(BELOW) Two old wagon wheels sit in the IU warehouse waiting for a new home in a yet unbuilt museum. (LEFT) Classroom chairs sit idle in one corner of Showers Warehouse.
photos/Julia Corbett
by Julia Corbett The floorboards are old and soft. The smell is a combination attic-barnyard smell. The chill hangs. Drips of melting snow drop from the beamed roof to the floor. Pigeons coo from the rafters and drip, too. At the turn of the century, it was a gigantic factory called Showers. About 20 years ago, IU obtained possession and began using the building at Seventh and Morton streets as a university warehouse. And what's being housed there now? A dentist's chair, rat cages, reels of film,
mailboxes, buggies and wagons, auditorium chairs, library shelves and tables, a sod buster, a cider press, a bear (stuffed), old yearbooks and dozens of thriving pigeons stay there. "If people (in university departments) don't have any place to put their things, they bring 'em down here, and here they set," said Bill Crohn, caretaker of the warehouse. The un-current items do indeed sit, and sit and sit. Sometimes they get wet. Sometimes they get covered with pigeon droppings. Watched after they are; cared for they are not. Some things are sold at an auction every fall, but the owners decide which, if any, of their possessions will be offered for sale. Much of the space is occupied by opera and theatre
department props and scenery pieces. Another section is full of antiques, antique-looking buggies and pieces of farm machinery. Crohn said these items would be moved as soon as a museum is built for them. The saddest inhabitants of the IU warehouse are the large, oak tables with massive, carved legs and matching chairs, many leaded-glass windows and piles of green, metal bookshelves. They came from the old library after it burned; Crohn explained. He said the tables are being stored because they will not fit into any new buildings. Plastic covers protect several tables; many more are just left to be damaged by water and pigeon droppings. 91
