March Madness + Sullivan Fever, part 3

One of the most interesting collections of material here at the Drawings + Documents Archive is the trade catalog collection, which contains marketing publications directed to architects and those in building trades. Some of the earliest examples tout the long-lasting benefits of lead paint and durability of asbestos flooring for schools and hospitals, all printed long before the hazards of the materials were discovered.

The collection is a rich resource of ephemeral material that reflect what was valued at the time it was printed. As you might have seen in an earlier post about the mid-century concrete masonry publication, Pictorial, which highlights mid-century geometric designs with a decidely post-war American aesthetic.

We have been working on cataloging and reboxing our large trade catalog collection for the past year, and are nearly finished. It has been a year of discoveries, more of which you'll see in posts to come.

Here we have a page from a 1951 booklet of basketball backboard designs from the J.E. Porter Corporation, based out of Ottawa, Illinois. The first few pages of the book describe the differences between backboard designs and height regulations for grade school, high school, college, and professional basketball courts. The single pedestal backstop shown in this drawing is meant for college-level teams.

March Madness + Sullivan Fever

Here in the Hoosier state, we're suffering from a few afflictions these days. Butler University, located in Indianapolis, has had an exciting men's basketball season and is now slated for the Final Four round of the NCAA Basketball Championship tournament, which will be played this Saturday in Indianapolis. Hoosier hysteria over basketball is widely known, thanks to the film Hoosiers and legendary IU coach Bobby Knight, and Butler's success is whipping the state into a full-on frenzy of all things basketball.

From a recent request here at the archive for drawings of Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse, an extraordinary structure built in 1928 that was the largest fieldhouse in the country at the time, we learned that we do not have any drawings of that building. We do, however, have material on other gymnasiums and fieldhouses around the state. Every day until Butler's final game, which will hopefully be the championship game, we will add a new basketball-related item in our collection to the blog.

This is a ca. 1960s postcard photograph of Muncie's Fieldhouse, built the same year as Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse, but with a more traditional design. On the back of the card, it describes it as the "home of the Muncie Bearcats basketball team which has already won five state championships. It was built in 1928 and seats 7,500 people. Muncie is known as the 'Basketball Capital of Indiana'"

Not only used for basketball, the Fieldhouse was home to Eleanor Roosevelt's first visit to Muncie and speech on October 27, 1939. She addressed the challenges facing youth during the Depression. A few years later, in 1942, Abbott and Costello rallied the community in the Fieldhouse to support the war bond effort.

Sullivan fever is hitting the College of Architecture and Planning! The Indiana premiere of Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture is just a week away--April 6th at 7:30. The exhibit DiCSX, about the digital recreation of Sullivan's legendary Chicago Stock Exchange building, is up in the gallery. The last day to see the cornice of the building on display will be April 6th. So, come for the film AND the exhibit. Here's a picture from the opening of Prof. Michele Chiuini and his students K.C. Pavlik, Steve Allen, and Jessica Coleman, along with part of the building cornice: