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A Riverfront Walking Tour of Madison, Indiana

Courtesy: The Cornerstone Society Inc.
P.O. Box 92
Madison, In 47250
Reprinted by Permission

In the nineteenth century Madison was a bustling, thriving river town, for a time the largest city in Indiana. The center of activity was the riverfront, with constant incoming and outgoing boats, loading and unloading passengers and freight on the many piers.
Madison was industrious from the beginning: Colonel John Paul, one of the town's founders, operated both a gristmill and a sawmill. There were various shipyards at the west end of Madison's riverfront, one of them owned by the famous Howard Ship Yards of Jeffersonville. Even in 1899, after the peak of Madison's prosperity, town businesses thrived. The cotton mills employed over .300 people. There were two woolen mills, two flour mills, three tanneries, many slaughter houses (Madison was the early pork capital of the Midwest) , three brickyards, a tobacco warehouse, many cigar factories, two wagon factories, cooperages, breweries, a buggy and plow plant, a saddletree factory, and a tack and nail factory.
Although the waterfront area has changed greatly, it is possible to see some 19th century buildings and to imagine the scene more than a hundred years ago. Captain W. E. Pratt's coal fleet sat at the foot of Jefferson Street, then called Main Street; other levees held wooden ware, barrels, staves, wheels, and lumber. The various taverns and hotels hosted a constantly shifting clientele. One jolly industrious old German, John Buhler, stood a sign on a tall pole in front of his hotel reading "My Friend, Your Home."

The pork house where Jenny Lind sang is gone. The riverfront hotels have disappeared. Even John Paul's home has been razed. But we can imagine it as it was - and work to save what remains!
 

1. Eagle Cotton Mill*, 1884: 100 double hung windows on the river side make optimum use of available light. An 1887 map of Madison shows railroad tracks extending along the river from the railroad cut to the Eagle Cotton Mill, where they curved north for two more blocks.

2.. David Graham Phillips  House, 201 East Street, c. 1830/1870. A novelist, Phillips wrote Susan  Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, a Greta Garbo movie in 1931; the early part of the novel is set in Madison. First Street used to be High Street; the road was cut down and the walls built in the 1840s. This corner was the southeast boundary of the original town, which extended from East Street to West Street and from the present First Street to Fourth Street.
 

3. Snyder House, 127 East Street, c. 1850. Home of the landscape painter William McKendree Snyder, 1849-1930.
 

5. Ice house, c. 1840, has walls (now covered with ivy) two feet thick. The present floor covers a pit, now the basement.
 

6. The Richard Talbott Inn, called the "Old Welsh House," 218 Walnut Street, c. 1825-30.
 

9. The Hunger Building*, c. 1850/1900, was an early hotel. The third floor ballroom has a platform for the musicians. Open to the public.
 

10. Jefferson County Courtbouse*. 1855. The building faces what was then Madison's Main Street; the present Main Street was called Main Cross.
 

11. Schofield Woolen Mill*. 1877, now Meyers & Son. was designed to maximize natural light.
 

14. Commercial building, 313 East First Street; c. 1875.
 

 15. Meyers Stone Barn. Said to be the oldest building in Madison, it was used in the last century as a stable and carriage house. serving as a slaughter house early in this century.
 

19. The commercial buildings on the west side of Mulberry between Second and Main are very old; Jeremiah Sullivan opened his law office on the second floor of the two story building south of the alley in 1819. The building on the comer of Second and Mulberry was the Central Hotel, typecast in the movie "Some Came Running.".
 

2O. Hentz Bakery Museum, c. 1830, 316 Mulberry Street, c. 1860. The workings of a bakery run by the family from 1912 to 1980 are on display.
 

23. C&R Parts, 100 East Second Street, c. 1935, one of Madison's only examples of Art Moderne.
 

29. Capt. Charles Lewis Shrewsbury House., 1846-49, designed by Francis Costigan. Open to the public.

30. Talbott-Hyatt Pioneer Garden, containing one of seven early public wells. Open to the public.

31. Masonic Schofield House*, c. 1815. Open to the public.

33. First Presbyterian Church*, 1848.

 34. Site of the Woodburn House, 1846, another Costigan design.

37. Livery Stable and Tobacco Prizing House. c. 1890/1891. Lower one was built by W. Trow for a cooperage to make barrels for his flour mills.

38. James F. D. Lanier State Historic Site*, 1840-1844. Designed by Francis Costigan. For almost one hundred years, First Street was uninterrupted; the Lanier House sat on the street as the Shrewsbury House does. Open to the public.

42. House at 123 Mill Street, whose original stone middle portion served as a stable for a hotel nearer the river here. The front part, added later,  contained a wagon factory.

43. Site of Snider Catsup Plant.