7. COLUMBUS, INDIANA

Columbus, Indiana

7/11/2009

From Columbus, Ohio to Columbus, Indiana. Hey! They stole our name! Anyway, this town is lauded as having the sixth best architecture in the country. That might sound goofy, but consider the other cities are places like New York, Chicago, and so forth. Since there are just so many buildings to see, we decided to take a formal tour. A guide bussed us around to various prime examples of Columbus architecture, including their I.M. Pei designed library. The tour guide made it sound as though the First Christian Church was their crown jewel – one of the first contemporary church designs. It was interesting that most of the architecture was of that contemporary style. I guess that isn’t the style I imagine when I think great architecture. But I suppose that style has had an artistic impact. It was a different was of thinking. For the second half of the tour we drove away from the central part of town, while the guide pointed out buildings as we passed. The problem with this was, once we moved away from the downtown area we would pass through rundown streets of gas stations and McDonald’s before coming upon a notable building sticking up out of the bleakness. The tour guide explained that Columbus had no architecture regulations in order to preserve the town in any way, so the kind of buildup you would expect in any city was invading the special look the city may have had in the past. Honestly, the tour might have been better if it just focused on the central part of the city. I understand their enthusiasm for trying to show as much as possible, but maybe offering a one-hour tour as an alternative to the two-hour bus tour would be a good thing for them to think about. Laura and I were glad we visited this city now though. It seemed as though after almost every building we passed it the guide said something like, “Well, they just went out of business” or “This building has been for sale for a long time.” Many of these buildings are local banks, which have been ruined by the recent economy. I’m sure the library and the First Christian Church will be there for a long time, but if we returned in fifty years we wonder how many of these other buildings will still be there.