Indianapolis, IN
Post-Air has held its ground on the east side of Indianapolis since 1967: a single runway on twenty acres, privately owned but open to anyone, one of the last little strips of its kind inside the metro.
Indianapolis devotes more acreage to honoring its war dead than any other American city, and only Washington, D.C. has more war memorials. The center is the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Monument Circle, a 284-foot limestone obelisk dedicated in 1902; raised for Indiana's Civil War dead, it honors Hoosier veterans of every war before World War I, and at completion it was the second-tallest monument in the country behind the Washington Monument. It stands at the exact center of the original city plan: Alexander Ralston, who had helped survey Washington, D.C., laid out Indianapolis in 1821 with the streets radiating from this circle. An observation level near the top is reached by 330 steps or a small elevator, and from it the flat grid of central Indiana runs to the horizon. Five blocks north, the Indiana World War Memorial Plaza is a corridor of formal malls, fountains, and monuments; its centerpiece, the Indiana World War Memorial, is a massive limestone building modeled on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, housing the Shrine Room beneath a single suspended American flag. The American Legion keeps its national headquarters on the plaza. On the downtown canal, the USS Indianapolis Memorial honors the cruiser torpedoed in 1945, the worst single loss of life at sea in US Navy history, near the Medal of Honor Memorial along the canal walk.
Two cultural anchors on the near-north side. Newfields is the 152-acre campus of the Indianapolis Museum of Art: the Lilly House, a National Historic Landmark estate with its formal Oldfields gardens, and the 100 Acres art and nature park, one of the largest contemporary art parks in the country, its sculptures set in woods and wetlands around a 35-acre lake. A few miles southeast, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis is the largest in the world: five floors, the Dinosphere dinosaur hall, Chihuly's 43-foot Fireworks of Glass tower, and the seasonal 7.5-acre Sports Legends Experience outside. Between these, Conner Prairie, and the Speedway, the city carries a deeper roster than its racing reputation suggests.
Constructed in 1909, the first racing facility to call itself a speedway, and home of the Indianapolis 500 since 1911; it is still the highest-capacity sports venue in the world. The 2.5-mile oval's infield covers 253 acres; Churchill Downs, Yankee Stadium, the Rose Bowl, the Roman Colosseum, and Vatican City would all fit inside it at the same time, and four holes of the Brickyard Crossing golf course actually do. The track was bricked over in its first year; three feet of it survive as the Yard of Bricks at the start/finish line, the last of the surface that gave the Brickyard its name.
Before the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was famous for racing, it was famous for aviation. In 1918, the U.S. Army opened an Aviation Repair Depot at the Speedway, repairing and testing JN-4 Jenny training aircraft and Liberty engines. The Speedway provided hangars and a flight test field — planes took off and landed on the infield and straightaways. The depot repaired 313 aircraft and 350 engines in 1918 alone. Italian engineers from the Pomilio Brothers Corporation developed aircraft here. Allison Experimental Company (later Allison Engine, now Rolls-Royce) got its start producing engine parts nearby. The Speedway's aviation chapter is largely forgotten, but it helped establish Indianapolis as an aviation and engine manufacturing hub.