- On this Across Indiana Special, we're exploring museums.

Today we're at the Studebaker National Museum in lovely South Bend, Indiana, where they have plenty of antique cars on display.

Museums come in all shapes and sizes.

They teach us collect memories from our past and help us think about our future.

Recently Across Indiana producer Sam Oliver paid a visit to the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company to meet with some people who are building a museum from the rails up - Before the internet, before automobiles, before interstates, trains and trolleys were the kings of connection.

Ushering in an age of unprecedented growth for all and just 45 minutes outside of Indianapolis lies an unassuming, unmarked barn full of priceless artifacts and humble Hoosiers on a mission to preserve Indiana's interurban legacy.

- I've been interested in trains and trolleys since I can talk.

My first word was choo choo.

It's just been building up from there.

- Indiana was once home to one of the largest electric rail networks in the country.

- It started out of city networks like with, you know, they had mule cars and then they went to street cars, little electric ones, and someone got the bright idea, Hey, we could take this little streetcar and we can make it a little bigger and a little faster.

And go from Anderson to Alexandria and then Anderson to Muncy and then Anderson, Indianapolis.

Just a good way to connect small towns.

- And this connection wasn't just for getting people from A to B. Since these trolleys required power, their routes effectively became the state's first electrical grid.

- Well, they figured out that they're making way more electricity at the Powerhouse 'cause every interurban company made its own electricity 'cause there was no electric company.

So they started selling it to the towns along the way and then lightened up the towns as they went.

- As communities became more connected, the opportunities available to locals grew exponentially.

- We had dirt roads.

There were no paved highways, so that was the most efficient way to move people in goods was by rail.

- By the 1940s, cars and highways had effectively replaced the interurbans with much of the old infrastructure being torn out in favor of pavement.

- A lot of the interurbans, they went out of business and became power companies.

An automobile came along and they had a choice to sell electricity or or haul people.

And so the power company's still here, but the railroads long gone - One by one train cars scattered across the nation in many cases, left to rust away entirely until a small group in Indiana stepped in.

- The shortest possible version of the long, convoluted story is these cars were in danger of getting scrapped.

And I happened to have a really good bonus that year from when I was working and kind of fronted the money to save all the stuff with no real plan or no idea what to do.

Luckily there were a lot of other people that were interested in it and said, Hey, I, I bought this stuff, you wanna form a nonprofit with me?

And most of the people said, you're nuts.

But luckily, four or five of 'em thought, Hey, that's kind of cool.

Yeah, we should do this.

And we formed a nonprofit and and just kind of went from there.

- What we have here, the five or six we have are some of all that's known to be left in the state of Indiana.

And they at that point needed a new home.

They were in danger.

So we came together and we acquired them as individuals to save them.

We looked at it from these are irreplaceable pieces of Hoosier history.

They're not only our story, they're your story.

So we came together and we made sure that we saved these last pieces of Indiana's electric railway story - Piece by piece.

The volunteers at the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company bring these transportation time capsules back to life.

- Yes.

So we broke this major project down into smaller little bites.

All the mechanicals under the car are one, the painting of the seating areas is one.

Also we'll be doing things like roofing and windows.

So those are all individual projects that together will make all the parts of a big project.

- But since these are essentially massive museum pieces, each of these steps are handled with the utmost care and attention to detail.

- It's a judgment call.

Does it impact safety?

Does it impact the actual working order of the car?

Does it impact it visually?

So there is this fine line of what are we gonna replace, what are we gonna keep, how do we repair it and restore it so that you can appreciate the original.

You'll see where we've kept some little tiny areas of original finish that were protected, but the rest of it was painted like with house paint.

So off it comes, - Everything's big, everything's heavy.

You know, it's industrial work, you know, there's a lot of welding and you know, torching and occasionally you know, you'll just look down and notice you're on fire a little bit.

Put it out and go on.

I would say the hardest thing was when we were doing the truck work underneath we were changing motors.

They're big, they're awkward and it's all very fragile.

No good way to handle 'em.

I think the most rewarding thing was when we did our big mechanical grant two years ago.

Normally a grant like that, that would've been like a 10 year project.

