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>> BRANDON: Coming up, get a bird's eye view of the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival.

Experience the work of a one-of-a-kind Hoosier artist.

And learn how one Indiana city became the first in the world to be electrified.

That's all on this episode of "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> BRANDON: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Brandon Wentz, and we're coming to you from the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis.

The Indiana Statehouse has been the seat of political power in the Hoosier state ever since its completion in 1888.

The four-story building houses the executive, legislative and judicial branches of Indiana's government.

Tours are available and visitors are welcome to watch lawmakers and government officials at work at both the General Assembly and the Supreme Court.

And we'll learn all about this historic building in just a bit.

But first, producer Nick Deel takes us to Porter County, where the Indiana Audubon Society takes us under their wing at the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival.

♪ >> Ah, the Indiana Dunes.

For most, they are a summer playground, full of sand and sun, but for a short while each spring, this popular vacation destination is for the birds.

>> The Indiana Dunes Birding Festival is a celebration of the Indiana Dunes area and all of its migrating birds that are coming through this area.

We have over 700 birders that attend this festival, and we really just want to get people together to celebrate that huge flux in migration, over 200 bird species that can come through.

>> The Indiana Dunes Birding Festival, hosted by the Indiana Audubon Society is timed to coincide with the peak of the spring bird migratio here in the Midwest.

And while the southern shores of Lake Michigan are a picturesque spot for a get together, this location wasn't chosen simply for its scenic splendor.

>> So the dunes area is really great for birding because we have a variety of habitats.

So we have this woodland area that we're here right now in, and it's gorgeous.

We also have the dunes, of course, because we are right on Lake Michigan.

We have lots of wetlands, as well, and prairies.

So these birds migrate, and they migrate north in the spring and then come back down south in the fall.

So right now, of course, we're on spring migration for the festival.

Really what happens is they use a lot of the landscape and natural features to navigate to their northern breeding grounds.

But because of Lake Michigan, it creates a funnel effect along the flyway.

The Indiana Dunes State Park is perfectly situated at the southern tip of Lake Mich to take advantage of this funnel giving the birders at this festival an opportunity to see thousands of migratory bi across more than two-hundred spe ♪ So the Indiana Dunes State Park Longshore Tower is an awesome migratory hotspot for birds because of Lake Michigan and creating that funnel effect with migration, that observation tower sits right on the edge of Lake Michigan.

So you can actually see it from the tower.

So it almost draws them all in, and right here, right in the dunes, at that southern point of Lake Michigan, is where they sometimes congregate, you know, maybe for a day or two before they are going to travel either over the lake or around the lake.

And so we get these kind of, what we call migration fallouts where tons of birds will just be hanging out in this natural space for -- and just waiting, kind of, to migrate farther north.

So it's awesome birding, if you can come one morning on those fallouts, there are just kind of birds everywhere, and it's really great and awesome to share that with people too.

>> All right.

So this is similar to the bird we got last time.

Does anyone -- white-crowned sparrow.

We're seeing a lot of these right now.

>> Festival goers also have a chance to see some of these avian travelers up close.

Here, a conservation scientist demonstrates how birds are captured, studied, and their legs banded with identification tags for future research.

>> So Indiana Audubon and the festival bands birds because we want to be able to make the best management decisions, essentially.

We want to know where these birds are going and what habitats they are using.

What we do with banding is we, of course, catch them in what is called mist nets, and then we put them into these holding bags where they are just alone and not by anything else.

So they can kind of, like, relax and be calm.

It's almost like if you wrap yourself up in a blanket at home, just to calm down and relax.

So they can have a few seconds.

We'll measure their wings, get their weight, look for -- record the species and the sex of the bird as well, and then all the participants can watch that and really get kind of an in-depth look at what the research looks like.

And then after that, the banders will hold the bird up a lot of times for people to see up close and personal.

>> Who wants to let this bird go?

>> And then they will also a lot of times let the public or let the participants release the bird.

So they can hold them in their hand for a few seconds before it flies away, of course.

When they go back into the wild, they might be caught at a different banding station somewhere else, maybe, let's say, Canada, for example.

And so when that banding station catches our bird -- let's call it -- then that banding station will record it on the bird banding website.

And then we can see where that bird, migrated to, of course.

And then if it's using different habitats or what type.

So it just gives us a broader picture of where these birds are going and what they're -- what areas they are using so that we can, you know, better help them, better conserve these natural spaces.

