Roberts School Reverie by Jared Carter

In every city there are small, jeweled places that linger in the memory. Years ago as I walked along a side street in Palermo I noticed an open door, and peered in, and encountered a trompe l'oeil stairway, made of thousands of pieces of ebony and mahogany and spruce, that seemed to rise to a shadowy landing on the second floor.

I was looking in fact at a flat inlaid panel only a few feet distant from where I stood in that narrow entrance. It created a momentary illusion of depth and space. No guidebook listed this wonderful Sicilian joke. Some eighteenth-century townsman had installed it, for his own pleasure or amusement. In semi-tropical Palermo, it would last a very long time -- yet another secret in a city of many secrets and mysteries.

Similarly, I was much intrigued when I finally reached the top of the Eiffel Tower, and discovered, at the center of the highest observation point, a tiny office, enclosed in glass, no more than a meter wide, complete with a wooden desk and chair, a few books, and writing paraphernalia. It was Eiffel's own office, where, we are told, he sometimes repaired, after the completion of his masterpiece, so that he could read, and meditate, and look out over the city, and, one supposes, catch up on his correspondence. This, too, was a jeweled space, unexpected and delightful.

In Indianapolis there is a jeweled space of considerable proportions in the great hall at the top of the War Memorial. No visitor to the city whom I have ever taken up the long flight of marble stairs, and into this vast, hushed interior, has failed to be awed. It is one of the most remarkable architectural enclosures on earth. The great white multi-pointed star hanging in the center is utterly transfixing. One well-traveled friend stood and surveyed the room for several minutes without saying a word. Finally he spoke. "This must have been what the Parthenon was like, originally," he said, "with the statue of Athena by Phidias. This kind of majesty."

The next time you are out walking on Massachusetts Avenue, at the northeastern end, take a moment to locate a sealed entryway into the old Coca-Cola Building, which is now owned by Indianapolis Public Schools. It glazed tiles are covered with grime, its handsome bronze grills tarnished and pitted. But find a place to peer through the glass, at the lobby and the stairway. This, too, is a jeweled place, evocative of the great era of
sleek design and streamlining that characterized the 1930s. It is an architectural time capsule -- secret, hidden, splendid.

So, too, then, the hydrotherapy room of James E. Roberts School # 97, located at 1401 East 10th Street, and presently endangered, as the entire
building is now being considered for demolition by the Indianapolis School Board. The building sits at the extreme northeast corner of the large historic land-grant that includes Arsenal Technical High School and two other public schools. In itself it is a masterpiece of Art Moderne style characteristic of the 1930s. I toured the building not long ago in company
with other concerned neighbors and Near Eastside activists.

We were told by an IPS spokesperson of the irreparable structural damage, shown the classrooms, and allowed to wander the halls. It is a beautiful,
one might say, priceless building, the pure product of style and design in the year in which it was built, which was 1936. Nothing prepared me, however, for the striking interior space that was, originally, a room where children underwent the allegedly therapeutic and restorative process of hydrotherapy.

Roberts School was originally conceived and built as a special school for physically disabled or handicapped children. One does not need to search out the records of their specific illnesses. The building itself bears testimony. The long interior ramps that lead from floor to floor attest to the fact that many were in wheel chairs, while others moved with the assistance of crutches. If we turn away from such practice now -- of segregating those whose misfortune leads us to set them apart -- the architecture itself demonstrates that we cannot rewrite history.

Many diseases of childhood that have now been almost eradicated were quite common in 1936, when Roberts School was donated to Indianapolis by the philanthropist Henrietta West Roberts. Even penicillin had not yet been discovered. The president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then in his first term, had been afflicted with poliomyelitis when still a young man. Effective inoculation for this dread affliction would not arrive until the mid-1950s. During the Depression, treatment by heat, and by immersion or hydrotherapy, were among methods employed to alleviate the wasting physical effects of this disease..

Thus we come, toward the end of our tour, into a small but high-ceilinged room, on the south side of the school, where the floor consists of beautiful
dark plum-colored tiles, and an enormous interior wall made of glass blocks filters the afternoon light. We are in a slightly different world now from blackboards and books and multiplication tables. This is a place of rest and recuperation, of the strange comfort of water heated almost to body temperature, yielding and buoyant and refreshing. Muscles and limbs that had been constricted by disease could here be gently stretched and extended again against the ever-pliant waters.

An interior ramp circles around a large tiled receptacle that is the hydrotherapy tank. Today, the tank is capped and dusty -- unused, undoubtedly, for many years. Cardboard boxes of supplies are piled on top. The room's original purpose forgotten or abandoned, it now seems to function as a teachers' lounge. But its inordinate beauty remains unchanged.

One can almost visualize the small child being led up the ramp by the therapist, and encouraged to descend the inner steps into the shimmering
depths of the pool. Sunlight coming through the trees outside passes through the refracting blocks of glass, and shines like a benediction on the figures engaged in this timeless process. This is a place of hope, of comfort, of belief in a future that can, with philanthropic generosity and professional care, be made available to all.

It is one of those jeweled places to remember, and, if possible, to treasure. If we lose it, we lose something of ourselves -- an awareness that our fathers and mothers, too, confronted sickness and hardship, and did their best to reach out to others less fortunate. Henrietta West Roberts reached out, and so did the devoted teachers and therapists who worked for so many years in the building she endowed. A structure that perpetuates this spirit of caring, and that encapsulates that spirit in its architectural details, seems eminently worth saving.