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Carnegie Center for Art & History | |
Location | New Albany, Indiana |
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Coordinates | 38°17′12″N85°49′19″W / 38.2867°N 85.8219°W |
Built | 1902 |
Architect | Clarke & Loomis |
Architectural style | Neoclassical Revival |
Website | www |
Part of | New Albany Downtown Historic District (ID99001074) |
Added to NRHP | September 3, 1999 [1] |
The Carnegie Center for Art & History, within the Downtown Historic District of New Albany, Indiana, is a contemporary art gallery and local history museum. The Carnegie Center offers a variety of exhibitions, events, and learning opportunities for the public. [2] The Carnegie Center is a branch of the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library.
The building was initially built as a Carnegie library, first opened on March 2, 1904, with 11,125 total books. [3] It is of Beaux-Arts architecture style. It was used as a library until 1969, when the new New Albany-Floyd County Public Library was built. After a $1.2 million renovation in 1998, the name was changed to the Carnegie Center for Art & History to better reflect its mission and library heritage. In 2015, total attendance was 26,690 and Carnegie Center staff presented 107 programs to participants of all ages. All exhibits and programs are offered free of charge to the public.
The Carnegie Center has two permanent exhibitions.
The first is entitled Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage: Men and Women of the Underground Railroad, which opened in March 2006. The exhibit explores the lives of real people both free and enslaved, whose selfless acts of courage helped fugitive slaves find hope and freedom. The Exhibit is based on the book, The Underground Railroad in Floyd County, Indiana by Pamela Peters. [4] [5] Information for the project was gathered from court records, newspaper stories, oral history accounts, and other artifacts. [5] At the heart of the exhibit are the residents of New Albany who were able to accomplish so much in light of the risk of being involved with the Underground Railroad.
The second permanent exhibit is entitled Remembered: The Life of Lucy Higgs Nichols. The exhibit guides visitors through Lucy's life from 1838 to 1915. Period documents and letters detail her life as an enslaved person in Tennessee, a nurse during the Civil War, and her post-war life in freedom. It highlights her six-year battle for a nurse's pension, ultimately awarded through a Special Act of Congress. Visitors can explore maps that pinpoint the paths she took and examine actual artifacts from the Civil War, including an Enfield rifle and an amputation saw of the same type used by the surgeons Lucy served with in the 23rd Indiana Volunteers. [6]
Floyd County is a county located in the U.S. state of Indiana. Its county seat is New Albany. The population of the county was 80,484 as of the 2020 United States Census. Floyd County has the second-smallest land area in the entire state. It was formed in the year 1819 from neighboring Clark and Harrison counties.
Jeffersonville is a city and the county seat of Clark County, Indiana, United States, situated along the Ohio River. Locally, the city is often referred to by the abbreviated name Jeff. It lies directly across the Ohio River to the north of Louisville, Kentucky, along I-65. The population was 49,447 at the 2020 census.
New Albany is a city in Floyd County, Indiana, United States, situated along the Ohio River, opposite Louisville, Kentucky. The population was 37,841 as of the 2020 census. The city is the county seat of Floyd County. It is bounded by I-265 to the north and the Ohio River to the south, and is considered part of the Louisville, Kentucky Metropolitan Statistical Area. The mayor of New Albany is Jeff Gahan, a Democrat; he was re-elected in 2023.
In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is a nonprofit organization that operates four museums in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The organization is headquartered in the Carnegie Institute and Library complex in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The Carnegie Institute complex, which includes the original museum, recital hall, and library, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 30, 1979.
New Albany High School is a public high school located in New Albany, Indiana, United States. Founded on October 3, 1853. New Albany High school is the oldest public high school in the state of Indiana. The school was closed from 1859 to 1864 to be made into a hospital for union soldiers during the American Civil War. The school was the first FM high school radio station (88.1) to be licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and has had its own Public-access television cable TV channel WNAS-TV since 1980. It is a part of the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation.
The Indiana State Museum is a museum located in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The museum houses exhibits on the science, art, culture, and history of Indiana from prehistoric times to the present day.
