The Indiana State Archives has officially opened its new downtown Indianapolis facility at 350 W. Ohio St., ending a quarter-century period in a temporary warehouse. State officials marked the long-awaited opening with a ribbon-cutting on Thursday, celebrating a new home designed to better protect the state’s historical records and make them more accessible to Hoosiers.
The new building is located alongside Indianapolis’ Central Canal, contributing to a cluster of historical institutions that includes the Indiana Historical Society and Indiana State Museum across the canal, and the Indiana State Library nearby. The facility brings together archival storage, conservation and imaging workspaces, exhibits, and a public reading room near the Statehouse.
Approximately 90,000 cubic feet of boxes containing Indiana’s centuries-old paper trail were relocated into the new archives, according to Chandler Lighty, executive director of the Indiana Archives and Records Administration. These vital records include Indiana’s original constitutions, governors’ correspondence, millions of state agency documents, and evidence of family members’ military service, ancestors’ naturalization, or court battles that helped define Hoosiers’ rights.
Lighty highlighted three main priorities for the new building: proper climate controls, consolidating staff, and improving public access. He noted that the agency, despite being one of the smaller ones, had previously operated from four different locations. Bringing all staff together in one site allows for improved cross-departmental work.
Concerns had been raised about the former facility at 6440 E. 30th St., which was a temporary warehouse. Preservation advocates cited extreme climate fluctuations, vulnerability to tornadoes, and roof leaks. Elizabeth Hague, who works in the archives’ conservation lab, recalled watching an old book’s cover warp due to the changing conditions at the previous building. She explained that humidity in the lab could drop to 12% in winter or rise to 73% in summer, when it should ideally remain between 35% and 50%, with temperatures around 68 degrees, to prevent damage like leather drying out and causing spines to fall off. The new building’s storage areas are specifically designed to maintain the consistent temperature and humidity necessary for long-term preservation.
The archives had moved out of the Indiana State Library’s basement during a 2001 renovation, with the East 30th Street warehouse intended as a temporary solution. However, finding and financing a permanent replacement took years. Lawmakers authorized a new building in the 2021 budget and provided funding in 2023. The State Budget Committee approved work on the project in June of that year, with a budget of $102 million. Gov. Eric Holcomb joined officials for the groundbreaking in August 2023.
The five-story, 133,000-square-foot building now features offices overlooking the canal and the Indiana History Center. The public reading room offers long tables, individual lamps, and tall windows, along with computers for accessing digital collections and equipment for reading microfilm. A rooftop terrace provides space for gatherings with downtown views. Architect Bill Browne of RATIO Design noted that the narrow site allowed for placing storage areas against the parking garage, as they require no daylight, reserving the canal frontage for offices and public rooms. The building also connects to an existing tunnel, enabling it to use the state office building’s loading dock instead of constructing its own.
In the conservation lab, staff meticulously restore fragile documents. Hague is currently working on a Porter County survey map that had broken into pieces, using tinted mending tissue to reassemble the "so, so brittle" document. Restoration on such items can take four to six weeks, requiring drying time, so multiple projects are often handled simultaneously. Other records need cleaning, humidifying, and flattening before researchers can safely use them, with the goal of making repairs subtle and unnoticeable. Lighty also stated that better-conserved documents lead to higher-quality digital scans, improving public access.
The collection holds unique and recognizable materials, including Jim Jones’ church incorporation papers, Donald Trump’s casino application for Gary, and photographic negatives from the Beatles’ Indiana State Fair appearance. Indiana’s original constitutions are kept in a combination-lock safe when not on exhibit. The new storage areas also include room for future growth, with Lighty estimating capacity for an additional 30,000 to 40,000 cubic feet. Movable shelving in the new facility uses hand cranks, a choice Lighty believes will require less maintenance than the aging electronic system at the prior building. The opening also introduces a small ground-floor exhibit titled, “Indiana’s Foundations of Independence, 1776–1851.”
