LAFAYETTE — The sky, with a consistent gray overcast, made the red bricks of the Lincoln Center appear drabber than the years already have. Several of its window blinds were either broken or misused, jagged from disorder.
A piece of paper taped to one window read, in messy handwriting, “Do NOT knock! No exceptions!”
Sitting along Ferry Street 102 years after its construction, the building still serves as refuge to the overlooked.
But while the wind whipped between buildings on plots of barren parking lots and roads, the story of a neighborhood once populated by Lafayette’s marginalized community is still largely unwritten.
“This was a very, very central part of this entire neighborhood, which at that time was a predominantly African American neighborhood,” Purdue professor Ashima Krishna said. “All of this was basically built by demolishing African American homes. This was all a thriving neighborhood that was all taken over.”
It’s just one of over 40 sites that Krishna and her students in Purdue's Urban Matters Lab have explored to find the Black history in Lafayette. But federal and state legislative initiatives may restrict them from uncovering more of these stories in the future.
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