bike. It was in my extended neighborhood. It always caught my eye. Maybe it was the dingy yellow stucco facade – coupled to the red tiled roof. Probably it was the design with the surrounding turrets. I think I thought of them as minarets (though that's not a word my 12 y.o. mind would've known).
The house, to my little kid’s mind, belonged more in Morocco or Spain (as little as I knew about those places). More so than on the north side of Indianapolis. As an adult looking more closely, maybe it's based more on a Spanish design. I don't know, I'm no architect. Other homes in the neighborhood were nice but more conventional, brick or wood suburban houses from the 1930s. So this one stood out a little.
I found myself walking through this neighborhood in 2012 on a hazy, humid late summer morning. You can almost see the humidity thick in the image. I was on one of my many short visits back to the city during this recent period of my life. I sort of stumbled across it. The house hadn’t changed much over the years. It was looking a little tattered.
If you look closely, there appears to be a handbill taped to one of the windows. I wonder if it was a permit for repairing the house. Or maybe to raze the house. The house was pretty old.
I can’t remember which street this house was on. I think it was Washington Boulevard. A couple of photos taken just before this were shot at 46th and Washington Boulevard, near where I would expect to see this house. But a very brief search on Google’s streetview app didn’t find this house on nearby corners. I was thinking it was originally around 45th and Washington Boulevard.
Maybe it has been torn down. If so – and I'm saying this strictly for sentimental reasons – that's too bad in my mind.