0:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The turning point in history of most hometowns is economic. 0:16 [SPEAKER_00]: A factory moves in, or an industry moves in, and then thousands or millions of people follow. 0:24 [SPEAKER_00]: This episode is the story of a county in southern Indiana that was changed not through industry, but through art. 0:32 [SPEAKER_00]: It's the story of one well-known painter named T.C. 0:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Steel, and his wife Selma, and how they almost single-handedly changed the future of Brown County, and nearly every town within it. 0:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Today, everyone in Indiana knows Brown County, and many have visited at least once. 0:56 [SPEAKER_00]: When T.C. 0:56 [SPEAKER_00]: and Selma moved here, more than 800 years ago, few people had ever heard of it, 1:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And for those who had, it was treated as a running joke, about backwards and out of the way places. 1:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Multiple times now, I visited this steel estate. 1:16 [SPEAKER_00]: In this time, I brought the team with me to help share this history with you. 1:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Our guide throughout the property was Kate Wetzel. 1:25 [SPEAKER_00]: The program developer here at the TC steel State Historic Site. 1:34 [SPEAKER_01]: What's important to know about this area is that when T.C. 1:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Steel settles here, it looks very different from the way it looks now. 1:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Because Brown County in 1907 is considered the ends of the earth. 1:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody comes to Brown County. 1:48 [SPEAKER_01]: It has a national reputation as does steel, but Brown County's reputation is for being backwards. 1:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Because Abe Martin is a nationally syndicated cartoon. 1:57 [SPEAKER_01]: He looks like an uncle Sam figure. 1:59 [SPEAKER_01]: He's like a line drawing, and these tattered clothes. 2:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And he likes to spit out these foxy-witticisms that people associate with Mark Twain. 2:12 [SPEAKER_00]: At some point, we're going to do something on a Martin. 2:17 [SPEAKER_00]: He deserves his own episode. 2:19 [SPEAKER_00]: You might think of him as a cross between Sunday comics and New Yorker cartoons. 2:26 [SPEAKER_00]: This fictional character was located in Brown County and became so popular that he was syndicated to more than 200 newspapers around the country. 2:36 [SPEAKER_00]: In collections of these cartoons were sold in bookform. 2:40 [SPEAKER_01]: So here he is this hill person from Brown County, Indiana, and everybody loves to laugh at Abe Martin. 2:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the rest of the state really certainly Indianapolis, but also Bloomington have moved on from the Civil War. 2:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And at the turn of the century, we've got Indianapolis and in Bloomington, more housing going up development advancement progress, right? 3:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Not in Brown County, Brown County is 40 years behind Bloomington. 3:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's people are living in log cabins consistent with the 1840s. 3:15 [SPEAKER_01]: So when T.C. 3:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Steel arrives here, one thinks he is nuts. 3:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But then the paintings of Brown County began to appear. 3:23 [SPEAKER_01]: And everyone goes, that's Brown County. 3:24 [SPEAKER_01]: That's beautiful. 3:25 [SPEAKER_01]: We had no idea. 3:27 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not from Indiana, you may not be aware of this, but Brown County is one of the state's most popular destinations. 3:35 [SPEAKER_00]: To this day, it has only one incorporated town, Nashville, which has a population of 800 people. 3:45 [SPEAKER_00]: In spite of this relatively tiny population, tourists spend roughly $45 million in Brown County every year. 3:53 [SPEAKER_00]: They finally discovered what T.C. 3:57 [SPEAKER_01]: knew all those years ago. 4:06 [SPEAKER_01]: When steel stands, what you stand where you are now, what he would stand where you are, he could see all the way to Bloomington from here. 4:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Because the ridges are clear of trees. 4:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Brown County is clear cut. 4:17 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a farming community that's terrible to farm. 4:20 [SPEAKER_01]: That's the joke on Brown County. 4:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Because this county is made of the unwanted land of the four counties that surround it. 4:29 [SPEAKER_01]: So Bloomington is good to farm, Columbus is good to farm, brown county is terrible. 4:34 [SPEAKER_01]: As to do with a very thin top soil and underneath it if you're on the tilt, it's bedrock. 4:39 [SPEAKER_01]: You're down toward the county seat Nashville, it's red clay, which might explain why we have three potterys in the village of Nashville during the 1930s. 4:48 [SPEAKER_01]: But what people are doing here is they're living in these log cabins, tenor more kids on average, and everybody is surviving. 4:54 [SPEAKER_01]: These are some systems farming families. 4:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And steel arrives, and he builds this house on top of a hill. 5:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody does that, everybody builds some hollows, right? 