2017 Main Streets Across America

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Indianapolis, Indiana – Fountain Square

Main Streets 2017: Indiana

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Like many cities in the 1960s, Indianapolis lost population and businesses to the allure of the suburbs. The once-vibrant Fountain Square, where Virginia Avenue and Prospect and Shelby Streets intersect, was dubbed “the lost little valley,” its bowling alley shuttered, the fountain forlorn.

Perhaps no one would have believed that a key to revitalizing part of this neighborhood, a mile and a half from the city center, was the reintroduction of a game invented in 1900 and loved by Babe Ruth. Not baseball — duck pin bowling. In 1994, a local businessman rediscovered and bought the Fountain Square Theatre, a dilapidated gem from the 1920s that he restored and reopened, complete with dance hall and vintage duck pin bowling alley. Local people began to visit the neighborhood again. More businesses followed, and even the fountain got restored.

Today’s Fountain Square is more popular than ever, a haven for artists where poets, painters and performers compete to claim one of the neighborhood’s new housing units. One of Fountain Square’s most anticipated events is the annual Art Squared, where artists create new works around the square in “Masterpiece for a Day,” local artists offer work for sale in the Fountain Square Art Fair, and the day wraps up with the Art Parade. If you’ve never seen art paraded around a town square, this is not to be missed.

The Fountain Square Music Festival is a two-day October event centered on the square, with over 50 performers performing on the main stage and in club venues a block or less away. Visitors enjoy pre- and post-concert meals in the area’s many restaurants, featuring the cuisines of Peru, Mexico, Greece and China. Indianapolis has always welcomed immigrants, and continues to celebrate its cultural diversity.

Linking Fountain Square with the city’s five other designated “cultural districts” is the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, an eight-mile path for bicyclists and pedestrians that’s highlighted by public art installations. Even the trail is art, in part. When planners wondered what to do with a dark stretch through a covered parking lot, their solution was to embed purple lights in the trail’s bricks that twinkle, illuminate and turn off when the walker leaves the area.

“Surrounding neighborhoods, including Fletcher Place and Holy Rosary, add to the vibrant life on the trail between Downtown and Fountain Square,” notes the square’s website. Explore it all by walking, or rent a “Pacers Bikeshare” bicycle from one of the neighborhood kiosks. You won’t be sorry you did.

Photo credits (L-R) – Nyttend, Jim Grey, MCC Indianapolis
Indianapolis, IN is home to two 2016-17 LifeChangers: Lisa Johnson and Elizabeth Rothrock

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Atchison, Kansas – Commercial Street Mall

Main Streets 2017: Kansas

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For two days of the Amelia Earhart Festival held every July, residents of Atchison, Kansas, celebrate the pioneering aviator, their homegrown folk hero. Festival events include a fly-in to Atchison’s Earhart Airport — plus food, crafts, music and children’s activities on the Commercial Street Mall, a three-block stretch of the town’s central avenue that has been converted to a pedestrian-only stretch of retail shops and shady spots. Capping the festival are fireworks and live music at Riverfront Park, where Commercial Street meets the Missouri River.

Founded a few years before the Civil War, Atchison had grown by the late 1800s into an important industrial manufacturing center, with steamboat landings on the Missouri and the eastern terminus of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, a major line during those years. The historic depot building is now home to the Atchison Rail Museum, where train buffs can view vintage railway cars and a steam locomotive. A favorite attraction now is miniature railroad trains that visitors can ride around the grounds.

The depot also houses the Atchison County Historical Society Museum, which features the “World’s Smallest (Unofficial) Presidential Library,” an exhibit telling the story of David Rice Atchison, a Missouri Senator and the city’s namesake. Through an accident of history he became the nation’s temporary chief executive for one day in March 1849.

For those interested in a spookier sort of history, “Haunted Atchison” offers coach and trolley tours to old homes with spooky histories. The town calls itself “The Most Haunted Town in Kansas,” and you can join in paranormal investigations, take a walking cemetery tour, and even sign up for a “Murder Mystery Dinner.”

Atchison’s 14,000 residents have a variety of options when it comes appreciating the arts. Theatre Atchison offers live plays, the Atchison Musical Arts Society organizes concerts, and the Muchnic Art Gallery, inside one of Atchison’s fine Victorian mansions, is an exhibition space for the Atchison Art Association.

You can spend much of the day exploring the retail shops that line the Commercial Street Mall — and you can dine in one of the several Commercial Street restaurants. Along with the Earhart Festival, the mall hosts a number of special events through the year, including A Taste of Atchison in September, Oktoberfest (needless to say, that’s in October), and the annual Christmas Tree Lighting in late November.

Primary photo taken by Tim Kiser
Earhart Festival photos courtesy of Kansas State Tourism

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Danville, Kentucky – Main Street

Main Streets 2017: Kentucky

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Danville’s Main Street delivers on the promise of a downtown as a place to gather, have fun, and build a sense of community. When this small Kentucky city earned a Great American Main Street Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the accolade “honored the work of volunteers and city officials who came together to rehabilitate and beautify parts of downtown,” says livability.com. “A collective $52 million was spent on renovation and preservation in the 1990s and has paid off with 110 new businesses opening and the creation of more than 300 new jobs.”

Art is a major supplier of downtown’s energy. The Community Arts Center on West Main lives in the city’s original post office, a landmark 1909 structure that was refurbished with much community support in 2004. Now “the epicenter of Danville’s rich and vibrant Arts District,” according to its website, the Arts Center features galleries, studios, and classrooms.

A block off Main on Walnut Street is Centre College’s Norton Center for the Arts, whose two theaters host concerts, dance, musicals, opera and college events. Just around the corner from Main on 2nd Street is the West T. Hill Community Theater, a venue for live local productions.

