Like many areas of the neighborhood, this block used to be home to a smaller manufacturing building and a row of wood-sided, one-story vernacular dwellings. Looking through the city directories, these dwellings were occupied by local carpenters, Edward Campbell, Jeremiah Campbell, and Frederick Meyer, and stonecutter Theodore Frazier.

The manufacturing building on the north half of this block was occupied by the United States Wire and Nail Works downstairs and Hall & Bailey’s capsule factory upstairs. In an 1885 Indianapolis News newspaper article on the thriving manufacturing economy, the reporter wrote: “So down to Shelby Street went a News reporter and found a brick building that contains in itself evidence of both the diversity and importance of the industries of this city. Within it are two enterprises, each sending goods to the uttermost part of the civilized earth…and yet probably not a tithe of the popular ever heard of either.” The Wire and Nail Works manufactured uniform nails, made from wire. The capsule factory created about 30,000 capsules per day, made with gelatine molds. Hall & Bailey’s Capsule Factory would soon turn into the National Capsule Factory. 

By the 1910s, this block was absorbed into the larger Wheeler-Schebler Carburetor Company complex. Part of the facility was demolished in the late 1950s. In 1962, the modern, barrel vaulted building you see before you today was built as a Marsh supermarket grocery store. In the 1990s, it became Bud’s grocery store, before turning into a Goodwill. 

For more on the history of the Wheeler-Schebler Carburetor Company, which would soon incorporate this block into their larger manufacturing complex, refer to 1035 Sanders Street/Wheeler Arts Community. 

The block in 1887 on the Sanborn map. Note that Barth Avenue was called Munson Street at this time.
Credit: 1887 Sanborn Map, MapIndy, City of Indianapolis.

Advertisement for the U.S. Wire Nail Works, 1887.
Credit: Advertisement, Indianapolis News, May 26, 1887.

Advertisement for the Langsenkamp-Wheeler Brass Works.
Credit: Advertisement, Indianapolis Star, January 2, 1955.

Advertisement for Marsh supermarket grocery store the year it opened.
Credit: Advertisement, Indianapolis Star, February 15, 1962,