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COLUMBUS, IND. -- There's no city anywhere quite like Columbus, Ind.
This is an industrial town of 44,000, an hour south of Indianapolis. It's home to Cummins Inc., the maker of diesel engines, which has both factories and offices here.
And it's also home to some 60 landmark buildings designed by many of the most eminent American architects of the 20th century. Six of those buildings -- all aggressively modern in design -- are already designated as National Historic Landmarks.
How did this happen?
More than 50 years ago, the late J. Irwin Miller, the top Cummins executive at the time, started a program to make his hometown unique by subsidizing architects' fees for any local organization -- church, school, public library, etc. -- that would hire an architect from a list he prepared that included most of America's best 20th century modernists.
As a result, you have a public library designed by I.M. Pei across the street from a church designed by the great Finnish-American architect Eliel Saarinen, a fire station by Philadephia's Robert Venturi, an elementary school by New York's Richard Meier, a hospital by Robert A.M. Stern, also of New York, a town hall by Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and the list goes on and on -- Eero Saarinen, Kevin Roche, Harry Weese, Edward Larabee Barnes, and many more, all of...