>> While the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival is certainly a perfect place to build a closer bond with our feathered friends, for many, nurturing the human connections that are made here is equally important.

>> There are 700 people here that all really love birds and get enjoyment from it and love to do that.

And it's kind of like, you know, when you have a hobby, it's fun to share that hobby with other people, and connect with others.

So it's not just about finding the birds and enjoying their beauty, but it's sharing that with other people.

It's going to the socials or out on the tours and talking about, oh, hey, I saw this Virginia rail one time.

Or oh, did you see that solitary sandpiper that was over here?

And just really getting that sense of community.

And so really, it's just bringing people in to celebrate this large expanse, this large diversity of birds and habitat.

And then, of course, getting people together to share in that joy as well.

A bird just flew right in your shot.

Did you see it?

Yeah, it went poof.

>> Really?

>> Yeah, you will have to -- [ Laughter ] >> Whoa.

>> It like flew, it just about hit me.

>> Oh, my gosh.

>> BRANDON: Ever since I was a child, the dunes is one of my favorite places to go.

And so it's fascinating to discover that there are things going on there that, even all the times I've been there, I've never noticed.

Want to learn more?

Head to indunesbirdingfestival.com.

Earlier, we spoke with Jeannette Goben, the Statehouse Tour Coordinator, to learn more about this fascinating place.

♪ >> The Indiana Statehouse is the people's house, and this is also the seat of state government.

We're one of eight states that have all three branches of state government still functioning in the same historic building.

The Indiana Statehouse is located in the heart of Indianapolis.

The first statehouse on the grounds where we are now was built in 1835, but unfortunately, it was a bad build.

Half the ceiling collapsed after the foundation failed when the building was just slightly over 30 years old.

So we started over, and this time decided to do it right.

And the building took ten years to build.

It was completed in the year 1888, and we brought it in under budget.

A lot of the buildings, statehouses that were being built in that time period actually come from an influence following the American Civil War.

Following the war, all the veterans were invited to come to Washington, D.C., for a march.

They came back to their communities, particularly here in the Midwest, with an idea in their head of what a capitol building looked like, based on our nation's capitol building.

The Indiana Statehouse, this one that we are in, the 1888 version, was actually quite a modern building when it was being built.

It included great things like indoor plumbing.

We had a central heating system.

We had three steam hydraulic elevators in the building, and as they were building -- keeping in mind that this goes back to when the building was begun in 1878 -- they wired for electric lights.

Now, the original chandeliers had both gas lines and electric lines coming to them because in 1888, Indianapolis did not have a power plant that could supply electricity to a building this size.

We didn't get to turn the lights on here, though, until the year 1900.

In 2023, this is still the seat of state government here at the Indiana Statehouse.

With all three branches here, our executives are actually working in the building.

When the governor comes to work in the morning, this is where he comes.

Our legislators are here.

We have 100 House members, 50 Senate members.

We have five current justices on our Indiana Supreme Court.

All five of them generally hear the cases that come from the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court.

I guess my hope for anyone who comes into this building is, first, they know they are welcome.

This is the people's statehouse.

And for the people who live in Indiana -- and we all own this building, all 6.6 million of us, it is the people's house.

And so not just a sense of belonging, but a sense of ownership, and a sense of pride that we have this beautiful, functioning building, with so much history, but that it is still a functional space, that it is making things happen in our lives today.

>> BRANDON: You know, if you live in Indianapolis or you visit Indianapolis a lot, there's a great chance that you have driven by this building and just weren't aware of all of the things going on inside every day that make our government run.

Want to learn more?

Head to the address on your screen.

Up next, producer Tyler Lake takes us to Marion County to paint a picture of Hoosier artist, Felrath Hines.

♪ >> This is the work of one of Indiana's most underappreciated native sons.

A painter, both playful and meticulous; lyrical and meditative; joyous but thoughtfully restrained.

Felrath Hines is a Hoosier native, a world-renowned art conservator, and most importantly, a painter of great skill and artistry.

Born in Indianapolis in 1913, Samuel Felrath Hines, or Fel to his friends, was an urbane sophisticate that thrived in New York's elite art world, but his early days in Indiana guided this man of singular talent and ambition.

>> He showed really an early talent for making art, and was encouraged by his mother, who was a seamstress, and she always claimed that his talent came from her.

He was also encouraged in school.

He got a prize for something that he made when he was very young.

Then was able to get a scholarship to go to the Herron School of Art Saturday classes.

