Crooked Creek’s earliest recorded landowners arrived in 1821, and by 1835 all of the land in the area had been purchased.  According to early surveys, the settlers found good, level farmland containing spice underbrush and a wide variety of trees including many hardwoods. [1]
 In 1884, historian Berry Sulgrove described the area as having no industry and few residents. [2]
 Today Crooked Creek is a well-populated, racially integrated neighborhood of homes, country clubs, churches, schools, and parks.  Nearby neighbors of the Crooked Creek community include Butler University, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Christian Theological Seminary, the Indianapolis Civic Theatre, The Women’s Hospital of Indianapolis (formerly Humana), St. Vincent’s Hospital, and a large medical complex.

Crooked Creek contains a number of smaller communities, including Crows Nest, Rocky Ripple, Highwoods, Spring Hill, Meridian Hills, and Wynnedale.  Founded as a working class resort in 1910, Rocky Ripple is the oldest of these communities.  In 1926, however, Spring Hill became the first actually to be incorporated, when this long-time home of a small group of upper-income residents (including Mrs. Frank Flanner and J.I. Holcomb) officially became a city.  The 1980 U.S. Census confirmed Spring Hill’s status as the smallest town in Indiana.  In 1927, both Crows Nest and Rocky Ripple followed Spring Hill in incorporating themselves as independent towns.  Unlike Rocky Ripple, however, Crows Nest was an enclave of private estates ranging in size from two to twenty acres.  Residents of Crows Nest have included such leading citizens as pharmaceutical entrepreneur Eli Lilly, Lilly executive Nicholas Noyes, and the Ayres family. [4]
 In 1932, Indianapolis Power & Light executive Thomas Wynne divided his family farm and platted the town of Wynnedale, but the town did not incorporate until 1939.  Although construction in the area began in the 1920s, the town of Meridian Hills did not incorporate until 1937. [5]
  In 1971, each of these towns became an “included town” under the UNIGOV structure and they continue to be governed by their own elected officials.

As wealthy enclaves, these smaller communities developed strict zoning regulations that demanded large lot sizes and prohibited most non-residential uses.  Over the years, these zoning restrictions have faced court challenges.  In the 1950s, following a lengthy court battle, Wynnedale won the right to keep a barrier (erected in 1954) across Knollton Road.  Shortly thereafter, Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation (IHC) successfully sued Meridian Hills to allow the congregation to relocate to a site at 65th Street and Meridian.  The construction of IHC was soon followed by the relocation of both Second Presbyterian Church and First Congregational Church to the Meridian Hills neighborhood. [6]

As befits an area oriented to a middle- and upper-middle class population, Crooked Creek is home to three country clubs–Broadmoor, Meridian Hills, and Highland.  In 1908, Highland Golf and Country Club opened an 18-hole course, designed by Willie Parks, a renowned Scottish golf course designer.  The Western Open (Golf) Tournament was held at Highland in 1925 and 1929, and tennis great Bill Tilden played a match on the club’s tennis court.  Broadmoor Country Club opened in 1921 on land deeded to the club by members of the Fox family.  A Jewish country club, Broadmoor’s golf course was also designed by a Scottish golf architect, Donald Ross.  In response to declining membership, Broadmoor opened its membership to non-Jews for the first time in 1980.  Broadmoor has hosted both the U.S. Women’s Open Golf Championship and the Mayflower Classic.  Meridian Hills Country Club opened in 1923, and as of the early 1990s it boasted the city’s highest initiation fees ($20,000). [7]
 In 1970, a group of African-American professional athletes opened the Indianapolis Sportsman’s Country Club in the neighborhood.  A racially integrated facility, the Sportsman’s Country Club was to have been the first of a series of such clubs throughout the United States.  The club proved to be a financial failure, however, and it closed in 1973. [8]

Demographically, Crooked Creek is home to a variety of religious and social groups.  Perhaps the most striking social aspect of Crooked Creek is the concentration of the city’s Jewish presence in this neighborhood.  Crooked Creek houses four of Indianapolis’ five synagogues, as well as the Jewish community’s educational and community institutions.

