Indiana Architects: Vonnegut And Bohn

A row of duplexes built by the late-1800s firm Vonnegut & Bohn has a long history of resilience.
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The Rays’ family home is one of the rare surviving doubles designed in the late 1800s by Vonnegut & Bohn. Photo by Tony Valainis.

WHEN JOE RAY and his wife, Kacy, spotted a “For Sale” sign a few doors down from their Cottage Home new-build a few years ago, they saw a rare opportunity to move into an architectural time capsule—one of five Vonnegut & Bohn doubles that date back to 1888 and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Designed by the powerhouse architecture firm led by Bernard Vonnegut Sr. (grandfather of writer Kurt Vonnegut) and Arthur Bohn, the homes were built as working-class rental properties for grocer Frederick Ruskaup. In contrast to Ruskaup’s own stately Vonnegut & Bohn limestone mansion across the street, the duplexes are quietly elegant, their facades decorated with charming gables and spindlework. “When we lived down the street, I always had front-porch envy of all the Vonnegut doubles,” Joe says.

The partially renovated house the Rays purchased needed a rescue mission. For that, the couple worked with Graydon Renovations, a local construction company that specializes in historic homes. Today, the house stands beautifully restored, a single-family two story with a majestic double staircase, fully functioning wavy-glass windows, period-appropriate hardware, and (bonus!) a noted Indianapolis historian and photo archivist living right next door.

An atomic-age relic. A row of duplexes listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A classic Tudor gem. A marvel of art nouveau design. They might have been conceived by some of the greatest architects in our city’s history, but these homes are loved—and lived in—by everyday residents who invited us in and described what it’s like to live in a home of such understated importance, where every corner tells a story. Photo by Tony Valainis.

Joan Hostetler serves as director of The Indiana Album, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and sharing the state’s visual history. She and husband John Harris, a museum professional who has worked with the Indiana Historical Society, moved into their Vonnegut & Bohn double in 1999. One of the rooms serves as Hostetler’s home office where she does much of her research, including quite a bit of historical digging for information about her own neighborhood. “To me, it’s sort of like detective work,” she says.

Hostetler once interviewed an Indianapolis old-timer who mentioned a turn-of-the-century fire that devastated this entire block. “I was a little skeptical,” Hostetler says. “But I went in the fire records and found that two years after these doubles were built, they burned to the ground. The house to our north survived the fire, half of our house burned, and the other three doubles south of us were a total loss.” Even more remarkably, Hostetler found that Ruskaup immediately brought Vonnegut & Bohn back on to rebuild the incinerated doubles—proof that the current residents of these Cottage Home gems aren’t the first to recognize they are worth saving.

City Blueprints

  • Das Deutsche Haus, later named the Athenaeum—Vonnegut & Bohn’s first major commission and a nod to the architects’ German heritage

  • Herron School of Art + Design, Vonnegut & Bohn’s  three-story neoclassical building that opened
    in 1907

  • The firm’s elaborately Victorian Schnull-Rauch House, an early Meridian Street mansion, now known as The Manor at The Children’s Museum of IndianapoliS

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