Days of the Circle's Past: Looking Back at the City Center Cafe
Monument Circle is generally seen as the physical heart of Indianapolis. Circle Street, as the roadway around the Circle was once called (and sometimes it still is, although Monument Place or simply Monument Circle is also used), has hosted a wide variety of buildings of over the years, ranging from residences to businesses and commercial buildings, to religious institutions.
One tenant which has not been as common over the past 20 years, has been eateries and/or bars on the Circle. Today, there are a few spots to grab a bite, including Pot Belly, Command Coffee, South Bend Chocolate Factory, and Sushi Boss, but at various times in the Circle's history, pickings have been rather slim on the Circle. Before any of these current eateries were established, the Circle hosted a rather unique restaurant back in the 1980s, called the City Center Café.
The Café was located on the southwestern section of the Circle, in between the Guaranty and Test/Lacy buildings. This space had once been occupied by an annex of the Wasson Department Store, whose main building was located on the southwest corner of Washington and Meridian Streets. The location of the annex is highlighted in the 1927 Basit map below,
That main Wasson building still stands today and is occupied by the Indiana Department of Health. The annex which fronted the Circle dated back to the mid 1870s was damaged in a fire in 1969. At the time, it was the oldest commercial building on the Circle (the oldest building is the Christ Church Cathedral). After some discussion about preserving the old Wasson annex building it was demolished (I’ve wondered whether any architectural elements were saved) leaving a large empty lot. This lot was transitioned to a park-like space, although there was a rumor that Goldblatt’s Department Store was going to construct a building there. Instead, the empty lot/park was maintained, and in some sources is appropriately referred to as Wasson’s Park, or as in the Sanborn map below, a "public park." This remained in place for the next decade.
In the early 1980s, plans were afoot for a massive transformation for downtown, with the Hoosier Dome under construction and plans for Circle Centre Mall in the works. One piece of the new downtown was a café on the Circle, dubbed the City Center Café. The café was developed by the Commission for Downtown, Inc., the predecessor to the Downtown Indy (now Downtown Indy Alliance) and was part of a $300,000 beautification project for downtown funded by the Lilly Endowment, the city, and private donations. L.S. Ayres was contracted to operate the café. The café’s hours focused on a lunch crowd, with its hours running from 11 am to 4 pm, Monday through Saturday.
The café officially opened on June 2, 1982, with Mayor William Hudnut officiating. The café was mostly open air were verandas and other coverings over the diners. On each side of the café was a gazebo which had previously been used as part of the skating rink which was once operated on the Circle during the winter.
In addition to providing a food and drink venue right in the heart of downtown, the café also hosted special events and receptions. Included among these was a reception in October of 1982, for employees of American United Life Company (known as AUL). AUL had been based on the banks of Fall Creek just west of Meridian until the AUL Tower (now known as OneAmerica Tower) was completed in the heart of downtown in 1982. A welcome reception for the company’s employees was held at the café, complete with a banner which read “AUL Employees Welcome to Downtown.”
While usually a seasonal business, the café was also used as a warming station during the city’s holiday events on the Circle. For example, in 1983, the café was open in December from 11 am to 8 pm daily to provide hot chocolate, “seasonal items,” and a wood burning stove for visitors to warm up around. This was also when the Circle’s skating rink was in operation.
By the next year, 1984, it appears that L.S. Ayres was no longer involved in the operation of the café and the cafe was going by a new name, Circle City Cafe, a similar, if not more appropriate, than the original City Center Cafe. The new manager was Hank Bayt, whose family managed the food service at the Marott Hotel at Meridian and Fall Creek. Catherine “Josie” DeLuca was the new chef, and the cafe’s hours extended to 7 am to 8 pm, although the hours were later changed to 11 am to 10 pm. In announcing the new management, the Indianapolis Star described the cafe in glowing terms: “Its classy, cosmopolitan, chic, and downright surprising. It's the Circle City Cafe, tah dah!”
Live entertainment was also introduced, with a program called Summerjam, which ran from June 28 to July 5. The first installment was jazz focused, featuring Mark Radway Quartet. The next year, the cafe figured into the SummerPops event with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, where it hosted pre-concert wine, beer, and hors d’oeuvres.
Next door to the cafe was the Indianapolis City Center, an event space and visitor center which hosted a variety of city events, including government receptions and history lectures. The City Center was housed in the former Indianapolis Journal Building. That building was later demolished although its facade was left standing and used in a new construction. The cafe often paired with this space to provide food and drinks for the event.
In 1987 the cafe began its sixth year of operating on the Circle, but its operator once again changed and that year the cafe was renamed Rick's Cafe on the Circle. The new operator appears to have been Keith Albrecht, who also owned the Rick's Cafe American at Union Station. This was also the cafe's last year of operation. In June of 1988, a short report in the Indianapolis News announced the cafe's closure due to construction of the Circle Centre Mall. Utility relocation at the cafe site was to take place during the summer, and eventually it was planned that the site would host one of the entrances to the new mall. Construction at the site did not prevent its use for other purposes. In 1989, a news brief in the Indianapolis Star about portable toilets located near the construction site for the Bank One Tower (present day Salesforce Tower) noted that the toilets were being relocated to the southwest portion of the Circle “where the outdoor cafe used to be.” The Commission for Downtown indicated no plans to open another cafe on the Circle at that time.
As it turned out, the former cafe site was not exactly an entrance for Circle Center. After a few years of construction, the location of the cafe reverted to a park-like space, with a walkway allowing pedestrians to cut through from the Circle to the northeast corner of Illinois and Washington, where there was a staircase which allowed access to the Arts Garden, completed in 1995. Technically this was an entrance to the mall, as it could be reached through the Arts Garden. However, that was short lived as the lot where the café once stood was selected as the site for the new Emmis Communications building which was completed in the late 1990s. While early discussions had noted a walk through the building to allow access to the Arts Garden, the later development of the northeast corner of Illinois and Washington into the Conrad Hotel prevented this. The "then and now" images below show the cafe site at the time of its opening, and as it appears today.
Sources
Indianapolis Star: May 28, 1982, June 3, 1982, August 8, 1982, June 28, 1987, April 22, 1988, May 19, 1989, August 23, 1996
Indianapolis News: Jube 7, 1969, September 1, 1970, May 21, 1982, June 5, 1982, December 16, 1983, May 4, 1984, June 13, 1987, June 25, 1987, June 30, 1988, July 11, 1988, June 13, 1995
Indiana Historical Society images, as noted above.
Indianapolis Mayoral Archives, University of Indianapolis
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