Gary, Indiana, is the Pompeii of the midwest: a city of ruins where life can seem to have just suddenly stopped. The “Magic City,” as it was nicknamed by its founders, was established as a company town for U.S. Steel in 1906 but fell into a depression almost half a century ago from which it has yet to fully recover. The city’s fortunes were inextricably tied to those of the industry, and when steel took a downturn in the late 60s, so did Gary. “By 1972 the bigger businesses started leaving,” says David Hess, the local-history librarian at the Gary Public Library. “It’s not that unusual to lose the department stores, but Gary lost its banks. There were no white-collar jobs to be had.” Between 1960 and 2000, nearly half the population moved away. Buildings were boarded up and houses were abandoned. Today Gary is perhaps best known as the sometimes murder capital of the U.S. and the childhood home of the Jacksons.
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Grab an early dinner at Eat Your Heart Out (487 Broadway, 219-880-2636). Located inside a mini office building, it’s a cheap, family-run spot with three tables in a common area and a pickup window on the side of the building. The menu is surprisingly extensive, diner food with a southern bent, and everything is from scratch–as one of the proprietors puts it, “If you come up to the window and order chicken, you’re gonna have to stand there while we fry it.” The jambalaya is a local favorite and the friends who accompanied me on my trip unanimously declared the sweet potato pie the best they’d ever tasted. Eat Your Heart Out is only open until 5 (and closed on Sundays), but if you don’t get there in time you can always make do with the world’s largest Bennigan’s, located two blocks west at Gary’s baseball stadium.
7 PM
Have breakfast at the Juice Garden (2700 Fifth, 219-881-0212), Gary’s only health-food restaurant, deli, and grocery. It’s run by a local minister and his family–their slogan is “Organic Foods the Way God Intended”–and every booth has a tiny Bible right next to the salt and pepper shakers. There are vegan options (tofu scramble), fake meats (a “chorizo” omelet), blueberry pancakes, and a sizable juice bar and smoothie menu. Breakfast ends at 11 AM, but the veggie burger served at lunch is worth the trip to Gary all by itself. Open from 8 AM to 6 PM; closed Sundays.
One block south and to the east, at Sixth and Massachusetts, is the old Gary post office, a favorite of Indiana preservationists. Built in 1936, it was designed by Howard Lovewell Cheney, who also served as supervising architect on the Chicago Tribune Tower. The building hasn’t had a roof in decades, and from the street you can see saplings growing behind the teller windows. At Seventh and Massachusetts are the remains of the Gary Memorial Auditorium, one of several landmarks that burned in a single evening in 1997. Another victim of the fire that’s still standing is the City Methodist Church at Sixth and Washington, a center for antiracist activism in the 1920s. A little further to the west are two Frank Lloyd Wright homes: 669 Van Buren and 600 Fillmore. The second is a rare example of the American System-Built prefabs Wright briefly designed just before World War I.
5:30 PM
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Mathew Clark.
