In 1820, state commissioners gathered at settler John McCormick’s cabin along the White River to select a new state capitol, the future City of Indianapolis: a ten-block by ten-block square area referred to as the Mile Square, centered by Monument Circle with four outward radiating avenue streets, including Virginia Avenue, moving towards each corner of the Mile Square. The Mile Square is bounded by North Street to the north, East Street to the east, South Street to the south, and West Street to the west. Adjacent to the southeast corner of the Mile Square was the future western boundary of the Fletcher Place neighborhood, bisected by Virginia Avenue, our future commercial thoroughfare. 

Indianapolis expanded outward from the original Mile Square as more settlers populated the growing city, including to the southeast. The near southside and southeast side developed quickly after the railroad reached the young city in 1847. Many of these early settlers were coming from the East or Upland South for new economic opportunities; immigrants, including Irish, German, and Italian immigrants, traveled to Indianapolis to work on the Central Canal project, the rapidly growing railroad industry, and other commercial and industrial opportunities. 

Fletcher Place’s namesake comes from Calvin Fletcher, Sr., who owned the “Wood Lawn” farmstead in this area, the north side of Virginia Avenue in the Fletcher Place neighborhood. Calvin Fletcher came to Indianapolis with his wife Sarah Hill Fletcher in 1821 to practice law; the successful businessman would go on to serve in the state legislature, organize the State Bank of Indiana, and advocate for public schools and churches. Fletcher and Nicholas McCarty purchased the 264-acre farm in 1835. Here, Fletcher’s large family of eleven children, many of whom would go on to be prominent citizens, lived in the Wood Lawn estate and farmed the area. In 1857, the Wood Lawn farm was sold and then platted into individual lots, creating the foundation for what would become our district’s neighborhoods. The name “Fletcher Place” itself was most likely first utilized as early as 1872, according to the neighborhood’s National Register of Historic Places nomination. 

Fletcher Place represents the traditional 19th century Indianapolis neighborhood of smaller working class cottages in Victorian, or detailed, and vernacular, or simplistic, styles in a densely platted neighborhood. The neighborhood is full of homes, commercial buildings, and some schools and churches; homes started to populate the neighborhood in the 1860s. Most of the historic structures you see in Fletcher Place today were built between 1865 and 1890. A mile east of the neighborhood was still full of farms and meadows as the city boundaries had not crossed Prospect and Shelby Streets yet. Related, the western part of Fountain Square, or west of Shelby Street, was starting to develop into lots at this time. And the Citizens Railway streetcar line, the popular form of public transportation, traveled all the way down Virginia Avenue to Shelby Street and Prospect Street, at the end of the streetcar line. Yes, our district was developing into a neighborhood – and a thriving community of immigrants, workers, leaders, artisans, and advocates.