Commercial District - 200 Block of South Audubon Road

Irvington was modeled after Glendale, a suburb of Cincinnati. In the Glendale plan, locals built a small commercial area near the railroad depot. Irvington founders did the same, constructing most of these commercial structures in the late nineteenth century.

A grocery store, a dry goods store, a post office, a fraternal lodge, and numerous other businesses have occupied the structures over the years, which now house a small set of local shops. We’re on the Pennsy Trail, currently a bike trail and the former Pennsylvania Rail line. The depot for the Pennsylvania Railroad sat where the modern gray home with red shutters sits today.

In the 1890s, there was a house that sat just behind the train depot. When notorious serial killer H.H. Holmes (the alias for Herman Webster Mudgett) got off the train in Irvington, he rented this house for a short time. Although his time here in Irvington was brief, Holmes killed a 10-year old boy, Howard Pitzel, cut him up, burned the pieces, and buried the remains in the yard.