19 A Room Of One's Own

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My search for a Hopperesque hotel left me feeling a little like Goldilocks. "This one is too new," I pouted about a hotel that looked like a 1960s office building. "This one is too old," I lamented about a "European Luxury Hotel" that waxed a little too opulent to be Hopperesque. But I exclaimed, "This one is just right," when I found the Ramada in the former American Fletcher Bank building. Like Hopper's Hotel Lobby, it was festooned with dark wood, brass railings, dim lamps, and a little clock on the wall. Unlike Hopper's lanky male desk attendant, the Ramada's greeter was a plump young woman. When I told her of my search, she directed me to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the old train depot.

"They've got railroad cars you can stay in," she chirped. "You should see if they'll let you go in one."

[Crowne Plaza lobby]

I reveled in finding both Hopper subjects in one place: a hotel lobby and railroad tracks. A low brick extension in back that formerly covered passenger platforms now sheltered the plush Pullman railcar hotel rooms that I aimed to see. I asked the young goateed manager behind the front desk if I could tour one.

"Well, someone has it booked soon, but if you're only going to be a short time..."

I was handed the key to car #001, also named for Charlie Chaplin. Film fan Hopper would approve. Being number #001, the car hunkered at the end of the track. I ascended the narrow metal stairs feeling like a President going to campaign from the train's back platform.

Inside, the room definitely evoked Chaplin: decorated in black and white and filled with canes, bowler hats, and other memorabilia. Modern sprinklers and fire alarms had been added; otherwise, the car seemed frozen in the heyday of American train travel, Chaplin's films, and Hopper's scenes.

A wiry old man with a bushy white mustache trundled in with a small bag wedged under one arm and a big suitcase in the other hand. He looked just like the man in Hotel Lobby. His eyes widened in alarm when he saw me.

"Excuse me," he objected. "Is this your room?"

I apologized and scurried out. I felt like I had found my room--one from Hopper's world. I seemed to have entered Indianapolis's Hopper paintings and made contact with one of his characters. I strolled out through the hotel lobby.

18 The Odd Couple

Up the street from the tourism office, I spotted two men sharing a bench. One was gangly, with white hair and a red face. He wore blocky wraparound sunglasses, a car dealership shirt, and an Indianapolis 500 cap. The younger one was a stocky, dark East Indian wearing slim shades and a polo shirt.

When I asked if people were isolated in Indy, the old man looked off to the side, twisting a silver watch back and forth around his wrist. Then he growled in response, "Nah, I wouldn't say that. There's a lot of different neighborhoods in the city. There's a neat old neighborhood over on the east side called Irvington. West side is Sawville, which is where I grew up. It was originally settled by Germans, Polish. Now it's mainly black. I live in Speedway, which is the little burg that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is located in. There's quite a few race fans live there. There's a little burg up on the canal called Rocky Ripple that is sort of a town unto itself within a town. Then of course there's the outlying suburbs. Brownsburg is in another county, but it's still part of the metropolitan area. Carmel and Fishers is a really fast-growing area."

At this, the young man chimed in with statements that curled up like questions. "Right now? Cities in the outer parts? are growing so fast that, where most towns it would take ten years? they're doing it in two. They're full in a year, and all the sudden the schools are too small. I've seen it, and I've only been here two and a half years. I was transferred here for a job with a big car dealership. After a year, they decided to close. But we liked it so much we just stayed. I was born and raised in Orange County, California. I was telling this guy that? Today? Perfect beach weather. Only there's no beach."

"So the outlying area is growing faster than the city?" I asked.

The younger man snorted. "The city's done."

The old man reined him in. "I wouldn't say the city's done, but I think we've got as much population inside Marion County as we need. Seven, eight hundred thousand people: that's enough as far as I'm concerned. This town in 30 years has just completely reinvented itself. It's really grown up. Every big town has its problems. They do a pretty good job here of trying to recognize the problems and take care of them."

17 A Hotel Lobby in Indianapolis

I started my search for a Hopperesque hotel lobby at Circle Center, the retail mall that is the focus of Indianapolis's downtown renewal. A tourism information booth was set up in the glass-encased Indianapolis Arts Garden, where skywalks converge above the busy intersection below.

There, two African-American women sat between two potted palms at a table displaying handouts for local arts organizations and day-of-show theater tickets. One woman was large and dark, in her mid-thirties, with straight hair, big glasses, and a dark blue dress. Her lighter-skinned junior partner wore a lightweight flowery blouse and had corkscrewed hair atop her head. They didn't know of any hotel lobbies downtown like I sought.

"Are you from Indianapolis?" I asked.

They looked askance at each other. "Born and raised," the older one answered.

"Do you think that people in Indianapolis are isolated?"

The young one giggled and responded, "It is cliquish. I think that people are more in cliques than they are isolated. Like there's neighborhoods: the Riverside area, the historic area. To a certain extent, I think it is isolated. But I think that's human nature."

"What about the African-American community? Are they isolated from the Whites?"

The older one shook her head. "I just never thought about it, 'cause I mean I interact with everybody, so…. I don't really stick to one race. You just go. And I say everybody's pretty much open and together."

The young one tittered again, "Unless they're in their clique. You know?"