Although there might have been individual Jews residing in the neighborhood in earlier decades, a visible Jewish presence began in 1953 when the Jewish Welfare Federation purchased nearly forty acres of land near Spring Mill Road and 69th Street.  They intended the land to be used primarily for a Jewish Community Center, but also planned on donating space for both Congregation Beth-El Zedeck and the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation to build new buildings.  With the help of Lilly Endowment and the Indianapolis Foundation, the $800,000 Jewish Community Center opened to the public in February 1958.  That same year witnessed the move of both Beth-El Zedeck and Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation into the Crooked Creek neighborhood, although only Beth-El Zedeck moved to the original site on 70th Street.  In the mid-1960s, two other congregations joined Beth-El and IHC in the neighborhood.  In 1963, Congregation Etz Chaim acquired the Pleasant View Lutheran Church at the corner of 64th Street and Hoover Road.  Etz Chaim was the city’s only Sephardic Jewish synagogue, composed of Jews of Spanish-Portuguese descent who had come to Indianapolis in the early twentieth century from the Balkan region in Europe. [9]
 In 1967, Congregation B’nai Torah, the city’s main Orthodox Jewish synagogue, built a new building one block north of Etz Chaim at 65th Street and Hoover Road. [10]

Since their establishment in Crooked Creek, all four synagogues have expanded their presence.  Beth-El Zedeck, for example, has funded two major building expansions. The first was the construction of the Kaufman-Schuchman Chapel in 1985.  The second, begun in 1996, added educational space, classrooms, and cafeteria, new libraries with multi-media equipment, and youth lounges.  Beth-El also expanded its presence religiously, when it hired Rabbis Dennis and Sandy Sasso as the first rabbinical couple in American Jewish history. [11]
 By 1995, the congregation  had become the largest Conservative Jewish congregation in Indiana, with a membership in excess of one thousand families.

After successfully contesting the restrictive zoning laws of Meridian Hills, Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation (IHC) relocated to a twenty-acre site at 65th and Meridian Streets in 1958.  The oldest Jewish congregation in the city, IHC was founded in 1856 and adhered to Reform Judaism, the most liberal of American Jewish religious movements, from early in its history.  IHC also has long been a source of civic and charitable leadership in the city as well as a strong advocate for inter-religious understanding.  Among IHC’s early accomplishments was the formation of the Jewish Federation (now the Jewish Welfare Federation), the foundation of both the Jewish Shelter House and the Nathan Morris Settlement House, and a foster home.  During the 1920s Rabbi Morris Feuerlicht led the IHC in active protest against the Ku Klux Klan.   Following IHC’s move to Meridian Hills the congregation continued its involvement in civil rights issues as well as becoming more involved in projects geared toward youth and the elderly.  In the 1960s, IHC spearheaded the creation of a Jewish youth camp and nonprofit housing for the elderly.  More recently, IHC has founded an ecumenical organization called Inter-Faith Alliance and hosted the annual Block Forum Lecture Series, which attracts renowned speaker. [12]

In addition to a congregational presence, the Jewish community maintains several other institutions in the Crooked Creek neighborhood.  The Hebrew Academy of Indianapolis was founded in 1971 by a group of families at B’nai Torah Congregation who wanted an all-day, dual Judaic-secular studies curriculum for their children.   That fall, the school began holding classes in the educational wing of the synagogue. [13]
 By 1977, the Hebrew Academy moved into its own building just north of B’nai Torah, on a five-acre tract at Hoover Road and Golf Lane.  The new 2,600 square-foot facility included a chapel, pre-school area, eleven classrooms, art room, library, science laboratory, kitchen, and multi-purpose room.  Four years later, increased enrollment forced the school to relocate some of its pre-school classes back to the synagogue and to hold Middle School classes in an adjacent trailer.  The next year the Middle School Program was re-designed to be more comparable to gifted and talented classes provided in the public school system.  By 1985, when enrollment at the Hebrew Academy reached more than two hundred, the school converted its chapel into a classroom.  That year, the Board of Directors voted to begin a fund drive for a new wing that would include 25 new classrooms, larger specialty rooms, a computer lab, a community library and a museum.  Ground was broken in September of that year.  From a modest beginning with seventeen students, the Indianapolis Hebrew Academy has become an institution with a student body of 270 and is planning to implement a technology program called Plan 2000.  Plan 2000 will provide access to the Internet, e-mail, a database of the library’s holdings, a bar-code booking system, four multi-media stations for children in K-5, and a middle school media center with facilities for video production and desktop publishing as well as research resources. [14]

