The Parry-Atkins Home
The Phoenix Rises Out of the Ashes

For many others of Hoosier heritage they received their training from Manual or Arsenal Technical High Schools. In addition, Indianapolis had a wonderful railroad transportation system running in all directions. It was in this environment that David Maclean Parry, President of the Parry Manufacturing Co, moved his plant from Rushville to Indianapolis, when in 1886 a fire destroyed his small facility which made wagons, carriages, and buckboards. These products were sold direct to regional farmers and businessmen throughout the Midwest.

The record of David Parry’s business savvy from his late teenage years onward was remarkable. It was marked by many successes – never a failure. He had an abundance of energy to stay the course. His organizational skills, leadership and business tenacity took his little company through the Roaring ‘90’s to the point where his Indianapolis plant was producing nearly 1,000 units a day at the close of the 19th century and shipping his buggies worldwide. As he grew in stature, he made for himself a secure place in the commercial and civic life of Indianapolis for himself and his family.

As a possible model for Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” he was one of the first to challenge what he considered to be the “unjust demands” of organized labor, which he considered a violation of American principles of private property. He remembered well the Haymarket Riot and Massacre in Chicago on May 4, 1886 in which an anarchist threw a bomb into the police ranks guarding the strike breakers of the McCormick Reaper Company killing seven police officers, at least four civilians and injuring scores more.

Though Parry never sought public office, he had a strong allegiance to the Republican Party. On the personal side Parry’s first wife died early at the age of twenty-four leaving him two children in 1882. Parry married a second time to Hessie Maxwell in 1883. They had seven additional children of which Maxwell was the first boy born of the two marriages. He was no doubt the most colorful of the Parry clan.

At the height of his success, Parry moved from the prestigious area near downtown Indianapolis from a luxurious Victorian styled home, often referred to as the Bates McGowen home, in 1906 to a nearly 100 acre forest site north west of Indianapolis facing the Whitewater Canal and White River. Purchased in 1902, construction of his new home began in 1903. The family moved into the palatial residence called Golden Hill three years later. The architect of the home is unknown, but the magnificent gardens were designed by architect, George McDougall, who also designed the gardens and landscape for Eli Lilly and Walter Marmon of the Marmon Automobile Company. Massive wooden structural beams inside and huge stone insets on the outside were incorporated in the home to ensure fortress type stability.

As transportation modes were changing in the early 20th century, Parry redirected his efforts and got into the automobile manufacturing business with the purchase of 54% of the stock of the Overland automobile and the Standard Wheel Co. of Terre Haute. Parry suffered a shortage of working capital because of the 1907 Depression and was bailed out by John North Willys, who bought Parry’s interest in the Overland Automobile in 1909. The new firm, Willys, survived into the 21st century with the Jeep automobile. Subsequently he formed a new automobile company in 1909 with outside investors providing $1,000,000 of the initial capital to produce the Parry automobile. Because of equipment to produce the automobile on a timely basis, the company went into a financial meltdown. Again a second attempt was made to bring out the Parry II along with the assembled automobile called the Pathfinder. In the long term, the manufacturing of the Parrys and the Pathfinder fell by the wayside shortly thereafter. Even with the new corporation suffering hard times, the magnificent Mansion in Golden Hill with its massive stone gated entrance was a constant source of highbrow social and political gatherings. With nine children inhabiting the grand structure, life was never dull. Parry, because of his dislike of labor unions, feared threats on his life and carried a side arm on his person and never went out in public without an armed body guard by his side. When he spoke out against the “rough tactics” of the labor union money, he received death threats. To maximize security for himself and his family, he built a gatehouse staffed by round the clock security personnel.

The rich and the famous came to the Parry home. Names such as James Whitcomb Riley, the children’s poet, popular stage actor Otis Skinner, the highest paid Broadway actress Maude Adams, writers Theodore Dreiser, Booth Tarkington, Meredith Wilson, along with Vice President Charles Warren Fairbanks were visitors as well. The Parry’s lived the high life, not knowing that a war in Europe was going to change their destiny.

In early 1914 David Parry and his wife took a trip around the world traveling West to East. They crossed the Pacific Ocean heading to Vladivostok, Russia, on the Empress of Russia Steamship in September 1914. The ship was intercepted by a German naval frigate and escorted to a Chinese port neutral to both parties in the early days of the Great War, which started the first part of August of that year. While the Parry’s were in port waiting for a neutral ship to take them back to the US, he contracted some mysterious disease which progressively got worse after his return to Indianapolis. Parry died the following June of 1915 in his Indianapolis home. Without his leadership the swing in the Parry dynasty changed. The Parry Manufacturing Co. sold its last carriage in 1916, but it remained successful as it downsized its carriage and wagon business to build a variety of truck bodies for the Ford Model T automobile. Henry Ford was not interested in this aspect. However by 1923, after ten years being solely an automobile manufacturer, the Ford Motor Company got into the truck business never to leave.

In 1919 the company merged with Martin Truck & Body Company which later merged as an affiliate into General Motors Corporation. The huge plant served General Motors well being renamed Chevrolet Body Division. For the eighty years following 1930, on the near southwest side of Indianapolis the former Parry Manufacturing Company made truck bodies for General Motors.

Following the death of Parry, the Golden Hill property was subdivided into eighty lots. The Golden Hill home of the Parry’s was sold to William Atkins, one of the principle owners of the Atkins Saw Company of Indianapolis in 1927. Atkins wasted no time in removing some of the structures attached to the home and adding more square footage. Atkins was a prominent social figure in Indianapolis once entertaining Clark Gable and his wife, Lady Silvia, at his 500 Mile Race party in 1950 when Gable was in Indianapolis filming the movie “To Please a Lady” with Barbara Stanwyck at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Gables were overnight guests in the mansion.

