A Bit of History
I cut my archaeological teeth working two lost neighborhoods of Indianapolis, communities that are now gone and buried, or at least close enough not to matter. Urban archaeology is a different breed of work in the United States, only a handful of our cities are more than a few centuries old. Yet in that time there have been great changes, terrible calamities, and whole neighborhoods that are now gone and largely forgotten. They lie now buried beneath asphalt and concrete, waiting, dreaming, hoping to one day rise again.
I've cut through those layers of asphalt and concrete, and I've seen things man, I've seen things.
Real world archaeology is somewhat prosaic and humdrum. Most of what we have found beneath the streets of Indianapolis are the common debris I have mentioned in many columns. Sometimes you find things that are odd, such as a butcher shop with a basement sixteen course of bricks deep, in a neighborhood that was once rather poor. That's a lot of construction, but I am sure there is a perfectly reasonably explanation for that. Also there is nothing occult or bizarre about the intact pig's skull we found on the floor of the basement, empty eyes pointing towards the door. The butcher shop was less than a yard from boarding house whose residents were no doubt transients of one kind or another. There's a whole Call of Cthulhu adventure there, surely there is.
Anatomy of a City
Most of this column will focus on downtown Indianapolis, for it is the oldest part of the city. The center of Indianapolis is the Monument Circle, a round area from which streets runoff to all corners of the city like spokes from a wheel. These radiating streets are connected by concentric roads forming a squared off grid. This makes it easy to navigate most of the city, as the streets tend to be perpendicular and easily tracked. However, it does cause one to notice the occult, even hermetic, nature of the city's layout. Circles, spokes, grids, squares, all these are the makings of a giant ritual circle. What does it keep in or out? Where does the energy come form, or where is it drained? Why does such a modern city have an antiquated sewer system that drains into the White River? What sleeps, dreaming and dead, under the center of this circle, beneath he towering obelisk like Sailor's and Soldier's Monument?
From the circle, downtown is divided into four quadrants. If you are attending GenCon, you are likely staying in one of the nearby hotels, and both your hotel and the convention center are in the southwest quadrant. Many of the shops and restaurants are in the same quadrant, though some are in the neighboring southeast quadrant, as is the Eli Lilly Complex. IUPUI and the Ransom Place neighborhood is in the northwest quadrant, and the northeast is dominated by the Murat and surrounding bohemian neighborhoods (as well as the Beer Garden at the Rathskeller, a fine place to drink and eat).
From downtown, the city is divided into several districts, some based on the old township lines (again with the grid structure), others on divisions that have developed since the city was plated. You have the Near North Side that is the home of both slums and North Meridian where the wealthy once and still do live (including the Governor of Indiana). Farther north you get into the North Side, which extends all the way to I-465 (the main loop through the city, another circle). North of I-465 (or the David Letterman Expressway as some people call it) you find yourself in Castleton and eventually the outlying communicates of Carmel and Zionsville. To the Northeast is Broad Ripple, another semi-bohemian neighborhood that has several excellent (and even more horrible) bars and nightclubs. The Northeast is dominated by Eagle Creek Park and Reservoir, a fine place to sail, hike, and have hidden meetings in the woods. Rumor has it that the park is prowled by a large cat like creature, those honestly those rumors exist about every park and wild land in the state. Maybe there is more than one such creature. Due East are several small neighborhoods of questionable status and varying wealth, until you run out of city and end of in New Palestine or one of the other satellite communities. West leads through several impoverished neighborhoods and on to the airport, and Speedway. Speedway is named for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, another big circle (and home of the Indy 500 and Brickyard 400).
South leads you to the Southside (SOUTHSIDE!), which is divided into the working class and industrial Near Southside, and the random mix of neighborhoods of the Southside and Far Southside. The Southside flows into Greenwood and Johnsons County, though it is rather hard to tell where Indy ends and Greenwood begins. In the southeast and southwest, communities give way to farmland and one can still be in the city yet be driving past cornfields.
Ransom Place
Just north of IUPUI lies what was once the cultural heart of not just the Near Westside, but also the African-American community in Indianapolis. Ransom Place was a vibrant middle-class African-American neighborhood that still lingers, alone and largely forgotten by the rest of the city. Today it is a neighborhood chopped up and bulldozed under, fallen into poverty and decay. Once it was a vibrant part of the Jazz Age, a place where some of the greats of that era performed. At its center was the Madame Walker Theatre, built by millionaire Madame Walker of cosmetic fame.
The Madame Walker Theatre is more accurately called the Walker Building, but locals generally refer to its by the former name, or simply The Madame Walker. Built in 1927, the theatre was designed using the Afro-Art-Deco motif, featuring Arabic, North Africa, Egyptian, and sub-Saharan African themes. Much like the Murat Theatre, the Madame Walker brings to mind distant lands as well as occult weirdness. The arabesques, painted sculpture, and decorative flourishes are beautiful to behold, especially since they have been restored. They do stand out, as does the pseudo-Egyptian motifs of the Murat, as being somewhat out of the ordinary in the Midwest. Both structures, although very different in the amount of power their owners wielded in the city, are fitting locales for hermetic orders, strange cults, and forbidden lore.
