10. Diamond Drugs, 670 Philadelphia Street. Diamond Drugs makes the list because of its massive, protruding-brow façade, an exaggerated modern element expressive of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The porcelain enamel panels cover a commercial row building that probably dates back to the 19^th century. Enamored with the clean lines and smooth surfaces of modernity, downtown merchants started remodeling their storefronts with contemporary materials in the 1920s. Pigmented structural glass (known by such trade names as Vitrolite and Carrara Glass), and porcelain enamel baked onto metal sheets were two popular modern facing materials. By the late-1950s however, smooth, unornamented surfaces were not enough to catch the attention of downtown shoppers, causing some merchants to adopt a style that exaggerated certain architectural elements to make the building stand out with a space-age sleekness appreciated at the time. Exaggerated modern exuberance fell from favor by the late 1960s, being replaced by a more somber environmental style characterized by earth tones, natural materials, faux mansard roofs, and Colonial Revival details. Interestingly, Diamond Drugs exhibits this style too, the results of a first floor remodel that occurred after the drug store moved from its previous location in an older building that once stood where Lucky Break Billiards now is. Diamond Drug’s contrast of styles only makes it all the cooler. Other Indiana buildings clad in porcelain enamel include Buggy’s Exxon on Philadelphia Street, with its curved corner vestige of the 1930s Streamline Moderne style, and the Rend Building on S. 7^th Street. Just north at 8 S. 7^th is Van Horn’s Barber Shop, partially clad in Indiana’s sole surviving example black Vitrolite.

9. Waller Hall, IUP campus. Waller Hall, and its adjacent fraternal twin, Fisher Hall, are Indiana’s best examples of Neoclassical Greek temple forms from the early 20^th century. Between the 19^th century Victorian period and the rise of modern styles in the mid-20^th century, America experienced a renewed interest in revival styles inspired by the classical architecture of ancient Greece and Rome. The two collegiate buildings that filled out the west side of the Oak Grove reflect these styles, referencing the enlightened principles of the ancient Greeks thought to be eminently appropriate for halls of higher education. Waller Hall was completed in 1927 to include a gymnasium and a swimming pool. Its front is a raised portico encompassing a row of fluted Corinthian columns supporting a triangular pediment. Large, three-part Palladian-like windows -more a Renaissance thing than a Greek thing, but commonly incorporated into Neoclassical structures of the early 20^th century- open the flanks and rear of the temple form. Keystones –more a Pennsylvania thing than a Greek thing- are used as decorative elements in the front and rear (including a large one containing the letter “I” for Indiana). Fisher was built next door in 1939 as an auditorium and concert hall. It is somewhat less ornamented due to the creeping effects of modernity, and is not raised on a stepped platform, but stands as the perfect compliment.

8. Coney Island, 636-642 Philadelphia Street. The first cool thing about the Coney is its labyrinthine nature, snaking through four interconnected buildings with two bars, a restaurant, dance floor, and game room tucked around each successive corner. This complex of structures also allows more buildings to be squeezed onto a top ten list as the exterior facades on all of them have been little changed. The front two buildings facing Philadelphia Street are part of a row of structures that preserve the appearance of Victorian era Indiana at its height. The eastern half of Philadelphia Street’s 600 block was the county’s business, retail, and government center. Buildings on the south side of the street were constructed in the high style architecture of the 1880s and 1890s, having located opposite what was then the new Indiana County Courthouse, completed in 1870. The four adjacent facades extending east from Carpenter Avenue (the first two being part of the Coney) project the rise and fall of the Romanesque style. The Coney’s main entrance is through the old True Value Hardware Store, constructed as the Wilson, Sutton & Company Store in 1880 in the popular Italianate style of heavy, decorative cornices, but with a hint of Romanesque in its arched windows and central bay. Coney’s arched-window corner building was built in a Romanesque style for S & T’s first bank. Although lacking semi-circular, Roman arch windows, the 1895 Rend Brothers Building (now Amadeus Café) does have some rusticated stonework more common to the style. At the same time, it incorporates larger window openings topped by transom glass, a feature characteristic of a new commercial style then being adopted by substantial downtown block buildings. The adjacent building, now Cozumel, was constructed as the First National Bank around the same time. The unaltered part of its façade uses even more rusticated stone, but in a style that anticipates the impending trend toward Neoclassicism that became especially popular with banks. This entire street ensemble predates the Coney Island Restaurant, but not the coney island, an early term for the hot dog invented in 1874 at Coney Island, New York. By the early 20^th century, “Coney Island” luncheonettes were popping up all over Main Street America as small eateries serving hot dogs and other quick, affordable fare. The Coney Island’s original alley location at 11 Carpenter Avenue was typical for these small lunch rooms. Established in 1933, Indiana’s Coney Island beckoned hungry patrons down the alley from Philadelphia Street with the aid of a colorful, neon, metal box sign. Although no longer lit, the vintage sign is still there.