After Atkins death in 1965, the property went into decline particularly after his widow passed away. It was given to Indiana University on the death of his wife and two years later sold to a Canadian-born ophthalmologist, Dr. Jack Taube, for $50,000 in 1968. Taube, a product of the Great Depression, deferred nearly all maintenance on the house thinking that even nominal repairs would increase his taxes. He and his wife Betty had five daughters. The kids have fond memories of riding their bicycles throughout the interior of the house. Except for the girls wedding receptions, there was no entertaining. The Taube family moved out of the mansion in 2006. Dr. Taube died in 2010 at the age of 87 still owning the house.

Enter John Lethen, president of Jerico Properties, who was a home restorer in 2012. It was a rainy day when Lethen entered the home. Water was coming into the upper level of the house because of leaks in the roof. Seeing the potential of the home, John and his brother Eric rolled the dice and bought the home for $300,000. His idea was that such a house with its striking history could be brought back to life and restored for a new buyer who has a love of the past and a home with all the modern conveniences and charm of today.

There were many challenges that lay ahead of Jerico Properties, some seen and some unseen. The company was not a novice in the business, since the company specialized in buying homes of worth in run down condition, and then restoring them, bringing them back onto the market.

Before the buy agreement was “inked,” the cost of redoing the slate roof and repairing the outside masonry had to be tied down. Estimates came in from local contractors as high as $800,000 just for the two trades. However, a more reasonable bid was received by an upstate roofing contractor, which made the purchase possible. Ink was then put on the real estate buy agreement and work was started in the mid part of November with Jerico Properties bringing in their crew of twelve men along with all the other trades.

The first question they had to answer was where to start. The second question they had to answer was what should be restored and what should not. In the same vein what should be thrown away. The first task was to cut down all the vegetation that consumed the house over the last fifty years. Although the greenhouse could not be saved, a portion was repurposed as a skylight in the renovated modern kitchen in the home proper. As the restoration process started, decisions also had to be made as how to blend the old into the new. A problem that arose was the amount of difficulty in cutting passages through concrete and plaster walls, massive wooden beams, compared to cutting through drywall and soft framing wood in modern homes. In essence the fortress like structure took an inordinate amount of time in placing heating and air conditioning duct work and water lines into position. This problem was particularly evident when cutting a doorway through the living room into the dining room. Instead of a normal cut through, Lethen found that Bill Atkins, the second owner, had plastered over a set of original wooden pocket doors. To remove the original doors, fill in the massive gap left by the pocket door, then replaster took craftsmen four times longer than normal.

The restoration process started with the third floor as the starting point, then worked down to the first floor. Once the slate roof was completed, the ceiling on the third floor was dropped to first eliminate all the raccoon feces that accumulated over the years. A second reason was to reconfigure the third floor into a ballroom that graced the mansion during the Parry years. The second owner had eliminated the ballroom by using the space for additional rooms. Once again Lethen turned the third floor with its high ceiling and magnificent new lighting that gave it a sense of grandeur. With an early elevator being replaced by a new elevator running from the basement to the third floor, the ballroom with its ease of entry was completely functional. The modern touches and amenities are completely upscale including an overpowering kitchen, all brand new plumbing, and bathroom fixtures.

A simple task but still challenging was placing into the home a full sound system, and television outlets in every nook and corner. Four on-demand water heating systems were installed as well as seven forced air systems for heating and cooling. Most of the electric was revamped going from a 100 fuse box to 1200 amps capacity with numerous 200 amp breaker panels throughout the home. To make these and other wall changes, three plasterers worked full time for a total of twelve months.

Another challenge was to find skilled workmen that could perform the detailed work of wood restoration on doors, columns, and trim at times using special applications of gold paint and varnishes. In addition, John Lethen had to learn new skills of another age by study, observation and trial and error. He is an extraordinarily gifted craftsman and a fast learner. He was able to come up to speed quickly. He himself reset over 125 leaded glass windows in the house including cabinet glass. The process of realigning the glass took place on a large work table in the basement using zinc. In the kitchen, new white oak flooring was installed to match what would have been there in the past. In the rest of the home all the white oak floors were sanded, stained and sealed. The marble flooring in the dining room and main hall have been polished to an extremely high luster by a gifted craftsman. There were many other challenges and problems that occurred almost on a weekly basis. However, the setbacks were attacked and were persistently overcome.

The last challenge was to meet a deadline of June 28, 2014 for a benefit open house for the Indiana Automobile Heritage Society, an affinity group of Indiana Landmarks. The date was met with lots of sweat and toil with even John Lethen living in the home twenty-four hours a day. Family members all pitched in. An asphalt driveway was the last major item to be installed along with the final touches of landscaping and new sod in the major areas of the grounds. The date was met. The day was beautiful. The Parry-Atkins home, all 21,000 square feet, had been as the Phoenix, raised from the ashes.

The final phase of the project is to find a buyer who will appreciate a great historic residence with a glorious past and with all the comforts of modern living. The task has been trusted to Everhart Studio in Indianapolis, which specializes in high-end properties of distinction.

Captions

1. The Parry-Atkins home under renovation in 2014.
2. Exposed wooden beams emphasize the mass and strength of the house.
3. and 4. “Opulent” is insufficient to describe the lifestyle of Mr. Parry.
5. Now entering Golden Hill.