AMONG MERIDIAN-KESSLER’S leafy grid of streets featuring one architectural gem after the other, the imprint of a civic-minded architect named Edward Pierre is unmistakable. During the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, he designed scores of homes in Midtown—by some estimates, at least one house per block between 38th and 62nd streets—in his signature eclectic style blending elements of Tudor, art deco, colonial revival, and prairie into grand but livable spaces. Pierre’s arched entries, steep gables, and leaded-glass windows helped shape the look of the city’s most beloved streetscapes.
At 5654 N. Delaware St. (above), family doctor Jason Lee is only the third owner of his 1928 Pierre-designed home. “I used to walk by it as a kid and think it looked like a castle,” Lee says. Now raising the fifth generation of his family in Meridian-Kessler, Lee appreciates the home’s graceful proportions, light-filled formal rooms, and leaded glass windows. “There’s a sense of elegance to how the rooms open into one another,” he says, “and you just don’t see that kind of natural light in homes from that era.”
A few blocks away, the sleekly curved art moderne residence at 5601 Washington Blvd. (right) is a bit of a celebrity (as owner Don Altemeyer pointed out, this is the fifth time Indianapolis Monthly has included his rare residential time capsule in its pages). The home is captivating, not only because of its sweeping limestone curves, flat roofline, and sexy horizontal flow, but also because it is Pierre’s boldest departure from his signature brick Tudors. Commissioned in 1938 by jeweler Adolph Blickman and his wife Fanny, it features glass pocket doors, an oval dining room, and some original decor.
Pierre’s granddaughter, writer Lisa Hendrickson, finds the home especially fascinating. While researching for an upcoming coffee table book featuring her grandfather’s work, she interviewed the original owner’s son, Sol Blickman, before he died in 2006. In high school when the home was built, he shared stories about the building process—including the fact that the house’s original footprint was too big for the lot. “So they bought 15 feet from the neighbor’s lot,” Hendrickson says. “Because they wanted the house to have, as Sol Blickman called it, ‘a very graceful curve.’”
City Blueprints
- Edward Pierre’s brick and terra-cotta Clinehens Building at 54th Street and College Avenue, now home to the Jazz Kitchen and Yats
Oxford Gables Apartments at 3815 Washington blvd., which pierre built in 1925 as luxury residences
A midtown landmark that has been a 7-Eleven, Double 8 Foods, Next Door Eatery, and Gallery Pastry Shop since pierre’s original Kroger design