The Hebrew Academy and Congregation B’nai Torah have been involved in several landmark events.  In 1974 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin visited the school.  In 1995 B’nai Torah installed the youngest synagogue leaders—Bernard Hasten, aged 28, and Rabbi Shlomo Crandall, aged 32—as co-presidents.  In 1996, noted author Elie Weisel was the keynote speaker at the twenty-fifth anniversary dinner of the Hebrew Academy. [15]

Just north of the Hebrew Academy sits the campus of Jewish Community Center.  As previously noted, the Jewish Welfare Federation purchased a large tract of land to build a community center in the 1950s.  The new structure was intended to replace the aging Kirschbaum Center located in the older Jewish neighborhood further south.  Officially opened in 1958, the Center underwent extensive renovation and expansion between 1975 and 1976.  More recently, the Center has undergone another expansion, adding modernized athletic facilities, a public auditorium, and a new educational wing.

The JCC campus also houses the Hooverwood Jewish Home, which today is the 12th-largest nursing home in the state.  Begun as a day-care program for the elderly, Hooverwood was built by the Jewish Welfare Federation at a cost of $2.4 million in 1970.  Because Hooverwood’s population had become predominantly one of the “sick aged,” the Park Regency Apartments at 8851 Colby Road opened in 1981 to care for the Jewish community’s “well aged.” [16]

While the Jewish Community are perhaps the most visible of religious groups in Crooked Creek, Baptists are the neighborhood’s oldest faith community.  Three Baptist churches operate in the neighborhood:  Crooked Creek Baptist Church at 5540 North Michigan Road; Jordan River Baptist Church at 5311 Fenmore Road; and Progressive Missionary Baptist at 6120 North Michigan Road.  Of these three churches, the only one that appeared in the sources examined was the Crooked Creek Baptist Church.  Affiliated with the American Baptists, Crooked Creek Baptist Church was organized in 1837 with 14 members and has been in the area ever since.  The congregation built its first church in 1842, replacing it with a second structure on the same site fourteen years later.  Following World War II, a third church building was completed in 1951.  Reaching out to other congregations, in 1967 they joined Arlington Heights Church of the Master in sponsoring a program for retarded children. [17]

Pleasant View Lutheran Church, now located at 801 W. 73rd Street, also has a long history in the Crooked Creek neighborhood.  The church was organized in 1844 as Zion’s Church and Sunday School by settlers from Pennsylvania and Maryland.  Although the first church building was located in the Augusta settlement just west of Crooked Creek, in 1855 Pleasant View Lutheran Church united with School District No. 8 to erect a combination school and church at what is now the corner of 64th Street and Hoover Road.  Eight years later, the church moved across the street and changed its name from Zion’s Church to Pleasant View English Lutheran Church.  In preparation for its centennial celebration, the church underwent renovation in 1943.  Its interior was remodeled to conform to “Lutheran appointments,” with changes made to the chancel including the addition of communion rails, cross, candelabra, altar, and paraments.  It was refinished in the Colonial Style with mahogany furnishings and white trim.  The Centennial Celebration of Pleasant View Lutheran Church in 1944 included the publication of a Church History by Mrs. Mary Hessong.  Six years later, the congregation was able to burn the mortgage.  During 1959, Pleasant View Lutheran announced plans for a new building on Hoover Road, although they had no plans to dispose of their church and planned to continue its use after completion of the new one.   Ground was broken in July of 1962 for a new, four-unit church in a ceremony using the 1850 cornerstone.  Plans included a church, a fellowship hall, an auditorium, chapel, classrooms, recreational and administrative facilities.  The following year Congregation Etz Chaim purchased the old Pleasant View Lutheran building located at 64th Street and Hoover Road. [18]

