Not far from where I’m temporarily living sits the little city of Terre Haute, Indiana. I’ve traversed this place by car in the past, going from Seattle to Ohio a long time ago, and from Denver to Pennsylvania even longer ago. But I never stopped and had a look.

Home to several institutions of higher learning, Terre Haute, like all cities, has an interesting past. In this post I show you just a few of the architectural feats that caught my eye.

I was in Terre Haute specifically because I wanted to see the Swope Museum and one of the paintings in its collection. I once discussed this painting in a scholarly article I published on the artist Robert Weir, and had only seen photographs of the painting. I’ll be posting on it soon.

Sheldon Swope was a very successful man in Terre Haute with enough money to establish a museum in his lifetime devoted to collecting American art. He built the building seen above and below and named it the Swope Block. Pretty impressive!

The Swope Art Museum, open and free to the public since 1942, has works by Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Janet Scudder, Andy Warhol, Ruth Pratt Bobbs, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, and many others.

The building below is Terre Haute’s is the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana. Its elaborate architecture speaks to a wealthy past. Located along the Wabash River, Terre Haute its one of the largest cities in the Wabash Valley and is known as the Queen City of the Wabash.