Welcome to the Chatham Arch Neighborhood

Won’t you consider joining us as we work to improve our beloved little corner of downtown Indianapolis?

Upcoming meetings

Mark your calendar for the next Chatham Arch Neighborhood Association general membership meeting. We meet on the last Tuesday of every month, except December.

  • When: 6:30PM social hour, followed by 7PM meeting.
  • Where: Firefighters Union Building, 748 Massachusetts Avenue, Indianapolis

If you haven’t yet joined, please consider doing so, either in advance or at the meeting. We accept cash, check, charge card and most app payments!

Remaining 2024 CANA meeting dates:

  • November 26, 2024 (Annual Meeting)
  • December – no meeting

Here are the 2025 CANA meeting dates:

  • January 28, 2025
  • February 25, 2025
  • March 25, 2025
  • April 29, 2025
  • May 27, 2025
  • June 24, 2025
  • July 29, 2025
  • August 26, 2025
  • September 30, 2025
  • October 28, 2025
  • November 25, 2025 (Annual Meeting)
  • December – no meeting

About the Chatham Arch Neighborhood

The Chatham Arch historic district in the northeast corner of downtown Indianapolis is a neighborhood of both historical and architectural significance. Its irregular street pattern, most of it dating to before the Civil War, recalls life in Indianapolis when the city was just beginning to expand beyond the original Mile Square plat.

The area also boasts a group of Civil War-era workers’ cottages on Arch, St. Clair and 9th streets. These houses represent the presence of working people in the early stages of Indianapolis’ growth into an industrial metropolis. Only a few pockets of these 1860s and early-1870s cottages survive in the downtown.

The northern portion of Chatham Arch illustrates an unusual mixture of housing types. Here, workers’ cottages, middle-class residences, rental duplexes, apartment buildings and flats, commercial buildings with second-floor sleeping rooms, and a few large homes of the wealthy all existed at the turn of the century.

Massachusetts Avenue is the primary commercial district in Chatham Arch, and it exhibits several fine post-Civil War and early-20th-century commercial buildings, which recall the close relationship between the neighborhood merchants on the Avenue and the neighborhoods to the north and south. The Real Silk Hosiery Mills complex, formerly home of one of the country’s main silk hosiery factories, is evidence of the neighborhood’s industrial significance.