Crooked Creek also contains two Methodist Churches–University United Methodist Church at 5959 Grandview Drive, and White Harvest Methodist Church, 7840 Ditch Road.  According to records in the Methodist Archives at DePauw University, University United Methodist came out of a merger in 1966 between Simpson, Gorham, and Christ Methodist churches. [19]
 Gorham Methodist Church was formed in 1955 by a group of Simpson members who did not wish to move from 11th and Missouri Streets to the new church at 30th Street and Capitol Avenue.  An African-American institution, Simpson Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in November of 1874.  The third member of the merger, Christ Methodist Church, began as an “out-post Church School” founded at 40th Street and Capitol Avenue in 1957.  Ground was broken for the present church on November 30, 1969.  In 1972 a day care center was opened with three children and four staff members.  By 1978 the center cared for one hundred children. [20]

Crooked Creek is also home to two prominent Presbyterian congregations– Witherspoon and Second Presbyterian.  A black faith community, Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church was established in 1896 by a group of graduates and former students of Knoxville College.  In 1968, the church moved to its present location at 5136 North Michigan Road.  First elected to the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners in 1968, Witherspoon’s minister, Reverend Landrum Shields, was elected president of the board in 1970.  During the period between 1993 and 1995, the church was involved in a controversy widely reported in local newspapers.  It began in 1988 when seven members of Witherspoon Presbyterian asked the Presbytery of Whitewater Valley to investigate allegations of financial mismanagement and “dictatorial leadership” against Reverend Shields.  When the case finally went before the Marion County Circuit Court in 1993, a session of elders voted 150-1 to support Reverend Shields.  An audit of Witherspoon Church records did not validate the rumored theft by Reverend Shields, but it did indicate that the church had failed to follow methods prescribed by the Presbyterian Book of Order.  A short time later, Reverend Shields resigned his position and in 1995 he formed the Covenant Community Church.  The former Presbyterian minister was subsequently ordained by the International Council of Community Churches, a forty-year old movement which stresses international and intercultural fellowship.  Its first public service was held on July 10 at Christ Church Apostolic with several former member of the Witherspoon congregation in attendance.  Reverend Shields’ new church broke ground at 5610 North Cooper Road, near the intersection of Kessler Boulevard and 56th Street in May of 1995. [21]

One of the city’s oldest churches, Second Presbyterian Church was organized in 1838 and erected a building on the northwest corner of the Circle in downtown Indianapolis.  During the late 19th century, the congregation relocated to a neo-Gothic building at the northeast corner of Vermont and Pennsylvania streets.  In 1953, the church accepted a gift of twenty acres in Meridian Hills with the intention of establishing a mission church at the site.  Following a lengthy period of negotiation with the Meridian Hills town council over zoning issues, however, the church itself opted to build on the site.  In 1959, Second Presbyterian moved into its current building at 7700 North Meridian Street.  The French Gothic-style building, noted for its monumental architecture, fine stained glass windows, and powerful pipe organ, cost slightly more than $1.8 million.  Former mayor of Indianapolis, the Reverend William H. Hudnut III, served as pastor of Second Presbyterian Church from 1964 to 1973.   Assistant minister of the parish, Dorothy Nevill, became the first ordained woman to be formally associated with Second Presbyterian Church in 1977.  The church entered into association with Westminster Presbyterian Church in the Near Eastside neighborhood in 1982 and, under the terms of the program, Second Presbyterian became involved in a number of neighborhood projects.  Now one of the city’s largest congregations, Second Presbyterian Church continues to display a concern with both social issues and evangelism. [22]
.