Fortunately at that time, even though other things were very segregated in Indianapolis, the Herron School of Art was open to anyone.

He went to Crispus Attucks High School when it first opened.

Indianapolis took a giant step backward and decided to have segregated high schools after they had had integrated high school.

He always had a lot of dignity and self-respect.

His mother, when he was a child, always told him that if people didn't wait on him in stores or ignored him, just to turn around and leave.

>> That sense of self stuck with him throughout his life.

He was meticulous in everything he did, whether it was working as a railroad dining car waiter in Chicago or as a conservator at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. or, of course, as a painter.

>> And he went out to San Francisco and he saw a mural on the side of a building, and just decided, okay, I'm going to go back and go to art school.

>> Hines attended the School of Art Institute of Chicago, before moving to New York City where he worked as a frame maker of some renown.

That work led to his work in conservation, where he met many towering figures in the contemporary art world.

But his passion for painting, as well as his skill and unique style, continued to grow.

>> He wasn't a traditional landscape painter.

He wasn't still lives or from models.

He was -- he always emphasized that he was painting from his imagination.

>> Even early on, his paintings from the 1950s were bold, brilliant studies in color and composition.

As he grew as an artist, soft kinetic strokes morphed into tighter, more focused works that explored color, shape and balance.

>> He does move -- starts to move more in a geometric direction and interested in different forms, and their spatial relationship to one another.

So these are not flat works.

They do have a sense of depth to them, which he achieves partly through the -- through the implied lines, the diagonals, but also through his manipulation of color and value.

>> Throughout the '50s, '60s and '70s, Hines' reputation as a conservator grew.

He handled works from Georgia O'Keeffe and Monet, among many others.

All the while, his paintings never found the right audience.

>> So the fact that he was a Black artist working in an abstract mode also limited his exhibition opportunities during his lifetime, because, you know, there are expectations that Black artists would be painting quote/unquote Black subject matter.

Therefore, museums -- let's say in the '50s, '60s, '70s -- they didn't really know what to do with his work.

>> He was part of an African American artist group called Spiral.

It was meant to bring greater recognition to artists of color, but his abstract works did not fit what many in the art world expected from an African American artist.

>> Felrath Hines was deeply engaged with the Civil Rights movement.

Matters of race were actually very important to him, but he didn't want to incorporate that into his art.

He was particularly interested in the formal qualities of his painting.

Starting in the early 1970s, he refused to lend his work to exhibitions that focused on Black artists.

>> In 1984, he retired from his role as chief conservator of the Hirshhorn Museum at the Smithsonian and embarked on the most prolific era of his long artistic career.

>> Final decade, he had much more time available to him, more freedom.

I think also it took him a lifetime to -- to explore and to develop his mature style.

>> Those late period paintings showcased an artist at his fullest potential.

>> We have right here an oil pastel called "Peacock" from 1989.

This is a late work made about four years before he died.

He was working in this geometric abstract mode.

It's a very unusual and distinctive use of color.

He was always exploring different possibilities for color combinations and juxtapositions.

This kind of olive green, and he's juxtaposing it to this earth sort of brown, and then we have three different shades of, you know, kind of cream becoming progressively warmer into this, you know, mustardy yellow.

Color combinations that I just want to say are strange, and yet they work really beautifully.

What distinguishes his work from other geometric abstractionists of this era is this really unexpected use of color.

>> Even with his prodigious output of profoundly original work late in his life, Hines is still a relative unknown, even here in Indiana.

>> He refused to be in Black shows, but he also wasn't accepted by the critical art world for his abstract work, which is what he wanted to be judged by.

It's really interesting today, because there's a lot of emphasis on Black artists, and Felrath Hines is almost always left out.

I think in the -- in the curatorial or museum art world, he is very well respected.

In Indiana, as far as a household name, certainly not.

>> But that's starting to change.

The Indiana Historical Bureau has recently placed a marker celebrating Hines and his work at his alma mater.

>> Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites wanted to commemorate Felrath Hines in this manner, with a historical marker, so that there would be a visible representation at his alma mater, Crispus Attucks High School.

>> More than a few of his pieces have found homes in museums back here in Indiana, where a curious Hoosier can endeavor to find the dazzling work of a truly remarkable artist.

>> BRANDON: Want to learn more?

Head to the address on your screen.

Up next, producer Todd Gould takes us to Wabash County, to enlighten us on how Wabash became the first electrified city in the world.

