From a distance, renderings of an air traffic control tower that will begin construction later this year bear a striking resemblance to the titular robot in WALL-E — up close, it looks like it could blend right in to any sci-fi movie. You might expect a tower like this to loom over an airport in New York City or Miami, but the sleek structure is being built in a small city less than an hour away from Indianapolis: Columbus, Indiana.
And it’s not an anomaly. In the heart of the Midwest lies a hot spot of modern American architecture, a title Columbus has claimed since the 1950s, and rightfully so — if you know where to look. The city’s church, library, and fire station are among the dozens of everyday buildings boasting stunning designs. Thanks to Columbus’ architectural prowess, it landed in sixth place on the American Institute of Architects’ 2012 ranking of the nation’s most significant cities for design innovation and heritage, per Artsy.
But out of all the locales in the U.S., why did designers choose Columbus? Back in 1942, Finnish-American architect Eliel Saarinen designed the city’s First Christian Church, one of the original contemporary churches in the country. Instead of following the Victorian style popular at the time, Saarinen constructed a rectangular box with mostly buff brick and limestone next to a 166-foot-high bell tower that still stands today.
This stylistic departure set Columbus on a new architectural path, on which prominent industrialist J. Irwin Miller took the next significant step in 1954. Recognizing the power of innovative infrastructure, he launched the Cummins Foundation Architecture Program with a mission of paying the architectural fees for any modernist public building in the city — and the program’s first grant went to a middle school.
“The influence of architecture with which we are surrounded in our youth affects our lives, our standards, [and] our tastes when we are grown, just as the influence of the parents and teachers with which we are surrounded in our youth affects us as adults,” Miller said, according to Visit Columbus Indiana.
Three years later, Miller brought the city’s architectural mastery right into his own home. Eero Saarinen, Eliel’s son, designed a house for Miller that boasted an array of signature midcentury modern features: steel and glass materials, a flat roof, and an open, expansive layout.
It was one of many cutting-edge buildings that sprouted from Columbus following the program’s debut. In 1970, the now-obsolete publication Architectural Forum estimated that from 1954 on, around two “modern masterpieces” were constructed each year in the city, Artsy notes. A couple others include the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, with its concrete waffled ceiling and distinctive brick exterior, and The Republic Newspaper Office and Printing Plant, featuring glass walls on an aluminum frame. Structures like these led The Saturday Evening Post to famously call the city “Athens on the Prairie,” per Bloomberg, a nickname that’s stuck to present day.
By 1992, Miller’s involvement in Columbus’ architecture ended with his last project, Mill Race Park. In the decade following his death in 2004, the industry shifted and expanded to include more involvement from local leaders.
“Columbus relies on incentives and a community-based approach,” Richard McCoy, founding executive director of the Landmark Columbus Foundation, told Bloomberg. “There really aren’t any policies in place. There’s no historic preservation committee, no city-run landmarks committee like you see in Chicago or New York. Columbus has never had a historic preservation commission even though they’re quite common around Indiana.”
Still, Miller’s spirit has lived on. The reputation he forged for the city has been enough to continually attract renowned architects — like Marlon Blackwell, who’s spearheading the airport control tower mentioned earlier, and the team at Höweler+Yoon, who are designing a new elementary school. And if you’d like to take a peek inside Miller’s personal life, his home is now open to the public as part of the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s permanent collection.
“It’s the start of a culture shift, it’s different from what was happening at the peak of the ’60s and ’70s, maybe more community-engaged,” McCoy said. “I’m really optimistic about where it can go.”
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