On the southwest side of downtown Indianapolis is a gravel lot, often used for overflow parking for events at the convention center or Lucas Oil Stadium. On the east side of this lot are the remains of a roadway, called Sand Street. This street has gained quite a bit of attention in the past few years thanks to the existence of old stone pavers which are still in place on site. This is how Sand Street appears today, looking northward from the south end of Sand Street at its intersection with McCarty Street.
Sand Street dates back to about the middle of the 19th century. On maps available online from local archives, it first appears on the 1866 Warner map of Marion County and Indianapolis, highlighted in yellow below, although it is not named.
A year later, the 1867 Asher and Adams' map of Indianapolis, which is very similar to the 1866 map above, does use the Sand Street name.
The basis for the name "Sand Street" is unclear, although it may be related to the geography of the area where the street was located when it was first constructed. At the time, in the middle of the 1800s, the White River took a hard turn to the east, and Sand Street ran right along its banks (note the yellow highlight above). Efforts to eliminate this bend began in the late 1870s. An Indianapolis News report on August 28, 1877, noted that the river had been eating into the eastern bank of the river at the peak of this sharp bend, while depositing a large amount of sand on a bar on the western side (visible as the small island above the word "river" in the map above). This may be the source of the name. Between the city's efforts to eliminate this bend, and a few floods in the 1880s, the eastward bend in the river eventually faded, opening up more land to the west of Sand Street, between it and river.
However, even before the river's course was changed, efforts had been made to eliminate Sand Street through act of government. In 1875, a group of citizens who had ownership interests along Sand Street requested that the city's Common Council approve the vacation of the street in the interest of the public good and to "prevent its becoming a serious and public nuisance" and a "pond of stagnant water, and a receptable for slops and filth from the adjacent lots and streets." The full request is shown below:
Vacating Sand Street seemed to work, and the name becomes scarce on maps in the 1880s, although it does appear in the 1887 Sanborn Map, with a note that the street was 'vacated.' However, even with its vacated status, there were still buildings on Sand Street (although that is not the case today). Per the 1887 Sanborn map, there was a varnishing operation which backed up to the street, along with a few possible homesites, although this area of the city was generally industrial. City directories from this time do note several residences along the street.
One major tenant which would later be located along the street was the Hetherington & Berner iron works, which was located on the west side of Sand Street for many years, although their address was on Kentucky Avenue. Originally located on South Street, just east of Illinois (Pogues Run actually flowed underneath their factory at this location), the company announced in 1905 that it planned to relocate to a new manufacturing complex along Sand Street, although this did not occur until 1910.
Hetherington & Berner produced structural iron pieces for buildings, and many of their works can still be seen around Indianapolis. Their “logo,” or more accurately an embossed shield, can be seen on the façade of the Yardhouse restaurant on Maryland Street between Illinois and Meridian as shown below.
The façade was once part of the Levey Brothers & Company building, which was constructed in 1890. The building was demolished in 1989, but the facade was preserved and incorporated into Circle Centre, a few doors down from the building's original location on Maryland. The Hetherington & Berner logo also appears on the iron work in the City Market, as discussed in this blog post from Historic Indianapolis.
Across Sand Street from Hetherington & Berner was a coal yard, owned by the Ehrlich family (Peter, Julius, and Christian), and the Morgan & Johnson coal yard. The updated 1898 Sanborn map (below) notes the name of the street as “Sand (formerly Ehrlich)” indicating that the street had at some point been known as the name of the adjacent coal yard. However, I found no reference to the roadway being referred to as "Ehrlich" in local sources.
Wedged between Kentucky and McCarty, Sand Street was really more of an alleyway, or at best, a side street and at some point, Sand Street was paved with stone. As mentioned above, some of these stone pavers are still visible today, as shown below, although at some point the roadway was paved over with asphalt, and the old stone pavers are only visible in places where the asphalt as worn away. A noted above, this stonework sometimes makes appearances on social media in Indianapolis, especially in discussions about old street paving materials, or after large events which use the parking lots located around Sand Street. Sometimes paving work on local streets is mentioned in the Indianapolis Common Council Minutes, although I did not locate a reference to the paving of Sand Street, so it is not clear when these pavers were installed.
Hetherington & Berner continued to operate along the street into the 1930s, and the area continued to be heavily industrial. By 1956, Hetherington & Barber was still located on the land on the west side of Sand Street, while the east side hosted a variety of operations, including a state-owned warehouse complex and a consulting engineer business.
While Hetherington & Berner finally closed at this location in the mid 1970s (they had been acquired by another company at this point), the industrial buildings along Sand Street continued on for the next three decades. Around 2002 some of these buildings began to come down, with empty land being used for parking. The images below show the progression of Sand Street from 1937 to 2002, and finally in 2024.
The Hetherington & Berner buildings still stood along Sand Street up until 2009. Streetview from that time clearly show the street, as well as the abandoned shell of the Hetherington & Berner complex, including the company’s name (image below). Within the next year these buildings came down, leaving a gravel lot, and the concrete pads from the former Hetherington & Berner buildings. Sand Street is visible on the left side of the image below, and while it is gated today, it is often open for onsite explorations.
Sources
Indianapolis News: October 28, 1905, December 16, 1905,
Warner, A, Worley & Bracher, and F Bourquin. Map of Marion County, Indiana. Philadelphia: C.O. Titus, Publisher, 1866. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/2013593173/
Hyman's Handbook of Indianapolis: An Outline History and Description of the Capital of Indiana (1897), https://www.digitalindy.org/digital/collection/IH/id/5446/rec/1
IU Indianapolis Sanborn Collection, 1887 and 1898
Activities of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, October 1924, Vol. 38, No. 10, Digital Indy, https://www.digitalindy.org/digital/collection/icc/id/1384/rec/4