Local
Riley’s Lockerbie home preserves a century of Indianapolis history
The James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home still displays many of the poet’s original belongings, preserved in the house where he lived from 1893 until his death in 1916. The museum at 528 Lockerbie St. offers guided tours and keeps the home’s connections to Indiana’s literary and civic past accessible to visitors.
INDIANAPOLIS — In the James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home in Lockerbie Square, a player piano, writing desk and top hat help preserve the everyday world of the poet known as the “Hoosier Poet.” Many of the home’s rooms, including its bedrooms, front parlor and library, retain furnishings more than a century old.
“Basically like time capsules,” museum director Chris Mize said of those rooms.
Riley moved into the Italianate house at 528 Lockerbie St. in 1893, invited by close friends John and Charlotte Nickum and their family. The house had been completed in 1872. Riley, born in Greenfield, had settled in Indianapolis in the early 1870s and was then a popular lecturer who performed his poems for audiences around the country.
He had long admired Lockerbie and wrote about the neighborhood in an 1880 poem. Friends in Bloomington questioned why he stayed there rather than building a home on Meridian Street, Mize said. Riley’s response, as Mize recounted it, was that he loved the neighborhood.
The residence became a gathering place for prominent visitors, including President Benjamin Harrison and writers Meredith Nicholson and Booth Tarkington. Riley lived there until his death in 1916, at age 66. Magdalena Nickum Holstein, one of the household’s residents, died a few months later.
William Fortune, a friend of Riley’s, bought the home to protect it. In 1922, the Riley Memorial Association — now the Riley Children’s Foundation — opened it as a museum to raise money for the hospital now known as Riley Children’s Health. The museum’s uninterrupted operation since then has helped keep the house and its history available to the public.
The collection includes an Apollo player piano given to Riley by a fan in 1908, as well as his cigar box, writing desk, top hat and cane. The museum also works to preserve details that might otherwise be lost: when lace curtains needed replacing, staff found the original receipt and ordered replicas made with the same pattern on the same looms, Mize said.
The home matters not only as a preserved residence, but as a place linked to a period when Riley helped introduce audiences across the country to Indiana and its culture, Mize said.
The museum interior is available by advance registration for guided tours. Its grounds and visitor center are open Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults, $2 for students ages 7 to 17, and free for children 6 and younger. More information is available at rileymuseumhome.org.