The New Albany Downtown Historic District is a national historic district located at New Albany, Indiana. The general area is W. First Street to the west, Spring St. to the north, E. Fifth Street to the east, and Main Street to the south. The local specification of the district is between East Fifth Street to West Fifth Street, Culbertson Street to the north, and the Ohio River to the south. East Spring Street Historic District is immediately east of the area, and the Main Street section of the Mansion Row Historic District starts. The area includes the Scribner House, where the founders of New Albany lived. It is also the focal area of the Harvest Homecoming Festival every October.
The Sweet Gum Stable, also known as Farmer's Feed and Supply, was located at the southeast corner of Main and W. Seventh Street in New Albany, Indiana. The property was a stop of the Underground Railroad, ten blocks west of another stop, the Town Clock Church, and a mere block away from the River Jordan for fugitive slaves, the Ohio River. The stable was built in 1877, and consisted of a balloon frame stable with an attached small brick and frame dwelling constructed about 1836. A feed store was added to the building in 1886. The structured measured 60 feet by 120 feet and encompassed the entire lot.
The 23rd Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
The Carnegie Museum of Montgomery County (CMMC) is located in Crawfordsville, Indiana, United States. The museum, opened in June 2007, is located in the first Carnegie Library building in Indiana, which opened in 1902. The museum's exhibits focus on the history, art, and culture of Montgomery County. Themes include business and industry, literature and learning, arts and culture, military and democracy, sports and pop culture, topics about Montgomery County, early history, and STEM/STEAM-based programs.
Lucy Higgs Nichols was an African American woman who escaped slavery. She served as a nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War. Known affectionately as "Aunt Lucy", her sole photo shows her surrounded by veterans of the 23rd Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, of the Army of the Tennessee. She was as devoted to the soldiers as they were to her and her daughter, Mona. She lost her daughter and husband during the Civil War, and after the war ended, settled in New Albany, Indiana, where she worked as a housekeeper to several officers and eventually married her second husband, John Nichols. She lived in New Albany with her husband for more than forty years, until her death on January 25, 1915, at the Floyd County Poor House.
Monroe Carnegie Library, also known as Old Monroe Carnegie Library, is a historic Carnegie library located at Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana. It was built in 1917, and is a one-story, rectangular, Neoclassical style limestone building on a raised basement. The Monroe County History Center is a history museum the historic library building that was established as a Carnegie library. The museum is located on the site of Center School in the former Bloomington Public Library building. The library building is now home to the Monroe County Historical Society, their collection of artifacts, and their Genealogy Library. A historical marker is present at the site. The History Center is located at 202 East 6th Street. It is a tourist attraction.
Hannibal Caesar Carter was the Secretary of State of Mississippi from September 1 to October 20, 1873, and from November 13, 1873, to January 4, 1874, serving the first term after being appointed when Hiram R. Revels resigned. He also served two non-consecutive terms representing Warren County in the Mississippi House of Representatives, the first from 1872 to 1873 the second from 1876 to 1877, both times as a Republican. In later years he changed his affiliation to Democratic. He was one of several African Americans to serve as Mississippi Secretary of State during the Reconstruction era. Carter was born in New Albany, Indiana, in February 1835, to a free Black family, then moving to Toronto, Canada for his early childhood. He and his brother, Edward E. Carter, served in the Native Guards of Louisiana and then both became Captains in the United States Coloured Troops.His father was George Washington Carter, free Black businessman, Freemason, and active member of the Underground Railroad.
Paul and Susannah Mitchem were a couple from Virginia who owned dozens of slaves; late in their life they decided to bring their slaves to Harrison County, Indiana and free them. They also used the Meachum surname. The Mitchems emancipated over 100 enslaved people in Indiana, most of whom settled around Corydon, Indiana. Farms, businesses, churches, and schools were established by and for the African American community, often called the Mitchem Settlement.
Wright Modlin or Wright Maudlin (1797–1866) helped enslaved people escape slavery, whether transporting them between Underground Railroad stations or traveling south to find people that he could deliver directly to Michigan. Modlin and his Underground Railroad partner, William Holden Jones, traveled to the Ohio River and into Kentucky to assist enslave people on their journey north. Due to their success, angry slaveholders instigated the Kentucky raid on Cass County of 1847. Two years later, he helped free his neighbors, the David and Lucy Powell family, who had been captured by their former slaveholder. Tried in South Bend, Indiana, the case was called The South Bend Fugitive Slave Case.