That grant, we had a, you know, 365 days to take.

It was sitting on blocks, you know, here it is, go turn this into a train.

You know, we did two motors and built an entire air brake system from scratch.

So many little intricate pieces to, to be able to do that in a year's time I think was, I don't know that I'll ever be able to top that in the list of accomplishments.

- As you can see, there's a lot of time, effort, and money that goes into the restoration process.

But Michelle and the rest of the team feel like it's all worth it.

- The inner urban story is so important, first of all, because they're going away.

Like the few that are left are scattered to the wind.

But also we forget how our towns and cities were built and how they connect.

So that is so important.

And Indiana, this really was the crossroads of the country.

You need to know where your roots are.

- I've always kind of maintained that.

That's one of the most interesting periods in time in general.

Someone in 1900 couldn't even dream of what's happening in 1950 and the, the impact that this would've had on, you know, somebody's life.

You know, think that someone in 1900, the fastest thing they'd ever seen was a horse.

And by 1930 you could get on this thing and be in it, Fort Wayne Indianapolis in three hours.

- Once all the repairs on this trolley are complete, the Hoosier Heartland Trolley company intends to get it out of the barn and into the hands of Hoosiers.

- So we decided we're going to have a museum that's open to the public that provides educational programs, that brings people together, not only by displaying the cars and having a traditional museum exhibit experience that you would typically think of, but an immersive experience through a heritage railroad where you can actually ride the trains, see what it was like a hundred years ago.

We want to make sure that folks can enjoy the electric railways as they were and really have that light bulb moment where they're like, oh, this is what it was like.

This is why it was important.

- But historical preservation isn't necessarily the only thing that keeps them coming back to devote their time and skills.

- It's not just the project or the trains, but it's the people.

And I know that sounds kind of pokey, but we spend a lot of time together and we appreciate each other's strengths.

I had no skills when I started.

If you're interested in restoration, if you're interested in mechanical things or woodworking, come see us - With me now is the Executive Director of the Studebaker National Museum, Patrick Slebonick So Patrick, tell me about the museum you guys have here.

- Yeah, the Studebaker National Museum is 150 years of transportation history.

We tell the story of the Studebaker Brothers manufacturing company as well as our community.

A lot of people don't know that Studebaker Brothers started as a small blacksmith shop here in downtown South Bend.

By 1890 they were selling wagons on six continents and they were the only wagon manufacturer to successfully transition into the automotive era, building some of the beautiful cars that you see behind me today.

- And why do you think people enjoy coming to museums in general?

- I think that people in our society have always enjoyed storytellers.

And that's what we are at the museum as storytellers.

We tell the stories of the people who made these cars, of what these cars did and accomplished and how they've impacted our life today.

- In our next story, we switch gears from hubcaps and carburetors to sequins and corsets.

Producer Logan Vaught tells us a a fabulous exhibit featured at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

- I own this really sickening gown that's in this museum in Indianapolis.

Like how cool is that?

- Gorgeous wigs, shocking high heels, detailed dresses and pounds of makeup.

Am I describing a drag queen or 18th century France?

A new exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art highlights these similarities through intricate ceramic pieces by Anthony Sonenberg, an immersive hand-painted room by Robert Horvath and some sickening gowns as Blair put it by Diego Montoya.

- We are in the Gerald and Dora Paul Gallery of Fashion and Textiles here at the IMA.

And this exhibition is called Resplendent Dreams Reawakening the Rococo, which is an exhibition that features three living queer artists who are all taking inspiration from the early 18th century and the Rococo period.

- The Rococo style was all the rage in Europe during the early 17 hundreds, breaking away from the serious classical period in favor of extravagance and frivolity.

- You know, it's a style that hasn't always been super popular in recent years, especially with the rise of like modern art, which tends to favor more of a minimalist style, you know, geometric abstraction, that kind of thing.

So I was always delighted in its kind of maximalism and its refusal to kind of conform to modern day taste, to really celebrate something that isn't necessarily in style at the time.

- Resplendent Dreams takes Rococo style and puts it in a new light, examining the different gender standards of the period.

- In the 18th century, it was mostly men that would wear high heeled shoes that were kind of the first actually to wear high heeled shoes before that became popular with women.