[ Bell tolls ] >> "March 31st, 1880, The fame of Wabash, Indiana, has been wafted upon every breeze and hurled from one point of the compass to another, until every nook and corner in America has been reached.

This is because she is the first city in the world to be lighted by electricity.

It was the strangest light ever exhibited in these United States," Fort Wayne Gazette.

♪ >> Rarely does the geographic layout of a city guarantee its place in international fame, but such was the case in 1880 in the town of Wabash, Indiana, which enjoys the claim of being the first electrically lighted city in the world.

>> They had this courthouse high on a hill that would allow the light to spread over the whole town and service the whole town and light the whole city.

It was a wonderful thing.

♪ >> In 1879, Dr. Charles Brush of Cleveland, Ohio, was one of the first entrepreneurs to shed new light on the functional uses of electricity.

Brush was working with a new arc lamp, which generated power from a small dynamo, sending electrical sparks firing through two carbon rods, creating a bright white light.

At the same time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison was perfecting his new incandescent light.

In a heated publicity race, both men were eager to show how their inventions could light an entire city with electricity.

Meanwhile, in Wabash, Indiana, Thad Butler, editor of the Wabash Plain Dealer, along with his partner T.P.

Keator, thought they could offer a solution to help Brush succeed in beating Edison.

>> These two men were walking one night and noticed that big courthouse and thought maybe the top of that courthouse would be a good place to try lighting the town with these new lights they had read about.

Thad Butler went to Cleveland, talked to Charles Brush, presented him with the idea.

He liked the idea, and so they brought it back to the city council.

♪ >> Notes from a city council meeting in February 1880 stated that Wabash would agree to pay $100 to the Brush Company to set up a lighting demonstration at the Wabash Courthouse in March.

If the event proved successful, Wabash would pay the company $1,800 to set up a permanent lighting system in the town.

The two editors from the Plain Dealer were thrilled, and hyped the coming attraction with great flair.

But as soon as the deal was signed, Wabash citizens began to question the move.

The city's rival newspaper called the lighting event a stunt, and many worried about the motives of folks from out of town who might abscond with the tax money raised by the good people of Wabash, none of whom had ever seen electric lights before.

>> People had read about electricity.

People in Wabash had read about it, but they had never experienced it.

>> They were doubting.

Both newspapers had all of these things that might happen, like the cows being so stressed out from light all the time, and so tired they wouldn't give milk.

The chickens the same thing.

They would probably croak.

They'd be so tired.

♪ >> As the time drew closer to the March 31st lighting event, tensions soared in Wabash.

Plain Dealer editor Thad Butler reported that one day the arguments grew so heated between the two Wabash newspapers, the editor of the rival paper accosted a Plain Dealer editor by holding a pistol to his throat and threatening him.

Butler and many members of the city council began to doubt their decision.

>> They have a moment when they are wondering, what have we done?

Why -- why did we decide to take this on?

You know, will it work?

[ Train whistle ] >> On March 31st, 1880, special trains from all over the Midwest poured into Wabash, crammed with people hoping to see the spectacle.

The tiny town of 2500 citizens was flooded with more than 10,000 spectators from all over the country.

>> So on March the 31st at 8:00 local time, it was pitch dark, and the arrangement was that the lights would come on at 8:00, at the stroke of eight.

There was tremendous tension in that crowd.

They were standing there and hearing the clock go bong, bong, bong.

>> All of a sudden the lights came on, and it was such an awesome thing.

They were so bright, the people were absolutely quiet for a little bit.

They didn't even say anything.

It was like ahhh.

>> There was dead silence.

You could have heard the proverbial pin drop.

>> And then the cheers, of course, and the celebration.

And supposedly a farmer out in the country, it was bright out there, and he saw this light.

And he ran in and said, get on your knees, mother, the world is coming to an end, you know?

>> "The crowd spread over the suburbs making tests by looking at watches and reading newspapers in an area that just moments before was pitch black.

In short, Wabash now enjoys the distinction of being the first city in the whole world to be lighted by electricity," Chicago Tribune.

>> This became a great matter of civic pride.

And some of that still exists today.

♪ >> BRANDON: I can't imagine experiencing this in realtime, and watching as people have this debate on whether or not to allow this to happen, especially since it's something that we take for granted now.

Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

And as always, we'd like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been, and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

All right.

Well, I am going to go catch a tour with Jeannette before I head out of here.

So we will see you next time on "Journey Indiana."

♪ Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you!