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Unique buildings, wooded park rise amid fields of Indiana
By ROBERTA SOTONOFF Special to the Journal Sentinel
Sunday, March 30, 2003
Lots of people think of Indiana as flat and farm-filled. Well, about 40 miles south of Indianapolis there are places and spaces that are different. The places are Columbus, a little town of 38,000, and the undulating, wooded area of Brown County and its quaint town of Nashville.
In Columbus, such architectural masters as Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Harry Weese and I.M. Pei, as well as artists Dale Chihuly, J. Seward Johnson Jr. and Henry Moore have plied their skills. Less than 20 miles west of these structures and sculptures are the open spaces of Brown County.
Columbus is perfectly described by a Winston Churchill quote: "We shape our buildings and in return, they shape us."
If the town hadn't been able to attract well-known artists and architects, its only claim to fame might have been that Col. Sanders went bankrupt here before he started frying chickens in Kentucky.
How Columbus attracted renowned architects and artists is an interesting story.
The idea germinated in the mid-20th century, when the First Christian Church congregation decided on a new building. They contacted Eliel Saarinen, but the famous architect had no desire to build an ostentatious church in a small town. Irwin Miller, the CEO of the Columbus-based, Fortune 500 Cummins Engine Co., convinced Saarinen that the congregation wanted something simple.
That went right along with Saarinen's train of thought, and he agreed to design the church. Its clean lines, Finnish accents, asymmetrical sanctuary and an adjacent reflecting pool made it one of the country's first modern churches. (The pool was later eliminated because too many people fell into it, and the church could not afford the liability insurance.) But the church's unusual design attracted national attention.
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