7. Rose Building, 740 Philadelphia Street. The Rose Building is Indiana’s most elegant example of the modern commercial style emergent in the early 20^th century. It also represents the height of downtown retailing before the onslaught of the automobile scattered shopping to the suburbs. Now housing the Pita Pit, the building was constructed for S. W. Rose, proprietor of the Bon Ton Department Store. His name still marks the top of the building. Indiana’s Bon Ton (a French reference to ‘high fashion’ popular in the late 19^th century) began on the first floor of the old Elks Lodge, a Romanesque commercial building constructed in 1907 that now contains Luxenberg’s Jewelers. Rose moved into the new building at 8^th and Philadelphia streets in 1918. The white, glazed brick building was minimally decorated, having broad eves and an arcaded façade of four, fan-topped, full-length arches. The arches reference Italian Renaissance loggias, while the building’s sleek lines and understated ornamentation anticipates the Modern movement. Its lesser twin houses Indiana Floral and carries a date stone of 1912, the year the Titanic went down. More than 100 years later, the Rose Building is still delicately balanced between the eclectic historical influences of the Victorian era, and the progressive modernity of the 20^th century.

6. The Coventry Inn, 11 N. 6^th Street. Most unaltered buildings reflect the historical styles that existed when they were constructed, allowing the built environment to be read like a book and arranged according to a chronology of expected styles. Occasionally, there is a building that doesn’t make sense relative to the typical historical geography of a place. In Indiana, that building is the Coventry Inn. Rather than representing its time and place, The Coventry reflects its authorship; one man’s dream to construct an authentic English pub on the streets of Indiana. Charles Runyon, owner of The Roadster Factory, an Indiana County company that provides parts and equipment for British sports cars, willed the inn into existence, and even fabricated its legend. The legend tells of a mythical first Coventry Inn operated in Bidford-on-Avon from 1497 to 1941 when a German air raid during the Battle of Britain bombed it out of existence –almost. The surviving beams were purchased by Runyan, and incorporated into his Indiana recreation, which then would have been completed in time to celebrate its 500^th anniversary in 1997. Regardless of the legend, the Coventry Inn is Indiana’s incongruous example of a 15^th century English Tudor pub built of half-timbering and stucco popular three centuries before the county was founded. Common to this vernacular form, the Coventry has twin, front-facing gables, and three cantilevered stories each projecting outward from the story below. The wooden casement windows are grouped in strings of three (third floor) or more (first and second floor), the heavy iron-strap door is fitted into a flattened Tudor arch, and the massive chimney is topped with decorative clay pots. The chimney is the outward expression of a large central fireplace, which can be enjoyed on chilly winter nights while lounging on leather couches drinking pints of English ale. And that’s really cool.

