Propylaeum Carriage House miniature

This representation of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis re-creates its original 1926 location in the carriage house behind the Propylaeum, which still stands today at 14th and Delaware streets.

 

Rose Wernicke, the current resident historian of the Indianapolis Propylaeum, shares that there were many connections between the ladies who ran the Propylaeum and founded The Children’s Museum.

 

“The carriage house, the Propylaeum, and the women who have spent time in both places are a story with many threads. As you know, Mary Stewart Carey founded The Children’s Museum. She had [also] been part of the search team to find a new location for the Propylaeum after the former location was taken over by the city for the Indiana War Memorial Plaza. She was elected president of the Propylaeum in 1924 and used her creative thinking to find ways to fill the whole property. One such was The Children’s Museum.”

 

The miniature room was commissioned by The Children’s Museum Guild to honor Mildred S. Compton when she retired as the museum’s director in 1982. An Indianapolis Star article from the opening of The Magic of Miniatures exhibit, which housed this piece, called its maker, Eugene Kupjack, the “world’s foremost miniaturist.”

 

Kupjack describes how he created some of the 81 tiny reproduction artifacts displayed in the miniature.

 

“The puffer fish was blown up and dried like a porcupine, so I used 120 pins for the points. Then I painted them. For the starfish, I used a plastic sponge with little crevices.”

 

Many of the museum’s first artifacts that are shown in this miniature remain in the collection today.