They also were really the first to wear wigs and a lot of times it was also men that were really wearing makeup as well.

And it was really in that period more of a symbol of social class.

So it was something that the aristocracy would do.

I think especially in the piece in the exhibition here from Sasha Velure that has this neck rough that is a little bit more 17th century, that 18th century, but still was a very kind of like unisex, like peacocking thing that the aristocracy would've done that was not necessarily gendered as male or female.

So there's this really rich tradition of different gender norms in the 18th century that I think that drag artists and Diego really love to play with in their work.

- The centerpiece of Resplendent Dreams is this gown here Rocaille, designed and created b Diego Montoya for the museum and modeled by Indianapolis drag icon Blair St.

Clair.

- Hi, I'm Blair St.

Clair.

I'm a full-time artist.

I'm most known for competing on RuPaul's Drag Race.

So I'm a drag artist, I'm also a theatrical league designer.

I co-founded an Indy based theater company called Indy Drag Theater that highlights drag artists and I'm still a working actor and that kind of like covers like a lot of the different things that I do.

It's like a little bit of everything that like all makes up artist.

For me.

Drag has always been this place to play with the idea of gender.

And I think that like I was taught at a young age, like boy equals blue doll equals girl.

You can, you can't wear these things, you can wear these things, you're supposed to do these things.

These are the professions you're supposed to look for.

And drag is everything beside that.

It's a place to play, it's a place to, to nurture your creative energies.

- Blair was born and raised here in Indy, a place she says she felt nurtured by and encouraged to explore her art.

- Indy has always been important to me.

It has been the place that I've fallen, the place that I've grown, the place that I feel the most comfortable and safe in.

I've never been one of those people that've sat, I cannot wait to get out of here.

I can't wait to leave Indy.

I don't wanna be here.

I look around and I find like love and community all around me and I feel like I wanna be here.

Like I wanna pour into Indy the same way it's poured into me.

- For Blair, Indy has been a safe space for her to express her identity.

The Resplendent Dreams exhibition aims to imagine a world in which everyone feels that safety.

- That was really a guiding principle for this exhibition is that they're all kind of imagining this different, more open, more celebratory world for queer people and for the Rococo style.

And it's about finding joy in things that maybe have been devalued before.

And I really wanted to stress that element.

I think a lot of queer history can often be, you know, very kind of trauma centered and kind of on the, you know, traumatic aspects of our history.

But I wanted to focus in this exhibition on artists who were really in a celebratory mood and really like finding things to love and enjoy and delight them in this time period.

- It's an exhibition filled with whimsy.

The extravagance and impracticality of the gowns are a reminder to take life and the societal boundaries we put on ourselves a little less seriously.

- I think people should play more.

I mean, how often did we play as kids playing dress up or playing with our imaginary friends or just enjoying life on life's terms and not feeling so bogged down in the heaviness of what's around us.

We should be aware, we should be responsible, but we should also allow ourselves to meet imaginative and to create and to have fun.

So if you're drag is trying on a new dress to wear to dinner on a date night fierce, like if your drag is putting on a little makeup to go to work and you have a big meeting that's happening, work like fierce, that's great.

Like if your is like getting out of town and experiencing like something new and different and feeling creative and finding like that creative spark to, you know, add into your daily life, great.

Like I feel like drag is manifested in so many different ways, but I think it's creative energy that allows us to keep playing.

- The Respendent Dreams Reawakening.

The Rococo exhibition will close in March of 2026, so there's plenty of time to go check it out at New Fields.

In the meantime, remember to stay playful.

- In West Lafayette we explore a lived in work of art designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright right here in Indiana.

Known as Samara, this masterpiece was the home of a Purdue University professor for nearly 60 years.

But the question remains, is it a museum?

- This is my first major restoration project that I've overseen and it's pretty darn exciting.

- Nathaniel Allaire loves this house, but he doesn't actually own it.

He doesn't even live here.

It's his workplace.

And it's a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece located in West Lafayette, Indiana.

- Welcome to Samara.

My name's Nathan and I'm the site director and curator.

