This story was originally published in Dwell’s July/August 2017 issue.

It comes as no surprise to followers of midcentury modernism that Columbus, Indiana, is one of the most important design destinations in America. A laboratory of ideas spurred in the 1940s and 1950s by the patronage of the forward-thinking Miller family and its Cummins Engine Foundation, the city of 46,000 is home to a staggering number of public works created by the most recognizable names in 20th-century architecture: Saarinen, Roche, Weese, Noyes, Pei, and Pelli, among many others. The city demonstrates how an enlightened practice of culture can alter history and change lives. Here, we present but a tiny glimpse of Columbus and nod to its future.

“As an architect, when I face Saint Peter I am able to say that out of the buildings I did during my lifetime, one of the best was this little church.”
—Eero Saarinen, architect

“There is really no equivalent of Columbus anywhere—there is no other place in which a single philanthropist has placed so much faith in architecture as a means for civic engagement.”
—Paul Goldberger, architecture critic

“Here they don’t say things like, ‘That doesn’t look like a church,’ or ‘That doesn’t look like a school.’ If there is criticism, it is more along the lines of saying what doesn’t work well, and you can’t ask for a better climate than that.”
—J. Irwin Miller, Columbus resident and patron of the arts, 1976

“Much of Girard’s residential, retail, and commercial work has been lost. Columbus is one of the few locations where several interrelated and intact projects can still be visited, and as such is key to understanding Girard’s work as a system stretching from the selection of china to the reconstruction of historic facades.”
—Alexandra Lange, architecture critic

Find out how a new generation is keeping Columbus’s design heritage alive.

Also Appears In

Ode to a Forward-Thinking America: Columbus, Indiana