Indianapolis Traction Terminal - Block 47 [4]

I made some improvements on the map of block 47. The station and the building were aligned 10 ft behind the property boundaries on Market Street. 

Sidewalks 20 ft wide were added, and Hotel St.Denis, later called Hotel Stratford was added. The location of this hotel is important, because it figures on some interesting photographs.

All figures are written in feet.inch, not in decimal feet.

Indianapolis Traction Terminal - Question from a sidewalk superintendent

Walking virtually in West Market Street, I was impressed by the large sidewalks. But how large they was really in early years, before the automobile invaded the streets?

According to the Indianapolis Baist Atlas from 1916 , streets were 90 ft wide between the property boundaries. But this Atlas don't mention the sidewalks. Thanks to this board message , I found this
photo dating from 1906, taken from the top of the Sailors' and Soldiers' Monument.

The perfect alignment in the centre of West Market Street permitted it to me to draw some helper guidelines. According to this photo, the sidewalks were exactly 20 ft wide; 50 ft remaining for the paved road.

The curves of the wye junction in front of the State Capitol are very sharp. But this will be the next question for the sidewalk superintendent...

Extract from a photo of the Indiana Historical Society

Indianapolis - Walking around Block 47 [3]

The time is ready to place the station, the building and shed of the Traction Terminal in my master-blueprint. Calculating and recalculating, there is still a gap of 8 inch in front of the ITT building and Illinois Street. Anyway, it should be like this. The track centrelines are not really in place. Before, I must achieve some research.

Indianapolis - walking around Block 47 [2]

Looking to the terminal through Market Street, all photos shows at evidence: the shed and the traction building where not aligned to the same baseline as the shops and buildings west of the station. The terminal was build some feet behind the property border, probably to avoid curved tracks under the shed. But I have found no indication about the width of this unbuild strip. 

To resolve this enigma, first some simple maths: the company property between Market and Wabash Street was 195ft wide. the Terminal building was 164ft 163.8 wide. So a total of 31ft 31.4 ft are remaining north and south of the building. If the strip north oft the building was perhaps 21.4 ft wide, the distance to the alignment in Market Street could be 11ft 10 ft. Does anybody have more exact data?

There is one photo (http://www.shorpy.com/node/3084) who gives me a chance to try a check. This image is of considerable interest, not only for the street scene. As this photo was taken in 1943, tracks were removed, but the terminal was not altered. No other photo shows the "dead angle" of the terminal like this one. 

I draw some auxiliary lines over the photo. If the man with his hat was 6ft high, the strip south of the terminal was 10 or 11 ft wide. Experts will calculate more exact, perhaps using the diameter of a vintage Greyhound bus wheel... 

Indianapolis Traction Terminal - the shed

To start this new theme, a small but delightful detail extracted from this extraordinary photo http://images.indianahistory.org/u?/P0130,1623 : one of the ten cast iron rosettes who orned each front of the terminal shed at every cross section of the trusswork. The rosette looks like this after treatment in Photoshop and Illustrator:

Indianapolis Traction Terminal - sources & forums

The internet site http://indianarailroads.org is hosting a forum with a rubrique about interurbans in Indiana: http://indianarailroads.org/board/index.php?board=6.0.

One topic is specially dedicated to the Indianapolis Traction Terminal: http://indianarailroads.org/board/index.php?topic=2250.0 . This topic was opened by Matt Austin from Australia who wants to create an MS Trainsim version of the terminal.

The topic contains many interesting links to online photo sources, specially in this post of Nathan Bilger .