From Das Deutsche Haus to Today: The Living History of the Athenaeum in Indianapolis
Today, this building is home to more than a dozen businesses and organizations. It's a vibrant, multi-use place where folks can enjoy a drink, see a show, and even break a sweat. And it's pretty much been that way from the beginning. The Athenaeum was erected by a group of German immigrants called the Turners, with a couple of goals in mind.
Craig Mince, President of the Athenaeum Foundation says, “These Turners, it was a movement that came out of Germany post-Civil War, and they had a motto: ‘a sound mind and a sound body.’ As they immigrated here to the Midwest, they built these temples, if you will, of a sound mind and a sound body. The idea was that, on any given day, you could service both your body and your mind in the same space.”
Originally called “Das Deutsche Haus,” it was changed to the Athenaeum in reaction to anti-German sentiment during the first World War.
“The name ‘Athenaeum’ refers to the Greek goddess Athena. The name, by an etymology, is a house of higher learning,” says Mince.
To be a member, you didn't just pay a fee. You became part-owner.
“You actually bought stock certificates to be a member. So you actually owned portions of the space or of the building. Anybody could be part of the club, it wasn't exclusive. So you had a melting pot of all these different cultures coming into this space,” Mince explains.
It served as a vital cultural hub for many German immigrants in the city.
“So it was a very large organization at its beginning and stayed rather large for quite a few years. It wasn't until second generation families really started to either move on to different areas of the state or the country, or as families aged out,” states Mince. “This building actually almost didn't make it. The roof was leaking. There wasn't a sprinkler system for fire safety. There wasn't an elevator. All of these things led to intervention from the Lilly Endowment to come in and save the building in the late 80s.”
Food, Fitness, and the Arts Under One Roof
That investment did more than just save the building. It brought it back into the fold of life in the city, while still holding true to its original mission.
Mince prides, “It’s a vibrant space, alive in many different kinds of designs and intentions. Even today, we still live by the motto of ‘a sound mind and a sound body,’ and we approach it a little bit differently, but we are able to pay homage to the original intent of the building and keep that moving forward.
“We still have an active gym; the YMCA has a gym in the space, so we are one of the YMCA branches in the city. We have a very active coffee shop, Coat Check Coffee, which was built out here in the space. The Rathskeller Restaurant–if you've been to Indianapolis, if you had a pint of beer or a liter of beer in this town, you've been to the Rathskeller. [There’s] both the internal restaurant for their German cuisine and also outside in the Beer Garden, which has one of the most beautiful, breathtaking views of the city skyline,” Mince states. “We have a 400 seat cabaret theater on the top floor of the building that is home to many different production organizations, as well as ourselves, as we put on different shows throughout the year.”
Even though the Athenaeum has had its share of updates over the years, echoes of its past still linger in every corner.
“When you walk down to the substructure into the Rathskeller, it's literally like you're walking back into the early 1900s. It's wild. A lot of the original decorations, most of the tables and chairs are still original. I mean, imagine those things are like 125 years old,” says Mince.
“The theater itself is practically untouched from when it opened in 1898. The same art reliefs in the plaster, the proscenium is the same, the stained glass–which is absolutely stunning. All of the bits and pieces of that space are the same. Even in the YMCA, the gym has some of the original equipment from when they were doing gymnastics, like practice ladders. It still has all of the original hooks and eyelets from when they had rings in the building,” Mince explains.
“There's this beautiful bridging of the generations of the centuries of what the building used to look like and what it is now, and how they're married together. It's absolutely amazing,” Mince states.
GermanFest, Christkindlmarkt, and Community Traditions
It's a place that marries the present to the past, celebrating old traditions while creating space for new ones.
“We do an OktoberFest-adjacent event. We call it GermanFest in celebration of German-American Day, which is always on October 5th. We do a lot of the same kind of celebrations: beer, food, wiener dog races. We do steinholding, we do sausage eating. We've got great German folk music. But then we also shine a light on German immigrants that came to central Indiana and the impact they have on the Hoosier State,” says Mince.
“It's a big event for us. It's our largest fundraiser that we do every year. Although, nipping at its heels during the holiday season, we now do a Christkindlmarkt for four weekends out of the year where we convert the Rathskeller Beer Garden into basically the Swiss Alps. It's like you walk into a different country. We have 14 different huts. We've got food and beverage and retail, all local but done in a German flair,” Mince prides.
From beer gardens to live music, there's always something happening.
“That's the beauty of the design of this building. It was meant to be somewhere you can stay from morning to night. I mean, you can come work out, you can have breakfast, you can have lunch, dinner. You can go to an event, you can see a show. Whether it's meeting some friends after work and having a pint of beer in the Beer Garden, meeting family members that are coming in out of town and having dinner in the Rathskeller or seeing the next big show during the holiday season–whether it's The Nutcracker or what have you in the theater–or as a local resident just coming and working out.” Mince concludes, “It's approachable to everybody, which is the beauty and what it was designed to be in a ‘sound mind and a sound body’ kind of scenario.”
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The above video is a clip from Journey Indiana from WTIU. You can watch more segments and full episodes at pbs.org/show/journey-indiana/
