Ball State University Libraries Announce Enhanced Digital Media Repository

The Ball State University Libraries are pleased to introduce a new and much improved Digital Media Repository (DMR), featuring a redesigned interface and incorporating the latest updates to CONTENTdm, the repository’s content management system. The newly designed DMR provides a more dynamic and interactive user experience, highlighting the value of the repository’s diverse digital collections and enhancing the discovery, visibility, searching of digital resources that support learning, teaching, and research.

New features include an enhanced image viewer that provides for easy zooming and panning, allowing users to enjoy a greater level of interactivity with DMR’s varied and diverse visual materials, including photographs, maps, and architectural drawings. The newly designed repository incorporates user comments and tagging to provide digital users with a more social experience. For a list of Drawings + Documents Archive collections currently in the DMR, please visit our website.

User tagging feature provides an interactive, social experience

New image downloading options give users increased access to archival material and educational content. Enhanced Search Engine Optimization improves the discoverability of DMR assets in web search engines, expanding the global reach of Ball State University’s unique digital content.  These new enhancements make the DMR a dynamic and interactive learning and research tool for Ball State students and faculty, and for users worldwide.

Wilkinson Lumber Company Drawings Online

The Ball State University Libraries Drawings + Documents Archive is pleased to announce the release of its latest digital collection, the Wilkinson Lumber Company Architectural Drawings. The collection contains 144 drawings made in the 1930s by the design service bureau of the Wilkinson Lumber Company. These drawings represent plans for 51 houses and one boat dock. Only one set of drawings is associated with an address; the others appear to be stock plans that customers could purchase to build their house. This practice was widespread among lumber companies; several offered similar services, and many continue the practice.

The Wilkinson Lumber Company was named for Indianapolis businessman Allen A. Wilkinson. Wilkinson attended a business college in Glens Falls, New York, as a teenager before moving to the Midwest with his parents. He started his business career in Muncie, Indiana, in 1882. Ten years later, he and his wife moved to Indianapolis, where he became secretary-treasurer of S. L. Greer Lumber Co., a business owned by his brother-in-law. Eventually, he gained an ownership interest in the business, which became Greer-Wilkinson and then, in 1906, the Allen A. Wilkinson Lumber Co.

Wilkinson eventually opened 36 branch locations and built a massive woodworking and joinery shop at 907 E. Michigan St. in Indianapolis, before his death in 1929. Anna Greer Wilkinson then assumed control of the business and ran it through the late 1930s. About 1946-47, the name of the firm was changed to Midland Building Industries. The building on Michigan St., then known as the Midland Building, remained actively used for lumber purposes into the 1970s. It was later turned into the Midland Antique Mall.

Images: Wilkinson Lumber Company plans 482, 441. Wilkinson Lumber Company Architectural Drawings, Drawings + Documents Archive, Archives and Special Collections, Ball State University Libraries.

William Conner Farm Architectural Drawings now online

The Drawings + Documents Archive is pleased to announce the latest digitized collection that is available online for research in Ball State University Libraries' Digital Media Repository, the collection of William Conner Farm Architectural Drawings. The collection consists of 36 sheets by Robert Frost Daggett, including topographical maps, elevation drawings and plans, relating to the restoration of the Conner house and construction of new buildings on the property that is now known as Conner Prairie Interactive History Park. 

In 1934, when pharmaceutical executive Eli Lilly purchased the early 1800s William Conner house and farm in Fishers, Indiana, the house required immediate preservation work to stabilize it structurally and preserve its rich historical details. Lilly, a wealthy and devoted advocate for historical preservation, hired Robert Frost Daggett, a prominent local architect who had designed Lilly’s home just a few years earlier, to oversee the structural work on the farm house.

In addition to restoring the Conner house, Daggett was also commissioned to build other homes and outbuildings on the property during the time Lilly operated the property as a working farm. The drawings in this collection reflect Daggett’s projects on the property, including the Conner house, a garage, well house, and a brick cottage built for the farm's foreman, Tillman Bubenzer.

Image: Restoration of the Conner House: stair details, 1934. William Conner Farm Architectural Drawings, Drawings + Documents Archive, Archive and Special Collections, Ball State University Libraries.

Drawings + Documents Archive plants landscape architecture collection online

Schuyler N. Nolan (1894-1981) grew to love working with plants and designing gardens at a very young age by helping his father work on residential landscaping projects in Vincennes, Indiana, where he grew up, and later Plymouth, Indiana, after his family moved there. His only formal design training came from a three-month mechanical drafting course he took at the Chicago Technical School. He supplemented his brief formal education with, as he wrote, “a great amount of time spent in libraries” studying any materials related to landscaping.

His extensive use of the local library paid off when he began his own landscaping company while still in Illinois. He steadily built his reputation in residential landscape design and did very well until the Depression affected his clientele. He then went to work at the Indianapolis Parks Department, where he designed gardens for the 1934, 1937, and 1937 Home Shows, and then later at the Indiana State Highway Commission, where he designed roadside plantings throughout the state until 1937.

After 1937, he practiced as a landscape architect and experienced much success designing a wide range of commissions. From his work during World War II designing aircraft building plants and Naval officers’ quarters, to tony residential work for many of Indianapolis’ elite, such as J. K. Lilly and Harrison Eiteljorg, Nolan built functional yet artistic spaces for his clients.

After his retirement, an unfortunate basement flood destroyed most of his drawings and business records. He donated the drawings that managed to survive the flood to the Drawings and Documents Archive in 1979. These represent fifty-six commissions, and you can explore examples of his creative and technical design skills through his drawings for fountains, terrace gardens, and baseball fields, now available online through the Ball State University’s Digital Media Repository (http://libx.bsu.edu/collection.php?CISOROOT=/NlnArchRcrd).