5. Grace United Methodist Church, 7^th & Church streets. Like many small towns, Indiana has a street on the edge of the business district that fronts the oldest and most prominent religious institutions. Appropriately enough, this is Church Street where Zion Lutheran, Graystone Presbyterian, Calvary Presbyterian, Grace United Methodist, and First Baptist churches stand within a couple blocks of each other. This is by design, dating back to the original 1803 plat on which George Clymer designated a block between what are now 6^th and 7^th streets to be reserved for churches. Rising heavenward from the northwest corner of 7^th and Church, Grace United Methodist is the third church built by Indiana’s Methodist community, the first in 1841, and the second at this site in 1876. The present church was built to satisfy the needs of an expanding congregation in the midst of the Great Depression. Dedicated in 1932, it is a Georgian Revival building with all the embellishments this style is known for when used as church architecture: a tall, slender steeple, a large portico of cast marble Corinthian columns supporting a triangular pediment, decorative cornice urns, broken ogee pediments over the main doors, and two, large Palladian windows at either end of the transept, which is the part of a cruciform-shaped church that crosses the main nave right before the alter. The brilliant, classic white interior has a certain historic familiarity to it, as it is reminiscent of Boston’s famous Old North Church.

4. Calvary Presbyterian Church, 7^th & Church streets. Catty corner from the Renaissance inspired Grace United Methodist is Calvary Presbyterian’s monumental Gothic Revival edifice faced in reddish-hued Hummelstown brownstone. Church corners don’t get cooler than this, with two grandly apportioned houses of worship richly constructed in the two ecclesiastical styles popular during the early 20^th century. Calvary’s congregation was founded in 1807 as the First Presbyterian Church just four years after Indiana was founded. This building however, was completed in 1906 as the congregation’s third. Its Gothic references include heavy stone masonry, pointed lancet arches and windows, and a lofty, buttressed corner tower that supported a steeple until 1966. Gothic Revival styles were popular in the mid-19^th century as romantic reinterpretations of the cathedrals and castles of Medieval Europe. Its ecclesiastical roots made it particularly popular for churches well into the 20^th century. Although Gothic on the outside, the inside exhibits neoclassical Beaux Art influences with Corinthian pilasters and a spectacular art glass dome. Rather than the traditional cruciform shape, the sanctuary sits within a large rotunda typical of the “Akron Plan” first used in an Akron, Ohio, Methodist Episcopal church in 1870. Its raked floor and semi-circular pews are more like an auditorium facing an east wall platform supporting the altar. The octagonal room is surrounded by remarkable Art Nouveau stained glass windows, including one created by one-time Tiffany associate, Robert L. Dodge. This was Jimmy Stewart’s church, and his name can still be found on the Service Role of members who served in World War II. Nearly as cool as Calvary itself, is its pairing with the limestone-faced Graystone Presbyterian, another Gothic Revival church built next door in 1926. Graystone too is graced with large stained glass, lancet windows, but in a church with a more traditional cruciform plan.

3. Sutton Hall, IUP Campus. Once housing the entire college, Sutton Hall is Indiana’s “city on a hill,” a biblical and classical reference to a place of virtue that can not easily be hid whose enlightened ways will attract others. Because of this metaphorical reference, hilltops were favored locations for 18^th and 19^th century schools, academies and colleges. When Indiana attracted a state normal school (or teacher’s college) in 1875, it was built on a small rise southwest of town. Its hilltop position is best appreciated from the top of another even higher hill, near the 6^th Street entrance to Mack Park. It can also noticed when approaching the front of the building from Pratt Street, which is how the first students saw it after debarking from the train at College Station located at what is now Pratt and Locust streets. College Station was the first stop south of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Indiana Branch terminus at 8^th and Philadelphia streets. Sutton was built in an Italianate style with tall, narrow, hooded windows, bracketed eves, a central cupola, and veranda. The building has three projecting bays, with jerkin heads -hipped-roof wall dormers- topping the end bays. The building arms extending behind the north and south bays used to be much longer, housing dormitories, a library, dining hall, kitchen, and a corner tower of teacher suites. The arm extensions were all razed over the years as the campus expanded and these functions were taken up in separate buildings. The central arm contains the Blue Room, a parquet floored hall supported by a forest of Corinthian columns, with classical bas relief wall sculptures, and a raised ambulatory that surrounds the room. Originally called Recreation Hall, the room held mass meetings, gym classes, and dances. Its current name was borrowed from a small side room that once contained a great, four-way fireplace. At the time, Sutton had two other small sitting rooms, named after the hues of their décor; the Red Room, and the Green Room. Although now housing administrative offices, and the Gorrell performance hall, Sutton still stands as the historic core of the IUP campus.