Beneath IUPUI
Underneath the parking lots, buildings, and green spaces of Indianapolis's premier urban college are the remains of a long lost neighborhood. Few recall that it was there, yet it remains buried and waiting. Cut through the layers of asphalt and concrete and you find a neighborhood unlike any else in a major city east of the Mississippi. The old Near Westside ran from West Street to the White River, and was subject to flooding, a low water table, pollution, and malaria carrying mosquitoes. Naturally, this is where the newly arrived yet not wealthy residents of the city congregated. Land and rent was cheap, access to both Downtown and the factories across the river was easy, and a person could get their start here, or end up wallowing in misery and filth.
This is where the aforementioned butcher shop was located and also where Ransom Place ended. People from all over the world lived in this neighborhood, Euro-Americans from the East and South, immigrants from throughout Europe, and recently freed African-Americans from the south. Eventually the jobs moved, and so did the people, closing their stores and homes and moving on to newer and better parts of the city. The area grew increasingly depressed, even considering the implementation of flood controls (eleven feet of water once stood where just north of the Convention Center during one notable flood) and the eradication of the mosquitoes (plus an improvement of pollution control, still a problem along the river but not as bad as it once was).
This proves that lost cities are not just something that can be found in distant far off locales. Games set in the modern era can see adventurers and investigators digging under cities to find clues or artifacts buried in these lost neighborhoods. Given enough time, the names of these buried cities could be forgotten, as well as their locations. Picture this; the heroes leave the Capital in search of a lost item, wandering the world for clues to the lost City of the Circle, only to discover that Capital City was built on its ruins. Or maybe a group of pulp heroes need to find information about a certain culture or distant locale, and turn to either the living residents of a multi-ethnic neighborhood like the Near Westside, or if such a neighborhood is long buried, perhaps the ghosts of its residents? Not to mention what sort of weird and terrible horrors have been brought from the Old Country, and now lurk in a neighborhood whose residents speak fifty languages and distrust both each other and outsiders?
Military Park
Near the convention center and just south of what was once the Near-Westside, Military Park was the state's main military camp and gathering ground from 1827 until 1865. It saw both state militia and federal troops use the site to form and train units for the Blackhawk Wars and the Civil War, as well as other smaller conflicts. After the Civil War the place was a wrecked, prompting its transition to an urban park.
During the mid-Twentieth century Military Park developed a nasty reputation as a hang out for gangs, drug users, and prostitutes. This reputation continues to this day, though efforts beginning in the 1980's to clean up and restore the park have been largely successful. Today it is the site for quiet weekday lunches, weekend picnics, and several annual festivals such as the Irish Fest, Native American Market, and Jazz Fest.
Although this seems to be fairly mundane, one only has to look deeper. Imagine the psychic echoes in the park, especially the older ones. Its use as a staging ground for young men bound for war no doubts has injected a strong taint of fear and apprehension, as well as a certain martial or patriotic vibe. Years of neglect and the attendant violence and illicit activity have no doubt left its mark. The question is, does the spirit of the park prefer its current use as a happy place for families and festivals, or does it want to go back to the way things were. What happens when the park decides another change is in order, and starts to subvert its visitors, or even kill?
Lost Ethnic Neighborhoods
Indianapolis has never been a city possessing strong ethnic neighborhoods, as New York and Chicago has. However, some ethnically based enclaves did form, though they are mostly gone today. Beneath what is now the Lilly Complex lays the foundations of Italian and Greek communities. Germans once dominated Lockerbie and other areas (especially around German Church Road). Irish families tended to congregate on the Near Southside, though these never developed into monocultural communities and soon dissolved. Once there was even a small French community around St. Joan D'Arc Catholic Church. Across the White River from downtown there was a lively Slovakian and Czech neighborhood, but it dissolved nearly a century ago, its residents drifting off to other parts of the city.
The lesson here is that not all urban environments develop distinct districts or quarters for differing ethnicities. Expanding this to include different races or species that are commonly found in fantasy and sci-fi gaming, and you have a good basis for putting dwarves next to elves, and Martians next to Venusians. This itself can be the source of conflit in an urban based campaign, as the orcs must put up with their elven neighbors or lose their jobs at the potion factory. When designing a lost city, feel free to mix things up as much as Indianapolis has, with differing peoples living side by side in uncertain harmony. Another option is to take the loss of some of these ethnic neighborhoods (note how many are now underneath something else) as the source for a plot. Maybe someone wants revenge, or possibly just the rebirth of the old neighborhood, regardless of who currently owns the place or resides there. This someone could easily be a ghost, ancestor spirit, deranged super villain, or even a perfectly reasonable mundane.
However, this scarcity in ethnic enclaves is not the norm for cities in the eastern half of the United States. Consider this when you are designing a city of your campaign, especially one that has been lost. Are there different ethnicities living in the city, and if so where did they go? Perhaps one ethnic group survived the calamity that brought the city to ruin, and still remains. This could be used in a fantasy game to explain why there is a large tribe of kobolds living in a once great but no ruined elven city. They were brought in as laborers, and escaped the Doom of the Elves. Their numbers are not great enough to repopulate the city, but theyhave spread from their enclave to reclaim a fair section, the same section that the PCs need to enter to find the lost artifact sword they are questing for.
Beneath our cities lies more than a few bits of history that you can use in your game. These lost neighborhoods can be the sources for historical campaigns, inspiration for modern adventures with an occult past, or models that any lost city can be based on. Sleep well, my friends, and don’t think to hard about the things that sleep as well beneath you homes. Especially those of you visiting the Circle City, for your hotels are no doubt built on solid foundations, and not the restless ghosts of the past. No, not that at all.
