Superior Chevrolet, Indianapolis

A multi-story car dealership and service center in prime urban renewal territory on the edge of Indianapolis’ downtown core—I’m a little surprised that this one hung on. Many of these old automotive buildings were built like brick shithouses, though, so we get a nice example of adaptive reuse instead. Built in 1927 for Hare Chevrolet and designed by Adolph Scherrer & Sons (emphasis on the sons, since Adolph himself died in 1925), the building is now the headquarters of apartment developer Milhaus.

So, what's changed? Given the wildly different building function today (pretty big jump from a showroom and service center to a regular office), surprisingly little.

• The building chimney and most of the spaces programmed for signage have disappeared.
• It's mildly interesting that the anchors holding up the canopies over the entrances are much lower, but you can still see where the old ones where.
• Planters as bollards, those seem to be a more modern phenomenon.

In 1927, the Hare family—whose company was founded as a horse-drawn carriage business in 1847 before they eventually expanded into automobiles—bought Stone Chevrolet, which was operating on this site. Hare Chevrolet was based in Noblesville—this acquisition was their beachhead into the big city market.

The Hares immediately set about building themselves a flagship showroom and service center, hiring Adolph Scherrer & Sons to design it. Adolph, who designed the Indiana State Capitol and the gates to Crown Hill Cemetery, had died in 1925, so his sons Anton and Herman led the firm for this commission. They drew up a utilitarian brick box, built like a tank with reinforced concrete floors, then tried to gussy it up with that massive lintel decorated with medallions and, like, mock finials? It's goofy.

The late 1920s turned out to be an awful time for a provincial dealership to try to break into a bigger market—the Great Depression and all that—and Hare Chevrolet closed this location in the early 1930s (although the family hung onto the Noblesville dealership until they sold in 2017). It was briefly a Pontiac dealership, Dehart and Landis, until Superior Chevrolet moved in in 1936. Superior Chevrolet operated here for more than 30 years until owner E.J. Voelker terminated the franchise in 1970 and retired.

Semi-vacant but stout, the building survived the 1970s and 1980s, cycling through a variety of low-value uses (in the 1990s it was a storage warehouse for Bank One’s excess office furniture). The building was gut-renovated in 2002 to become the new home of Indiana Business College. A scammy, for-profit private college, Indiana Business College rebranded as Harrison College then abruptly closed in 2018, giving their students all of two days' notice.

In what was in retrospect a last gasp effort to stay afloat, Harrison College had sold the building in 2018 to Milhaus, an Indianapolis-based apartment developer (who were also caught off guard by the college's closure). Milhaus first developed an apartment complex on the surface lot next door (hell yeah!), then turned their attention to the old auto showroom. After a $5m renovation, Milhaus' new headquarters opened here in 2023.

Further reading:

• Apartment developer Milhaus buys former Harrison College property for $6.3M
• Milhaus plans $5M renovation to turn former Harrison College building into new HQ
• Milhaus Opens New Headquarters In Downtown Indianapolis

This ad absolutely cracked me up.

Plus a couple of other relevant articles.

And these were the Scherrer brothers, Anton and Herman—those were some particular genes.