102 INDIANAPOLIS REGIONAL CENTER PLAN 2020 PLANNING DOWNTOWN�fS FUTURE TODAY APPENDIX A: HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT Kinderhook, Germantown, Cotton Town and Stringtown; and suburbs such as Brightwood, Belmont, Mount Jackson, Haughville, Woodruff Place and Irvington began to flourish.  Mayor John Caven (among the city's most popular, having been elected to five two-year terms) personally drove the Street Railway Company's first mule-drawn streetcar down Illinois Street Union Depot inaugurating the city's first urban transportation system. The public school system kept pace with the dramatic population increase (the greatest increase in the city's history in terms of percentage increase) under the outstanding leadership of Superintendent A.C. Shortridge.   Parochial schools flourished, Indiana Medical College was founded and the city's first business college opened its doors offering, among other things, the city's longest title: The Indianapolis Practical Business, Military and Lecture College. Representative buildings of this era are Saint John's Catholic Church (1871) at 121 South Capitol Avenue, Morrison Opera Place (1871) at 47 South Meridian Street and the Nickum/ Holstein House/James Whitcomb Riley Home (1872) at 528 Lockerbie Street. 1873-1888: POST-WAR DEPRESSION Indianapolis had to catch its breath.  The Civil War economy and the momentum that carried it into the early 1870s had been characterized by hectic and uninterrupted growth.  The bubble suddenly burst with the startling failure of the New York Banking House of Jay Cooke and Col and the government's return to the Gold Standard.  Its unexpectedness set off the financial panic of 1873 Industry virtually ground to a halt in Indianapolis.   Statewide, over 1,000 businesses failed.  Over- extended real-estate investors and individual entrepreneurs like James Woodruff were hard hit. New industrial buildings remained unfinished Even prosperous businesses cut production. The Panic of 1873 engendered a strong resentment against the Eastern banks and exchanges that were suspected of controlling the economy to their advantage.  One result was the formation of the Greenback Party that exemplified the strong feeling that had emerged for government control of the currency. Despite the recession (or perhaps due in part to it) the retail sector of the economy consolidated and began to expand.  Lyman S. Ayres bought out N.R. Smith and Company's One-Price, Wide Awake Trade Palace, the When Building (now the Ober Building) opened, to be followed shortly by the H.P. Wasson, L. Strauss and William H. Block establishments. In 1876, Col. Eli Lilly opened a small pharmaceutical firm at 15 West Pearl Street.   quickly grew from a staff of three managed by his son Josiah to a major local business employing 100 workers and a dozen traveling salesmen.   This was only the beginning.  Eli Lilly and Company has been a major factor in the city's economic, political and social growth for over 100 years, the complete history of its impact on Indianapolis having yet to be written. Mayor John Caven did not wait for the economy to heal itself.  In an effort to put more people to work, he sought ways to attract new business to the city.  He proposed an actively promoted the building of a Belt Railroad around the southern half of the city that would connect all the railroads coming into the city with Union Depot and each other.  The plan was implemented after several false starts and helped position Indianapolis for its next phase of development despite having rendered several communities south of the Circle virtually inaccessible due to train blockage of access roads.    Several buildings constructed during this era provide a visible reflection of the times: Pierson Griffiths House/Kemper House (1873) at 1028 North Delaware, Hammond Block (1874) at 301 Massachusetts, City Market (1886), Indiana State House (1888) and Union Railroad Station (1888). Saint John's Catholic Church, 1903 Indiana Historical Society, Bass Photo Collection, 841 Union Station, 1903 Indiana Historical Society, Bass Photo Collection, 824 Union Station Depot