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Last updated on Thursday, June 19, 2014
(INDIANAPOLIS) - The historic home of James Whitcomb Riley has added a million-dollar visitors’ center.
The Hoosier poet's home east of downtown Indianapolis draws thousands of visitors a year -- but there's no place for those visitors to gather or hold events.
Riley Children's Foundation board chairman Jim Morris notes the home is typical of late Victorian architecture, with small rooms that don't easily accommodate large groups. Morris says the brick visitors center's design is modeled on the original home's carriage house. Most of its three-thousand square feet comprises a meeting room just inside the entrance, with an 80-inch flat screen to tell Riley's story.
Riley was born in Greenfield, but lived in the home from 1893 until his death in 1916 at age 66. His dialect-filled verses, including "The Raggedy Man" and "Short'nin' Bread," earned him the nickname "The Children's Poet."
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