Ransom Place Historical District | Indianapolis, IN

The Ransom Place Historic District is the most intact 19th century neighborhood associated with African Americans in Indianapolis. The district was named after Freeman B. Ransom (1882-1947, an attorney and general manager of the Walker Manufacturing Company, a cosmetics firm founded by Madam C.J. Walker. He moved to Indianapolis around 1910 and raised his family on California Street in the same neighborhood that would eventually be named in his honor. It is a surviving fragment of the much larger black neighborhood that surrounded Indiana Avenu, which was home to many african american business and civic leaders, doctors, attorneys, and other professionals over its long history.

Today, the six-block district features beautifully restored homes dating all the way back to the Reconstruction, a nineteenth-century canal, the Walker Theatre, Crispus Attucks High School, as well as the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University.

The Ransom Place Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992 for its significance in the history of Indianapolis’s African-American community.