Other neighborhood churches include First Mennonite and First Congregational.  The First Mennonite Church began construction of a building at Kessler Boulevard in 1956 and dedicated the structure a year later.  The church had its beginnings in 1952, when a group of medical and dental students and Mennonite conscientious objectors working in local hospitals began meeting at the Volunteers of America Hall.  In 1966, the group became independent of the Mission Board, and by 1982 the church was sponsoring a day-care center at 41st Street and College Avenue. It was also involved in a movement known as the New Call to Peace Making.

First Congregational Church was formed in 1908 through the merger of  the Plymouth (organized 1857) and Mayflower congregations, and it met in a building at the southwest corner of 16th and Delaware streets.   In 1958, First Congregational moved to its current location at 7171 North Pennsylvania Street. [23]
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The three Roman Catholic institutions located in Crooked Creek are St. Monica Catholic Church and School, St. Luke Church and School, and St. Maur Monastery and Hospitality Center.   In 1957, St. Monica Catholic Church and School were dedicated.  Located on an eight-acre tract at 6131 North Michigan Road, construction costs were over $300,000.  The new school was expected to have an opening enrollment of 200 pupils.  An innovative, day-long, Gifted and Talented program for kindergarten and first grade pupils was instituted at St. Monica’s in 1983.  Also that year, elementary-age children from St. Bridget Catholic School began being bused to St. Monica.  St. Luke Catholic Church and School opened in temporary quarters at 7575 East Holliday Drive in 1961.  Built on the same location at a cost of $2.4 million, St. Luke dedicated its new 800-seat structure in November of 1982. [24]
.

St. Maur Monastery and Hospitality Center was originated by monks from St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota as St. Maur’s Priory, an interracial seminary, in South Union, Kentucky.  It moved to Indianapolis in 1967 when a racially mixed group occupied the former Harrell estate at 4615 North Michigan Road and began offering classes that fall.  Within two years, the institution had expanded its pastoral training programs to serve Indianapolis and thirteen other dioceses and religious orders, had been accepted into the American Association of Theological Schools, and announced its master plan for the Catholic Seminary Foundation of Indianapolis.  The plans included a lake and island that required moving more than three million cubic yards of earth.  In 1970, Pope Paul VI granted St. Maur permission to establish an alliance with the Christian Theological Seminary to share faculty and facilities and to hold joint classes.  That same year, however, local residents groups began to protest the seminary’s expansion program.  The Buttonwood Crescent Neighborhood Association filed suit in the Marion County Circuit Court seeking to halt excavation, charging that the construction work had dried up wells, caused structural damage to homes, and inconvenienced area residents.  Supporters of St. Maur’s maintained, however, that the suit was motivated by racism.  While the monastic community continued to promote its plans for an integrated seminary, additional problems arose in 1975 when the Department of Natural Resources opposed the construction of the artificial lake.  Ultimately, the monastery had to scale back its plans.  St. Maur now provides a home for some clergy and houses an extensive library.  The dream of a St. Maur’s Seminary, however, remains unfulfilled. [25]

In addition to the Hebrew Academy and St. Monica and St. Luke Catholic schools, Crooked Creek has several other highly regarded private and public schools.  In 1930, the Indiana School for the Blind moved to its current location at 75th Street and College Avenue.  The Park School moved to 7200 North College Avenue in 1966 and in 1970, following a merger with the Tudor Hall School for Girls, it became the Park Tudor School.  In 1989, the Sycamore School for gifted grade-school children moved to 1750 W. 64th Street. [26]
 As part of the Washington Township School District, Crooked Creek’s public schools were scheduled for redistricting in 1996.  The district schools have had much the same problems in the last thirty years that other public schools have faced.  Overcrowding at Grandview Elementary resulted in pupils being bussed to Crooked Creek and Harcourt schools in 1964.  As a consequence, black students attended Crooked Creek Elementary School for the first time since its opening in 1918.  In 1982 Delaware Trails School at 73rd Street and Hoover Road closed and Westlane Junior High School became Westlane Middle School.  Fox Hill Elementary School opened for the 1991-92 school year and Harcourt Elementary School instituted a pilot program for latch-key children.  In 1994, Westlane Middle School received an $11,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Education as part of the Indiana 2000 program, and it was selected as one of 24 schools in an eight-state region to receive a Pioneering Partners for Education technology award from the Council of Great Lake Governors. [27]

