Butler University

Jan 31

Written By Ayrielle and Krista BadGoodFriends

It was a bright, blue sky fall day. Leaves were just starting to turn color in Indianapolis, but most were still very green. Butler students were in their classes as the halls and footpaths were relatively quiet by the time Krista and Ayrielle came to campus. If the calendar didn’t say it was September, you would have sworn it was still the summer term. We walked past the football stadium where we saw someone throwing a frisbee and meandered towards one of the cooler spots on campus – Holcomb Gardens. The Gardens encompass twenty acres of hillside overlooking a small manmade lake and the historic Indianapolis Central Canal. We slowly worked our way over the tower where the trees were denser to keep the sun off our faces.

For being nestled inside the city, Butler feels pretty excluded from the everyday hustle and bustle. Moreover, it’s hard to believe a campus with such a small land footprint houses six academic colleges: Arts, Business, Communication, Education, Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Pharmacy and Health Sciences probably have the closest cluster of buildings nearest the Gardens (it isn’t the nearest building as that’s Holcomb Observatory and Planetarium which has a zodiac floor that makes any celestial being covet). Krista and Ayrielle walked through the Pharmacy and Holcomb buildings. Took a pause to see the hallway cases of all the antiques of old pharmaceuticals and textbooks. Indianapolis has a long-running relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.

Eli Lilly was the founder and namesake of the pharmaceutical corporation which houses its corporate headquarters in Indianapolis. Lilly was an advocate of federal regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, and many of his suggested reforms were enacted into law in 1906, resulting in the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. One such law is potent and/or very addictive drugs should not be obtained off the shelf but rather require a prescription from a trained medical professional.

These hallway cases not only contained antiques of Butler’s program, but also the history of Indianapolis and Eli Lilly. And the Lily family has ties to Butler as they have donated funds to support many programs and buildings (the most notable is Lily Hall which houses studios and practice spaces for performing arts students). How Lilly/Indiana has influenced the pharmaceutical industry makes the relationship Butler has with the big pharma particularly attractive to any student wanting to study.

Lilly isn’t the only prominent family name that can be found on Butler’s campus. The Irwin Library was designed by world-class architect Minoru Yamasaki. You might be more familiar with Yamasaki, who designed the World Trade Centers that tragically are no longer with us, than the name Irwin. But I think a few motorheads might know the William G. Irwin. William G. Irwin was a wealthy banker of Indiana (Columbus, IN) who had a chauffeur named Clessie Cummins -- as in Cummins Inc.

Yes, Cummins had an idea on how to build a better combustible engine and asked his boss and friend to partner with him in his new venture. Their corporation would later be one of America’s leading multinational corporations that designs, manufactures, and distributes engines, filtration, and power generation products. The Irwin’s are a tour de force in south-central Indiana, and obtaining a world-class architect to design a building always seems to be a caveat if asking a member of the Irwin to help fund something important for a city, university, or corporation. And it didn’t stop with W.G. Irwin.

Irwin’s nephew, J. Irwin Miller, would later fill his uncle’s role at Cummins Inc. as Mr. Cummins was a close personal friend and mentor. Moreover, Miller was a true believer that a healthy business was a result of a happy workforce. This far extended the corporate walls as he was known to blacklist other companies in his community that would price gauge, inflate or refuse to rent, or deny service to employees of color. He put people first at a time when there was civil unrest and during the Civil Rights Movement, there were even talks in Indiana that he would be supported if he wanted to become a presidential candidate. Miller wasn’t interested but like all Irwins/Millers interested in making improvements in Indiana – especially through public works and getting world-class architects to build the spaces of those places where the public works are taking place. Columbus, Indiana – corporate home of Cummins – is also the 6th in the nation for architectural innovation and design – right behind Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. The decedents of J. Irwin Miller and Cummins Inc. today, both have architectural grant programs to assist with building public works for spaces in the state of Indiana and commissioning architects whose artistry would otherwise be unattainable with the use of public tax dollars.

Krista and Ayrielle are no Irwins/Millers but being nuts for architectural beauty, we head towards Jordan Hall. Jordan is situated more in the middle of the campus on the South Mall. It is one of the oldest buildings on campus, built with gothic influences. A photo from a certain angle, you might be able to fool a viewer to think you are someplace in Europe (or Hogwarts). Its exterior is notable for its pink granite and Indiana limestone trim. It is home to the offices of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, but more importantly the office of the President and Provost. Typically, the presidential offices are in a building that resembles the layout of a Greco-Roman temple (think back to Purdue’s Hovde Hall) in an office hierarchy structure with Bursar and Registrar Offices very close by. Moreover, the presidential office is usually not found in the same building where classes are held. Jordan Hall does have classrooms and is thus frequented by a lot of student foot traffic. Even if the current (or past) Butler presidents do have a “closed-door” policy so they can get their work done, the fact that their office is in such an easy access location sends a message to the students that Butler values their presidents being involved in students’ affairs. We did not see the president on our trip, but it wouldn’t be shocking if somehow, we bumped into President Danko as we walked through to the Mall.

We left a few hours after noon wanting to grab a coffee and a late-lunch, early-supper somewhere nearby. Being in a big city, means we are not limited by our options. We decided to go to one of the many businesses close by on the Monon Trail. The Monon Trail is about 25 miles long and remnants of a popular rail that lead from Indianapolis to Chicago. If people in Indy want to meander through their city then they choose with the canal or the trail. After eating, we choose the trail, and after considerable walking and being sidetracked at a plan store (Ayrielle did NOT buy any plants) we closed the Butler adventure and called it an evening.