Stop And Smell The Roses: The Secret of Chatham Passage

TO THE CASUAL passerby, the alley nestled between Tini and the Metro Nightclub & Restaurant in the 700 block of Massachusetts Avenue looks fairly typical—back doors, trash cans, maybe a raccoon looking for dinner.

 

But take a few steps into the alley, and a person will be greeted with a surprise—the smell of English roses. That scent is part of the Chatham Passage art installation. Created by conceptual artist Sean Derry, Chatham Passage was an original piece commissioned for the Indianapolis Cultural Trail at its inception.

 

When construction began on the Cultural Trail in the early 2000s, workers unearthed history by accident through the city’s extensive underground infrastructure. “When you uncover things, it’s very different than seeing them on a plan sheet,” says Cultural Trail president and CEO Kären Haley. “There were a lot of old coal vaults and coal chutes. When people had to have coal delivered, there was a separate drop-off or a way to get the coal to the basement from the street. Sean was very interested in this and wanted to think about how that could be turned into art.”

 

“There’s a lot of old mills and factories that have been converted to residential lofts, including the former Real Silk factory,” she says.

 

According to the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development Historical Preservation Team, the Real Silk Hosiery Company opened in 1922 and sold more than 12 million pairs of pantyhose annually at its peak. During World War II, the company shifted production to support the war effort, manufacturing silk parachute bomb sleeves and pantyhose for military personnel. Real Silk closed its doors in the 1950s.

 

That industrial history, along with the coal vaults hidden beneath the street, helped inspire the Chatham Passage installation. The piece is comprised of four elements: a sunken concrete vault, an intricately designed steel grate, LED lighting, and, perhaps most surprising of all, an underground scent machine.

 

“You typically associate coal vaults and alleys in general with not smelling great,” says Haley. “Derry wanted to think about how you could make something beautiful out of a place you wouldn’t normally find beauty.”

 

Joking, Haley refers to the underground scent machine as the “world’s largest Glade plug-in,” with workers replacing the diffuser regularly as part of routine maintenance. “You should be able to smell the roses from either direction,” she says.

 

“There’s some lighting he created that goes up alongside the sides of the building and some twinkle lights that follow you down the alley to create a destination that doubles as a nice surprise and delight moment on the Cultural Trail.”