Regional Context

With its flat topography and rich soil, the far East side of Indianapolis has been well suited for farming dating to its first American settlements in the 1830s. The National Road (US 40) originated in Cumberland MD in 1811 and reached Indianapolis in the middle 1830s, spurring a wave of growth. By the time Al Greens was built, many of the local small farms were still equipped with well and outhouse. The development along US 40 nearby included pre-World War II modest-to-middle-income homes, a mortuary, cemetery, bowling alley, elementary school, restaurants and motels. Nearly all of these businesses would be demolished and built over starting in the 1950s and continuing though 1980s.

According to the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, the first Indianapolis restaurant to serve patrons in cars was the Peacock, which opened in 1930 at the corner of 38th and Massachusetts. Another was the Tee Pee, opened in 1932 next to the Fair Grounds on Fall Creek Parkway. Many others were scattered throughout the city.

Shortly after World War II, Al Green returned home from the war, having been a cook in the army. His father, who was likely an immigrant, purchased a parcel of land at the intersection of Shadeland Ave. and Shortridge Rd. for Al Green’s restaurant which opened in 1947. The nation was in a mood to celebrate and Al Greens was eager to join the party. New manufacturing plants were sprouting up within a few miles, including such corporate names as Chrysler, Western Electric, Jenn-Air, RCA, Ford, Kroger, International Harvester, and others.

The state highway commission also built its first “cloverleaf” intersection and a major testing facility adjacent to the Green property on land purchased from the Greens (at least that's what I remember reading in the newspapers years ago.) By around 1950, all things were looking extremely favorable for the Green family as their restaurant was poised to achieve landmark status.

Although there were probably several dozen drive-in restaurants throughout the city, Al Green’s seems to have been one of the top two or three. It's free movies, outsized tenderloins, and curb service by phone were some of its advantages. Other leading drive-ins included the Tee Pee, which had North and South locations, and a few others indicated in the illustration at left.

Drive-in restaurants were particularly popular with teenagers in search of a destination They apparently didn’t mind driving long distances to reach the better spots. Crosstown adventure driving was a fairly new phenomenon, made possible by affordable American-made cars and extremely cheap gasoline, selling in the $0.25 per gallon range during most of the 1950s. It wasn't until the 1973 Israeli War that the specter of $1 per gallon gas was suddenly seen as a possibility. Today we are haunted by the specter of $5 per gallon gas, and beyond that, the eventual end of personal fossil fuel vehicles.

Directly across from Al Green’s on US 40 was Eastgate shopping center, one of the state’s first and, during the 60s, second only to Glendale mall located on the city’s North side. Eastgate began as an open-air mall and was enclosed sometime in the middle 1970s. It is now vacant and scheduled for auction.

Al Green's is nominally located in Warren Park, one of the small towns that Indianapolis annexed at it expanded. Most maps show Warren Park in the same typeface as Speedway and Beech Grove, two towns that were also annexed by Indianapolis. These towns still have an older commercial district and have retained a strong identity, however. In contrast, Warren Park's core was located near 10th and Arlington and has long been replaced by strip malls and places with no distinct character. This may be part of the reason people living in Warren Park do not identify themselves as such, seeing themselves simply as residents of Indianapolis. Without a visible place to identify with, the town and its identity have literally vanished, except for the name on the map. Speedway, on the other hand, with its world-famous Indy 500, has an identity that is possibly stronger than that of Indianapolis.

True to its name, Warren Park was once park-like and forested and still retains a good deal of forest or at least foliage. But as Warren Park was being planned, a low priority was placed on retaining public parkland, possibly based on the reasoning that residential lots had adequate yards and less need for public parks. Warren Park's single major public park remains Ellenberger, roughly 35 acres in size, two miles West of Al Green's, built perhaps in the 1920s. It did not seem to attract suburbanites of the 60s-70s in great numbers, however. Jake Greene Park, a mile and a half Northeast of Al Green's, opened in the early 1970s but it was flat, small, and lacking natural forestation or major amenities. Thus Al Green's did not have to seriously compete with public parks. With Warren Park's serious lack of meaningful public spaces, natural or otherwise, Al Green's was perhaps the perfect solution for young people looking for an excuse to get out on the town.