Holliday Park

With a tip from John, we recently made a trip to Holliday Park on Indianapolis's north side. The park actually brings a lot to the table that we have not checked out: nature center, 3.5 miles of trails, a pretty cool looking couple of playgrounds, etc. The only things we saw while we were there were a youth lacrosse practice and an Irish setter puppy, both in the shadow of this:

The Ruins! The story is that Indianapolis won these three statues that were on the St. Paul Building, which claims to be New York City's first skyscraper. The building was being torn down in the '50s and they wanted to salvage part of the facade and had a contest to give them to a city. Indianapolis won, probably in part because the statues are carved from Indiana limestone. The parks department seems to enjoy bragging that the statues were "valued at the time at $150,000." They were originally arranged as a work of art complete with reflecting pool, but over the years the art began to accumulate pieces of other old buildings that were being destroyed. And now the reflecting pool and other aspects of the original work are fenced off and have been left to dilapidate. I guess one of the nice things about artwork called "The Ruins" is that the less care you take of it the more authentic it gets.