2. First National Bank (First Commonwealth), 6^th & Philadelphia streets. Now First Commonwealth, the First National Bank of Indiana was erected just prior to the Great Depression in 1929, possibly contributing to its failure and reorganization five years later as the First National Bank in Indiana. It is a stunning Modern Neoclassical anchor bank with a cavernous interior, arguably the most impressive interior space in Indiana. Main Street America reached its peak during the early 20^th century when local business communities were anchored by substantial banking houses prominently located on downtown corners. The sense of permanence, stability and strength implied by classical architectural elements like marble columns, pediments, and stone lions was the exact attitude the banks wanted to project, especially during times of financial uncertainty. The Neoclassical Revival begun in the 1890s lasted with waning influence into the mid-20^th century, and had two sources of inspiration: Frances elite school of architecture at the Ecole de Beaux Arts, and Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Neoclassicism was gradually replaced by the smooth surfaces, and unornamented, boxy forms of modernity. Indiana’s First National Bank Building is transitional to both movements, exhibiting smooth, marble surfaces and pilasters (squared-off wall columns), with a classical frieze of alternating targets and triglyphs (groupings of three vertical bars). The bank’s stone facing and classical accouterments obscure the modern structural steel framework that allows for its full-length windows and great hall interior. There are no sleeping lions at the doorstep, but lion heads are worked into a decorative belt at the top of the entablature.

1. Old Indiana County Courthouse, 6^th & Philadelphia streets. The coolest building in Indiana symbolically stands at the center of town in the center of the county. Designed as the county’s most elegantly apportioned public building, the old Indiana County Courthouse replaced an even older courthouse built on the site soon after the county was formed in 1803. To this day, its gold capped clock tower joins the steeples as the tallest points on the Indiana skyline, a throwback to a time before skyscrapers when only government buildings and churches were built tall for symbolic reasons. A grand colonnade of fluted columns topped with Corinthian capitals made of iron supports a pediment rising above the tall second story court room windows. These classical elements are incorporated into a building defined by its mansard roof as Second Empire, a popular style imported from France when the courthouse was completed in 1875. The building has a traditional form established for courthouses in the 19^th century. The everyday functions of the county clerk, treasurer, recorder of deeds, and other “row offices” were located on the first floor. The large court room, with ample space for spectators, was reserved for the second floor where full-length windows provided plenty of light and cross ventilation above the dust and noise of the street in days before air conditioning. The sheriff’s residence behind the courthouse contained the jail, which was directly linked to the court room by a “bridge of sighs.” All of these courthouse components can still be seen even though the county government left for the new Colonial Revival courthouse at 8^th and Philadelphia in 1970. First Commonwealth leased the old courthouse and has underwritten its restoration. The new courthouse does not have the charm or aesthetic appeal of its predecessor, but it does have a cool statue of Jimmy Stewart.

            There are a lot of cool buildings in Indiana that didn’t make the list, but could have. Among them are S & T’s new Postmodern office building at 8^th and Philadelphia, the Neuman Center’s nautilus-shaped Catholic church, the Brown Hotel, and the old Clearfield Bituminous Coal Company office now functioning as the Municipal Building. These and many other structures are a treasured legacy that gives flavor to even the most ordinary drives through Indiana.