5:03 [SPEAKER_01]: He stains it red, a color exclusively reserved for barns. 5:08 [SPEAKER_01]: He fills it with paintings and music. 5:12 [SPEAKER_01]: The 20th century touches down for the first time in Brown County when the house listening wins the spill. 5:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the only place in the county to hear recorded music. 5:21 [SPEAKER_01]: So people come to visit. 5:23 [SPEAKER_01]: They're not sure they like the steels. 5:25 [SPEAKER_01]: They're considered foreigners from Indianapolis. 5:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Who marries a man who paints all day? 5:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Who marries a woman who can't cook? 5:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Who are these people? 5:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Selma Steele is 35 years older, husband is 60. 5:38 [SPEAKER_01]: It's her first marriage, it's his second marriage. 5:41 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is supposed to be the honeymoon house. 5:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And people come to visit on an house and uninvited. 5:45 [SPEAKER_01]: They walk up the cell seven days a week to see the house. 5:49 [SPEAKER_00]: When we arrived at the house of the singing winds, I was already inspired by what I knew of TC's steel. 5:56 [SPEAKER_00]: By the time I left, I think I was actually more inspired by his wife, Salmistio, a strong wilt artist in her own right. 6:06 [SPEAKER_00]: In a real sense, this house and this property are her masterpiece. 6:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Salmistio was the first generation of American girls we know her in Indiana. 6:19 [SPEAKER_01]: But that I mean, she's a daughter of immigrants, Austrian American, first language is German, her parents insist that the girls be as educated and independent as the boys, which means that they all go to school. 6:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And they are all encouraged to have their own hobbies. 6:39 [SPEAKER_01]: But when they finish high school, everyone's expected to graduate. 6:44 [SPEAKER_01]: They get married or they get a job. 6:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Selma gets a job teaching the public schools in Medinaapolis. 6:51 [SPEAKER_01]: After a few years of that, she decides that she wants a degree. 6:55 [SPEAKER_01]: She takes herself to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and takes the degree in normal art, which is the teacher's degree. 7:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Comes home to teach art at the Heron School in the first real art school in Medinaapolis. 7:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Brant Steele, T.C.' 7:09 [SPEAKER_01]: 's oldest, is her colleague. 7:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And she is teaching teachers how to teach art on Sundays. 7:19 [SPEAKER_01]: But she holds on to her job with the public schools. 7:21 [SPEAKER_01]: So by the time she's 35, Salma Newbacher is Assistant Superintendent of Art in the City Schools, Medinaapolis. 7:29 [SPEAKER_01]: This is at a time when women don't vote. 7:30 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't control property even if they own it. 7:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And they have no legal rights or access to their own children. 7:36 [SPEAKER_01]: If their husbands decide on separation or divorce, and Salma Newbacher can design the entire art curriculum for the Indianapolis School Student System. 7:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she is right over there. 7:45 [SPEAKER_01]: This is her house. 7:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Portrait of Selma Steele painted by to her husband T.C. 7:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Steele. 7:51 [SPEAKER_01]: She's in an ostrich feather hat. 7:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Lovely woman Auburn here. 7:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Big fan of the opera. 8:02 [SPEAKER_01]: She's a, we call her probably an NPR subscriber today. 8:10 [SPEAKER_01]: The thing that makes this house spectacular from our point of view today is that we are almost completely original. 8:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Having been in countless historic buildings, I can tell you how rare that is. 8:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Most houses of this kind are filled with either replacement or reproduction furnishings, little but the actual structure tends to be original. 8:34 [SPEAKER_00]: in the house of the singing winds on the other hand, even the books on the shelves, and the half-use pink tubes on the desks once belonged to the steels. 8:45 [SPEAKER_01]: I can tell you just about everything in this home was an artifact, belonging to the steels, which is pretty remarkable when you consider that most historic homes have pieces from the period but not belonging to the family. 8:56 [SPEAKER_01]: We, it's to be original like this because some of the steels gave us everything that was hers. 9:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Right before she died in 1945 through a deed of gift to the people in the state of Indiana. 9:07 [SPEAKER_01]: So 350 paintings, 211 acres, all of the buildings and their contents. 9:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Caretakers came in to look after the home. 9:16 [SPEAKER_01]: They lived here with some of his little sister Edith who had life rights until her own death. 