We're approaching the front gate main entrance of the house right now from Woodland Avenue, located in the middle of a residential neighborhood and right across the street from the Purdue football stadium.

But who would've guessed a Frank Lloyd Wright house right square in the middle of all of it.

- Samara, like all homes masterpiece or not needs maintenance.

It's April and Nathaniel's overseen restoration of the roof and hundreds of copper pieces that surround the house.

- So it's been quite a process.

We've taken 'em off one at a time.

We, we have a ID numbering system so we know exactly what part goes where.

But on the back of it, it's a hanger, just like a photo frame on a wall.

And this is section 13, piece 11.

- Each piece of copper is unique and carries a motif you'll see repeated throughout the home.

- Samara is a botanical term that means wing seed or wing fruit.

Frank Lloyd Wright usually identifies some type of a natural feature of a property and just runs with it.

So here that was Samara before anything was built here.

Imagine there was about 35 different mature trees on the property.

They were elm trees, ash trees, maple trees, counterfeit trees like these pines.

Here all of them grow a type of Samara, a wing seed.

- In the early 1950s, a young chemistry professor from Purdue University, Dr.

John Christian and his wife Catherine, bought a wooded triangular lot in West Lafayette.

They shared a dream to build an extraordinary home.

So they approached Frank Lloyd Wright by this time, a world famous architect in his eighties, and asked him to build a house for their middle class family.

- Frank Lloyd Wright, having liv through the Great Depression, he realizes that not all of his clients have all the money in the world and society in, in America specifically is shifting.

There needs to be a model for affordable housing.

And so really Usonian is more than just a style.

It's also kind of a, a way of living and kind of a, a model of a sort of utopian society.

- Usonian homes use natural materials and include characteristics like a flat roof, large windows zones, not rooms, no basements, no attics, and a central philosophy of connecting with nature.

- Now, Mrs.

Christian, she wanted a lot of things from Frank Lloyd Wright in their new home.

In fact, she had specified a hundred plus special features they wanted in their new home in a document called What We Need For How We Live.

It's a 30 page document, it goes room by room and lists every single feature that Mrs.

Christian wanted, which is also very unusual for one of Wright's clients to do.

I think he had total admiration and appreciation for Mrs.

Christian and he saw someone who was well put together, well organized, smart.

I mean, she is determined and you know, she knows what she wants.

So I think that's a part of the reasons why Frank Lloyd Wright accepted this commission.

- Major construction of the home took 18 months and finished in 1956, but this was a lifelong endeavor.

After Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959, the Christian family continued to finish details throughout their lives as money allowed.

In fact, the copper pieces were not added to the roof line until 1991 at a cost of $30,000.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed this masterpiece, but the Christian family truly crafted this home into what you see today.

- Pretty much everything here is the Christian's original belongings.

We have all their books, some of their clothes, their art pieces, handwritten notes, recipes, play settings on the table.

This is a home that's been lived in by the entire life of the Christians and not only lived in but loved for so long, and that's very special that someone really loved something so much that they spent their entire life here.

- When Catherine passed away in 1986, Dr.

Christian decided to make a plan for the home's future.

- He really started formally planning what's gonna be the next chapter.

And so in the bylaws that he wrote into the trust, one of the missions is to present the house as a learning laborato a learning laboratory, because you get to see every piece in action and you get to try out some of the pieces.

And that's something that started with Dr.

Christian and his methods of teaching at Purdue University.

- Dr.

Christian made Samara his home for 60 years.

Now it is operated by Indiana Landmarks and is the only Frank Lloyd Wright home in Indiana that's open to the public.

It's August, the roof is mostly finished, the copper pieces are back in place and the home is once again open for tours.

- During our tours, we let our guests use all the furniture pieces that we see around us here.

And the tour can go in many different directions based on people's interest, the rugs and lighting, the accessories.

The landscaping was designed by Wright.

Frank, Lloyd Wright being an architect that considered the furniture, the accessories, the landscaping designs, everything to work together.

And so having the ability for people to kind of discover that for themselves through maybe what's not set on the tours is really a powerful way of educating the public.

- Nathaniel Allaire hopes you come to Samara, make yourself at home and find a little bit of inspiration right here in Indiana.