There are several parks in the area for the benefit of both children and adults.  The newest of these is Juan Soloman Park (named in honor of a member of the city Department of Parks and Recreation Board, the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee, and the Mayor’s Task Force) located at 6100 Grandview.  In 1965, local residents formed the Crooked Creek Community Council in order to fight the development of Foxhill Manor.  The group succeeded in preserving a fifty-acre tract which was eventually turned into Juan Soloman Park in 1975.  In 1996, the park was expanded by an additional 22 acres, thanks again in large part to the efforts of the Crooked Creek Community Council.  Today the Council is a member of Community Centers of Indianapolis, Inc. (CCI) and serves as an umbrella for 12 neighborhood associations. [28]

In 1945, George J. Marrott donated an 83-acre tract to the city for use as a park.  The new park, located on College north of 72nd Street, was named in honor of the donor’s late wife, Ella P. Marrott, and opened to the public that same year. [29]
 The most visible neighborhood park, however, remains Holliday Park.  In 1931, John H. Holliday, founder of theIndianapolis News, donated his estate to the city for a park.  Bounded by White River, Spring Mill Road, 64th Street and U.S. Highway 31, the park opened in 1939.  The Holliday home within the park soon became a popular meeting site for various community organizations, including the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Campfire Girls, garden clubs and many others; the home burned in 1955.   Three years later, a national committee selected Indianapolis’ Holliday Park to become the new home for sculptor Karl Bitter’s “Races of Mankind,” statues saved when the Western Electric Company decided to raze the Westinghouse Building in New York City.   Construction began on a new Holliday House that same year and it was dedicated February 11, 1960.  The city commissioned local artist Elmer Taflinger to design a grotto for the statues, a grouping that became known as “The Ruins.”  Work on the Bitter statues was scheduled to be completed during the coming summer.

By the late-1960s and early-1970s, however, Holliday Park was much neglected.  An arboretum and botanical garden, opened in the 1940s, became overgrown, and many of their plant identification markers were lost.  People were arrested in the park for dealing drugs and public indecency.  A Senior Citizens Center, sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of North Indianapolis and the Metro Park Board, did open during 1968, but the Bitter statues project remained unfinished.  In 1970, Mayor Richard Lugar requested the completion of the Taflinger-Bitters project.  Work was finally rescheduled to begin in the fall of 1971, but the original design was altered to include 25 Grecian columns from the former Sisters of Good Shepherd Convent, which  had been razed to make room for a new highway.  By September 1973, Mayor Lugar ordered the completion of “The Ruins” by October 20, the anniversary of John Holliday’s death.  It was dedicated October 21.  But all was not peaceful for Holliday Park and “The Ruins.”  In 1975, descendants of John Holliday opposed an expansion plan for the park; the next year, the city banned motor vehicles from the park, except in parking areas. It continued to be plagued by vandalism.  Nonertheless, in 1977 a contract was signed for installation of a reflecting pool at “The Ruins” in Holliday Park.  That same year, the park became the legal property of Indianapolis.  On September 1978, 20 years after the Bitter statues were awarded to the city, the Holliday Park project was dedicated. [30]

In the early 1990s, Holliday Park became a rallying point for residents of the surrounding neighborhood.  Concerned about the appearance of the park, the extent of crime and indecent activity within it, and the well-being of their neighborhood, residents and park supporters established The Friends of Holliday Park, a nonprofit foundation devoted to raising funds for park renovation and improvements.  Over the ensuing years, the group has raised sufficient funds and recruited volunteer labor to install new playground equipment, restore Holliday’s original paths, and plant new gardens on the grounds.