This year, we cel­e­brated Thanks­giv­ing at my sister’s apart­ment in Indi­anapo­lis. It was a fun change from the usual rou­tine. The food came out well and every­one enjoyed themselves.

Many fam­i­lies have tra­di­tions for what to do with the fol­low­ing Fri­day. We don’t. Clearly some kind of road trip was in order, but there was lit­tle con­sen­sus on where to go. I cam­paigned relent­lessly for a tour of Colum­bus, Indiana—a quiet town of 39,000 about 40 miles south of the cap­i­tal. Even­tu­ally every­body gave in and that’s where we went.

Colum­bus is home to the Cum­mins Engine Com­pany, and seem­ingly lit­tle else. But Colum­bus is per­haps most widely known among archi­tec­ture cir­cles as one of America’s pre­mier show­cases of mod­ern archi­tec­ture. Cum­mins Engine co-founder J. Irwin Miller was an archi­tec­ture lover who in the 1950s set up a foun­da­tion to cover the costs of hir­ing cutting-edge archi­tects to design any new pub­lic build­ings in town: gov­ern­ment build­ings, banks, schools, and churches. So it hap­pens that Columbus’s streets are a Who’s Who of archi­tec­ture. But as the vis­i­tor center’s video is quick to point out, these are not a col­lec­tion of osten­ta­tious show­pieces. Some­how they man­age to fit together organically—visually and func­tion­ally inte­grated with the com­mu­nity. It’s an achieve­ment that has not been par­al­leled else­where, and it’s lovely to behold.

Among the highlights:

• First Chris­t­ian Church (1942, Eliel and Eero Saari­nen). The first mod­ern church in the United States, every­thing about this build­ing is slightly off-center and way ahead of its time.
• Irwin Union Bank and Trust (1954, Eero Saari­nen). Eero Saari­nen is my favorite archi­tect. You have undoubedly encoun­tered his works already: the one-of-a-kind St. Louis Arch, the widely-copied Dulles Air­port main ter­mi­nal, and MIT’s Kresge Audi­to­rium and Chapel. This single-story bank is a gor­geous throw­back to the 1950s. The built-in file cab­i­nets and cus­tom fur­ni­ture are still being used today.
• North Chris­t­ian Church (1964, Eero Saari­nen). This church is a mas­ter­piece. The roof lines and sky­lights are breath­tak­ing. The sanc­tu­ary is spa­cious yet inti­mate, and the bap­tismal font is gor­geous. The land­scap­ing is so well exe­cuted that, some­how, even approach­ing the build­ing by car is excit­ing. I also like the way that the park­ing lot is almost com­pletely hid­den, despite being right in front of the church.
• Cleo Rogers Memo­r­ial Library (1969, I.M. Pei). This is how libraries were meant to be built: red brick, warm wood, and some con­crete thrown in for good measure.
• Colum­bus Post Office (1970, Roche Dinkeloo). Ugly and insti­tu­tional on the inside, but notable for its use of self-rusting Cor-Ten steel on the facade, which gives the build­ing a lovely texture.
• Large Arch (1971, Henry Moore). Many of us have sat on his Three Piece Reclin­ing Fig­ure Draped in Kil­lian Court at MIT. This is a fine arch, and it is large.
• The Com­mons (1973, Cesar Pelli). This mall has decayed to an unfor­tu­nate level of dis­re­pair, but you can appre­ci­ate the unusu­ally broad ges­tures it makes toward com­mu­nity ser­vice as well as shop­ping. Indeed, with most of the stores gone or going out of busi­ness, the place is still abuzz. It pro­vides a stage for per­for­mances, sev­eral large com­mon rooms, a food court, an indoor play­ground, and a sunny home for Jean Tinguely‘s kinetic sculp­ture Chaos I (1971).
• Cum­mins Cor­po­rate Office Build­ing (1983, Roche Dinkeloo). Big, and look­ing a lit­tle for­lorn with all the vines with­ered for the win­ter. The lobby was closed for the hol­i­day, but through the win­dows one could see all kinds of entic­ing gems: antique cars, engines, and an incred­i­ble sculp­ture of exploded engine parts. Julia took the above pic­ture of me with the engine out­side their front door.

Com­ing soon: some pho­tos of Colum­bus, and some lively dis­cus­sion of my trip to Kentucky’s Cre­ation Museum.