A vibrant downtown offers an abundance of activities for families, and Danville has some really good ones. Each June, the four-day Great American Brass Band Festival features brass ensembles that “span the widest range of brass styles and performing groups — from historical bands of the Civil War to modern, large-scale brass and wind bands,” says the festival’s website. The event’s signature parade steps off from South Main Street, and the Great American Art Festival, a new component of the event, showcases juried national and regional artists displaying and discussing their work.

Danville also has its summer Lawn Chair Theatre, with family friendly movies in Constitution Square Park, an easy walk from Main Street. And around Halloween time, there’s a performance by the Thriller Zombies on Main.

“Main Street has become a vibrant shopping district in Danville,” says livability.com, and its centerpiece is three connected buildings known as The Hub. A downtown department store for 80 years until 1995, the renovated buildings are now home to Centre College’s bookstore and the Hub Coffee House and Cafe. Stop into the cafe to get ready to explore Main with an organic coffee and some nourishment. You’re going to need it!

All photos courtesy of Downtown Danville

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Opelousas, Louisiana – Main Street

Main Streets 2017: Louisiana

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Known as the Zydeco Capital of the World, Opelousas is as culturally diverse as the music itself. Along with Creoles, the creators of zydeco music — Creoles was first used to describe descendants of European and Spanish settlers, then broadened to include a mix of Native Americans and African-Americans — this city’s diverse population of 16,500 also includes many Cajuns, who came here in the 18th century as French-speaking refugees from the Canadian maritime provinces. People from many other places and backgrounds live in Opelousas as well, making the city a cultural gumbo as interesting and spicy as the local cuisine.

To taste the local flavor, check on Soileau’s Dinner Club on North Main Street — or head a little left or right off Main on Landry Street to eat where the locals do at Back in Time, Mama’s Fried Chicken and Frank Po’ Boys.

The city’s motto is “Perfectly Seasoned,” a pun but perhaps also a salute to the late chef Paul Prudhomme, a native son of Opelousas who, in 1957 at age 17, opened his first restaurant in the city, a drive-in hamburger stand called Big Daddy O’s Patio. Today, Main Street intersects with Prudhomme Street (named after Michel, though not Paul) in a section of the city’s Historic District where you will find St. Landry Church, home of the Festival De La Grande Eglise. The church’s history and influence in the area dates back to the mid-1700s.

East of Main Street you’ll find Le Vieux Village, a historical park and museum, and the Louisiana Orphan Train Museum, a restored freight depot dedicated to the Orphan Train Riders, abandoned and homeless children from New York who traveled to Louisiana between 1873 and 1929.

On North Main is the Opelousas Museum & Interpretive Center, whose exhibits, covering prehistoric times to the present, include a room devoted the Civil War and the archives of the Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music Festival. Each Labor Day, festival-goers can participate in traditional storytelling and learn about French, African and Caribbean cultural influences.

Opelousas has annual Mardi Gras festivities, many of which take place at the Civic Center near Main Street and feature the Half-Fast Krewe of Frank Mardi Gras Parade through the downtown area.

On the second Thursday in December, families gather on Main Street for the Opelousas Children’s Christmas Parade, featuring colorful floats, marching bands and, of course, Santa Claus.

A feast for the eye, ear and taste buds, Opelousas truly is the “Perfectly Seasoned” city.

All photos courtesy of the City of Opelousas, LA

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Brunswick, Maine – Maine Street

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Maine Street (yes, with an “e”) in downtown Brunswick is a broad thoroughfare that showcases so much of what this college community has to offer — history, arts and culture, education, quaint shops, and the beauty of New England coastal living. Here you’ll still find the three “F’s” that have driven this region’s economy for decades — fishing, farming, forestry — along with some manufacturing and industrial, retail, professional and arts-related businesses.

Maine Street takes you right past the campus of Bowdoin College, Maine’s oldest college and home today to many cultural resources for the community. The College Museum of Art is on Maine; also on campus are the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum & Arctic Study Center and the Pickard Theatre, home to the Maine State Music Theatre, which celebrates its 60th season in summer 2018. The Bowdoin International Music Festival treats students, locals and visitors to more than 100 free events, including concerts, student performances, and lectures.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the classic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin while living in Brunswick. The house her family rented in the 1850s, where they sheltered a fugitive slave from South Carolina, is just east of Maine on Federal Street.

If it’s local history you’re after, take a guided tour of the Joshua L. Chamberlain Museum on Maine Street, home for more than 50 years to the Civil War hero, Maine governor and Bowdoin president. Just off Maine on Park Row is the Pejepscot Historical Society, with several collections and programs dedicated to telling and preserving the rich history of the towns of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell.

The Brunswick Downtown Association hosts a wide range of civic, cultural and social events for all ages on and around Maine Street — including Meet the Candidates, the Community BBQ, the Rolling Slumber Bed Races, Outdoor Arts Festival, Music on the Mall, and the annual Tree Lighting Ceremony.

Traveling north, Maine Street heads across the Androscoggin River just past the Fort Andross Mill Complex. This site was originally a trading post for fur trappers, then a garrison during King William’s war in the late 1680s, and later a cotton and textile mill. A refurbished gem today, the formerly vacant mill building is a vibrant mixed-use business center.

As Maine Street crosses the river into neighboring Topsham, it loses its “e” somewhere before you reach the Sea Dog Brewing Company. That’s a good place to stop after you’ve spent the day exploring all that Brunswick has to offer.

All photos courtesy of Downtown Brunswick Association
Lower Maine Street and Maine Street/Fort Andress photos taken by Benjamin Williamson

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