Woodruff Place Neighborhood Tour

Stroll the historic tree-lined esplanades of Indianapolis’s Woodruff Place on a guided tour of the city’s first planned residential suburb. Entrepreneur James O. Woodruff purchased and platted the 80-acre district in 1872 east of downtown Indianapolis, creating an upscale, park-like neighborhood with stately homes, often cited as inspiration for settings in Booth Tarkington’s early twentieth-century novels. Woodruff Place’s unique cultural and historic importance was recognized in 1972 when it became Indianapolis’s first neighborhood to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today, neighborhood residents maintain the historic district’s distinctive public infrastructure—esplanades, fountains, statuary, planting urns, multi-globed streetlights, and decorative concrete fence—with funds raised by the city’s first neighborhood Economic Improvement District and by the Historic Woodruff Place Foundation. These efforts earned the all-volunteer group Indiana Landmarks’ Servaas Memorial Award in 2014.

Indiana Landmarks’ guided tours on May 9 highlight Woodruff Place’s long and storied history and include an inside look at three private homes not ordinarily open to the public, in addition to the neighborhood’s 1920s Tudor Revival-style Woodruff Town Hall, built when Woodruff Place functioned as an independent municipality. As a special conclusion to the tour, the Woodruff Place Foundation invites attendees to enjoy light refreshments and chat with neighborhood residents.

This tour departs from Woodruff Place Town Hall (735 Woodruff Place East Drive, Indianapolis). Groups will cover approximately 1.5 miles over the course of two hours.

Presented in partnership with the Historic Woodruff Place Foundation and Woodruff Place Civic League.

Refund requests must be received at least seven days in advance of the tour date.

Host or Publisher Indiana Landmarks