TOWN-GOWN I
t seemed to Joyce Taglauer Green ’75 and her late husband Judson ’74 that a wine bar serving pizza and pasta should bear an Italian name. But nothing struck them as they pondered what to call their new Greencastle establishment. Maybe, they thought, the name should have something to do with the city and its environs. “Our goal, we kept saying, is to connect people, to bring people together,” Green said. “… We came up with ‘Bridges’ because bridges do connect. There are multiple covered bridges around the area, and that cinched it. We said, this would mean something to the community.” When Bridges Craft Pizza and Wine Bar opened in August 2017 at 19 N. Indiana St. on the square, not only did it represent the Greens’ first venture into restaurant ownership, but their latest contribution to improving the towngown relationship between Greencastle and DePauw University. Such investments are “truly a magnet for visitors from outside the county,” said Eric Freeman ’84, tourism director at the Putnam County Convention & Visitors Bureau. “In promoting the county to prospective visitors, we
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heavily leverage the high quality of life here. The neat thing is we all get to live that life every day in this unique and enjoyable place.” Freeman’s advice for improving the town-gown relationship? “Rarely is ‘maintain the status quo’ a positive answer, but to continue improving relationships within the community, everyone needs to keep doing what they’ve done for the last decade,” he said. “In the last 10 years, the university and county leaders have done so much to intentionally engage each other and their constituents that Putnam County has become an awesome place to both visit and reside.” The Greens, who had given significant sums to the university in 2005 and 2013, shifted their focus in 2015 when they invested in the city and explicitly tied the investment to DePauw. They bought the former Goodwill building at 21 N. Indiana St.; renovated it to become Music on the Square, a performance center for faculty recitals, student performances and storytelling; and then gave it to DePauw. Thereafter, Joyce Green mused that it’d be nice for people who attended a concert to be able to get a glass of wine afterward. That led to Bridges. Then last
