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Downtown Indianapolis
Ms. Pink's Recollection Mural
By Eric Hannon
There is a hidden gem of art in the St. Joseph neighborhood that is just waiting to educate and inspire you. The "Ms. Pink's Recollections" mural is located on the north wall of the currently vacant commercial building at 901 N. Pennsylvania (last occupied by Datsa Pizza).
The mural depicts an open book with falling letters and words around a historical photograph of Charlotte "Pink" Cathcart, who grew up just south of this location. The artwork pays homage to Ms. Cathcart’s memoir of childhood memories, "Indianapolis From Our Old Corner" (available online).
The mural was created as part of the Vibrant Corridors project in 2015, a project to create murals in key underpasses and gateways around the city, by the Arts Council of Indianapolis and Angie's List employees.
Charlotte "Pink" Cathcart was born in 1877 in Indianapolis and grew up in a white cottage with a picket fence on the southeast corner of what is now 9th (formerly Pratt St) and Pennsylvania St. Pink got her nickname from one of her dolls that sustained a broken leg, which was the same thing that happened to a doll in a storybook she was reading at the time called "Poor Pinky Pet's Dolly". Her family began calling her Pinky Pet and eventually just Pink. Her father, Robert Weir Cathcart, operated Cathcart, Cleland & Company, a bookstore on Washington Street, that was often frequented by famous Indianapolis luminaries like James Whitcomb Riley and J.K. Lilly. Robert married Alice Morrison Cathcart, whose grandfather gifted them their home as a wedding present in 1870.
Pink's recollections of her childhood, published by the Indiana Historical Society in 1965, paint a vivid picture of life in Indianapolis in the late 1800's.
After Pink's father died in 1909, Alice Cathcart had an apartment building constructed on the site of Pink's childhood home. The Cathcart (103 E 9th St) remains today, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, as an example of the early 1900's apartment building boom that yielded many other historic buildings in the north central downtown district.
Next time you pass this mural (maybe on the way to the Central Library to check out a copy of Miss Cathcart's book) take a moment to stop, look, and appreciate the beauty and history of our amazing city.
Pennsylvania was a street of homes. There were very few handsome residences compared with Meridian Street, but Pennsylvania with its shady maples, its frame houses with picket fences, its little black mules pulling "bobtail" streetcars with accommodating drivers, was most pleasant for pedestrians.
Charlotte "Pink" Cathcart
Cathcart family on their porch (Alice, Robert, Kate, Pink). In 1917, Pink would go on to Contrexeville, France (~50 miles east of Paris) working as a stenographer to support the first world war.
Inside Cathcart, Clelland, & Company bookstore on Washington St. Whenever James Whitcomb Riley would publish a new book, he would write a verse on the inside cover of a book for both Pink and her sister Kate.