- It's a national historic landmark for many important reasons for the architecture and design of Frank Lloyd Wright also for the landscape design.

And being a home for a middle class American family and being able to celebrate that is well just fun.

So really a landmark of how big dreams can be.

And I, I think it's really a source of inspiration for many people.

It really feels more like home rather than a job.

- For our last story on this across Indiana special, we head back to Indianapolis to a place I bet most of you have been, especially when you were younger.

Producer Logan Vaught dives into the vast collection of treasures and trinkets, amassed over a hundred years by the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

- One of my favorites is the safe, harmless atomic bomb toy.

- The Children's Museum of Indianapolis has come up on something quite special this year, their centennial.

That means 100 years of the world's largest children's museum.

To celebrate this moment, the museum has a new exhibit that displays a hundred items in the museum's massive collection that helped illustrate its history.

- So the exhibit is memories, wonders and dreams, stories from a hundred years, it's our centennial.

And so we chose a hundred stories of objects as a way of talking about who we are, where we started, what are the through lines, through our history, what are the things we're thinking about for the future.

- It fills one gallery space, but then we've got iconic items like Chihuly's Glass Tower that's in the central core and our water clock and particular things that we get, you know, where's the polar bear?

I think I was in a submarine when I was little.

So we have those things and it was an opportunity to get them out again from storage and put 'em on display.

- Many of these iconic objects have been beloved by the public for years, but how did the museum get its start?

Where did it get its first pieces for display?

- We started with a very simple idea.

Our founder wanted to create an experience where everything was designed for children.

And instead of having objects and cases like a traditional museum, she said, what if we got the materials out of the case and let children touch them?

And she did a kind of a crowdsource funding situation where she did a call out via local elementary schools and said, children, ask your parents if they have anything interesting in their attic or in their basement that we could use to build a first children's museum.

And she collected all those items and put them in a small carriage house that's associated with the Propylaeum.

And that's how the Children's Museum was born.

- The museum began as a collective project created by Mary Stewart Carey in the community of Indianapolis.

This centennial exhibit made display everything from a sculpted Calabria to a first edition Barbie, but it really focuses on the community, the people, and stories behind the objects.

- One of the things that's my, one of my favorites is the safe, harmless atomic bomb toy.

If you think about is made in 1955, middle of the Cold War and the the way we deal with these sort of anxiety ridden things comes out in weird ways.

In this case, kids are buying these safe, harmless, atomic bomb toys that you could put a little cap with gunpowder on it and throw it at each other on the sidewalk and it pops and they could play atomic bomb.

And at the same time, they had to put on the packaging that it's really safe and harmless.

So a parent didn't worry that this was an actual atomic bomb.

So it's things like that.

They have a story about the people that were connected to them.

It really transcends that little bit of plastic.

- We also have things like our polar bear.

And I think when we've asked people to send in pho photographic memories over the years, so many pictures of little kids who are now big adults standing in front of that polar bear.

So that's another one of my favorite memories that you'll see in the exhibit.

- Memories are what make objects worth conserving anything.

Even a children's toy can chronicle a history and these objects form new memories with those, seeing them for the first time in a museum.

- If you're somebody who grew up in Indianapolis, I hope you see those things that suddenly flash a memory of coming to the museum with your class or your parents when you were a child.

And you have this, this distinct memory of joy that you had that day when you were at the museum.

And for other people, I hope it inspires them to understand that the objects in their lives also tells stories.

Those things that were inherited from grandma or the things you picked up on a vacation, unlock a story.

And that, that that can be a really valuable intergenerational discussion tool and just inspiration for our own lives.

- We think a lot about like, how did we become what we are?

And it's really the people.

Indianapolis allowed us to keep growing and expanding and offer new services and bring new programs online.

And I think when you see it all together in in an exhibit like this, you're like, wow, that was a monumental effort.

But it shows you what we can do when we work together.

- The Children's Museum showcases the stories of people, and by doing so, creates memories for over a million visitors every year.

I know I've made some, as for the next a hundred years, we'll just have to wait and see.

- That's it for this trip Across Indiana.

We hope you enjoyed exploring some wonderful museums.

Until next time, thank you for watching.