Recker Home - 59 North Hawthorne Lane

Year Built: 1908

Architecture Style: Arts and Crafts

Key Features:

• Dormers
• Deep Porch
• Clapboard Siding

Renowned architect and furniture designer, Gustav Stickley is highly admired today. His furniture was worth hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars in 2000. Only one known Stickley-designed home exists in the State of Indiana and it happens to sit at 59 North Hawthorne Lane in Irvington.

Furniture salesman Carlos Recker (1873-1951) and his wife Elizabeth Anne Butler Recker (1877-1973) likely purchased Stickley's No. 28 plan in 1905. They built their dream home three years later in 1908. It is very possible that Recker sold Stickley furniture in his downtown furniture shop called Sander and Recker Furniture. The furniture company operated in Indianapolis from 1901 to 1935. Mr. Recker also moonlighted as an interior decorator and was sought after by numerous wealthy clients. In addition to decorating homes in the Indianapolis area, he was also commissioned to design the interiors of the Columbia Club, the Indiana and Circle Theaters, and the Indiana Ballroom on Indiana University's campus. In his later years, he was highly sought after to appraise antiques.

His wife, Elizabeth Anne Butler Recker, certainly made her mark on the City of Indianapolis as well. The great granddaughter of Butler University's founder, Ovid Butler, Mrs. Recker served on several committees regarding child labor and poor relief. At the height of the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918, Mrs. Recker helped to provide quarts of milk to families afflicted by the plague. Today the home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.