I was glad to hear them confirm the tourism office's claim that Indianapolis is proud of its African-American heritage. Ransom Place, the traditionally black neighborhood just west of downtown, is home to jazz joints where The Ink Spots and Wes Montgomery got their starts. Weekly "Jazz on the Avenue" concerts are still held at the Madame Walker Theatre Center, named for a local African-American woman whose hair care products made her America's first female self-made millionaire.

16 Indianapolis sightseeing

[Indiana Capitol]

Architecture buff Hopper would have a field day with the bevy of beautiful buildings left downtown. (Even the New York Times said about Indianapolis, "It's a hell of a city if you just give it a chance.") The domed State Capitol is built with Indiana's famous limestone. The International Association of Architects designated the gray block Scottish Rite Cathedral "one of the seven most beautiful buildings in the world" shortly after its completion in 1929. The Indiana Theater is a rococo confection on Washington Street, and the 1909 Murat Theatre is a vision from the tales of Aladdin.

Minarets launch up from the Murat's light-and-dark striped walls riddled with windows flaunting leaded glass images of a curved sword dangling a crescent moon and star. This ornate piece of Morocco dropped on New Jersey Street is a perfect Hopper subject: breathtakingly beautiful and horrifyingly out of context. Right across from the Murat stands the 1897 Renaissance Revival-style German cultural center, the Athenaeum (changed from Das Deutsche Haus due to World War I anti-German sentiments). The building was designed by Bernhard Vonnegut, grandfather of writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr.--probably Indianapolis's most famous son besides David Letterman, who once bagged groceries and spouted weather forecasts here.

Now, Indianapolis has made itself famous as the nation's amateur athletics capital and home to the world's largest single-day sporting event: the Indianapolis 500 car race. The college basketball tournament also often comes here, where basketball fever is known as "Hoosier hysteria," inspiring Hollywood to name its film devoted to high school basketball Hoosiers. (The origin of the word "Hoosier" is unknown, and there are dozens of theories about it.) [Hopper drew this illustration]

As I walked the city's open spaces, flat terrain, and sparsely populated streets, the place felt as if the air had been sucked out. This may explain "Hoosier hospitality:" in this atmosphere, even the least interaction with another person qualifies as entertainment.

14 A Hotel Lobby

The weekend after visiting Muskegon, I took another four-hour drive, this time south.

I woke up in Indianapolis in a highway motel and partook of the free continental breakfast in the lobby. The tiny room was bisected by a Formica-covered reception desk, with thin industrial carpet laid over the hard floor. One humming fluorescent tube in the middle of the ceiling threw light that grew dim by the time it reached the concrete wall slathered with white latex paint. There stood a table of food. Tiny fruit flies swirled around bananas in a bowl next to plastic-wrapped Danishes, coffee maker, orange juice pitcher, and cereal dispensed from a retired lemonade churner.

This was hardly the kind of hotel lobby I came to Indianapolis to find. But then, the one I came to find was in the Hopper painting Hotel Lobby that hung in the Indianapolis museum.

That lobby was spacious, with wood trim, thick carpet, and tasteful furniture. In it, an elderly man stands by a seated older woman. In an early sketch, the man's hand touched the woman. In the final painting, Hopper separated the two. Across the lobby from them lolls a young blond reading alone. This was painted in 1943: most men her age were overseas fighting. A bellboy behind the counter is all but invisible.

Indianapolis is one of only two towns west of Washington D.C. to have more than one Hopper painting in its art museum. Beside Hotel Lobby in the museum hung New York, New Haven, and Hartford, named for the rail line that ran past Hopper's Cape Cod house. (Hopper sent the museum a note stating, "If any serious objection arises regarding the title, it can easily be changed.") Dawn light broadsides a house on a bluff above railroad tracks, making the hillside grass and trees burn at their fringes. The scene resembles the farmhouses, fields, and sky I drove through to reach Indianapolis from Chicago.

As I pondered the paintings, over waddled a man in jeans with a large shoulder bag slung over his starched shirt. The graying, rust-colored beard covering his chubby cheeks made him look like an aging red squirrel. I asked him about Indianapolis's Hoppers and isolation.

"Ooh, boy." He shook his head, so I switched to an easier question.

"How long have you lived here?"

"Almost 35 years," he chuckled flamboyantly. "I've been through the times when you wanted to be from Indianapolis; you didn't want to be in Indianapolis. People were all moving to the suburbs. And really there was no downtown any more. Now that's all changed, and the downtown is very active. Musicians and artists are moving to the Fountain Square neighborhood. Not quite New York, but at least they're characters that give a city flavor."

He wrinkled his brow. "Now, ask your original question again."

"Do you feel that people in Indianapolis are isolated like Hopper's characters?"

"I don't think so. This community is quite cohesive. Unlike in Hopper's other paintings, I feel like those two in Hotel Lobby are talking to each other. In this city, everybody talks. 'Hoosier Hospitality' is something we're known for."

"Do you know any lobbies like that in town?" I asked.

"Not those typical small twenties- and thirties-type places. Those kinds of intimate places still may be left in New York and Chicago. But I think intimate spaces here are gone."

He continued his viewing, and I was left thinking that the characters in the hotel lobby that he considered "intimate" were anything but.