9:22 [SPEAKER_01]: So what we see here really has not been tracked down. 9:26 [SPEAKER_01]: It was what the Steel slipped with. 9:28 [SPEAKER_01]: This is your goodwill furniture of 1907. 9:31 [SPEAKER_01]: This is Victoria in furniture, and the Queen died in 1901. 9:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So this had six years to go out of fashion in the Annapolis. 9:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Some will pick it up cheap. 9:41 [SPEAKER_01]: At T.C. 9:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Steals, more than 1847 is a child of Victorian period, and I know that now Victoria is not an American queen. 9:48 [SPEAKER_01]: The taste of Victorian England really tastes of England and France come across to American households, and we copy them. 9:56 [SPEAKER_01]: So during steel's lifetime, this is a style of furniture, probably that would have been considered comfortable in familiar. 10:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Some will fix it up cheap. 10:04 [SPEAKER_01]: They bring it out to the summer house. 10:06 [SPEAKER_01]: The neighbors come to see the furniture. 10:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Not because they like Victoria and I'm but because it is factory made in all the furniture and brown counties made by hand. 10:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And then you've got the paintings on the walls. 10:16 [SPEAKER_01]: The neighbors are not terribly impressed with the paintings, painting is an easy job. 10:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Farming is what's hard work. 10:22 [SPEAKER_01]: But the vitrola and the player piano, 10:27 [SPEAKER_01]: This is a very musical area that are filled contests on the porches at night, but nobody has a way to play music in their home. 10:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I noticed a large peacock mounted on the side of the room. 10:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It stood on a tall, black stand, roughly six feet tall, with its feathers trilling down to the ground. 10:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, with a had a peacock. 10:51 [SPEAKER_01]: This is not the original peacock. 10:53 [SPEAKER_01]: The original peacock was in bomb with arsenic. 10:56 [SPEAKER_01]: which is how taxidermy was done. 10:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So anyone offers you civil war taxidermy to say now, full of heavy metals to preserve it. 11:03 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm told by collections that, you know, short of hugging a taxidermy peacock and while I'm with arsenic, it really wouldn't be a danger to you, but I don't know. 11:13 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's best that we have another one. 11:16 [SPEAKER_01]: But the stuff peacock was a common element in Victorian homes. 11:20 [SPEAKER_01]: I like to imagine going a target and going through an aisle like goldfinches, just putting one in the cart. 11:25 [SPEAKER_01]: People had taxidermy specimens in their house. 11:28 [SPEAKER_01]: It was decor, but the peacock I love here, because it has one function, which is to be pretty. 11:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you think about a brown county log cabin, a brown county farming family, here is a dead bird in the house and you can't even eat it. 11:43 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's just a perfect example of I think the steals in brown county is that this is worth keeping because it is beautiful. 11:53 [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have to have a utility. 11:57 [SPEAKER_01]: But everything in a log cabin, what if how to use? 12:00 [SPEAKER_01]: If it was beautiful, it would also have been functional in some way. 12:09 [SPEAKER_00]: It occurred to me that this peacock symbolized a broader shift in the way people viewed Brown County as a whole. 12:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Remember, it was made of the lands that other counties didn't want, because those lands were useless. 12:24 [SPEAKER_00]: They had no utility. 12:27 [SPEAKER_00]: They were poor farmland. 12:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But today, people love Brown County. 12:32 [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the most cherished counties in the state of Indiana. 12:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Why? 12:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Because it's beautiful. 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Back to the tour. 12:43 [SPEAKER_01]: The paintings on the walls all are original T.C. 12:45 [SPEAKER_01]: steel pictures oil. 12:46 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm canvas with the exception of the pictures they collected, but we're not done by him. 12:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, this is the first kitchen. 12:53 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a terrible kitchen. 12:55 [SPEAKER_01]: He's still designed this house. 12:58 [SPEAKER_01]: He never used the kitchen, and so this was a kitchen which had a number of problems. 13:02 [SPEAKER_01]: When someone walks up to sit on her wedding shoes in 1907, remember also that she is a professional artist educator and administrator. 13:09 [SPEAKER_01]: She's not a cook either. 13:11 [SPEAKER_01]: She makes the assumption that we all make when we move to a new place. 13:16 [SPEAKER_01]: One, 13:17 [SPEAKER_01]: There will be water. 13:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Two, there will be a grocery store. 13:21 [SPEAKER_01]: And three, if I need help in my house, I can hire it. 13:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And the answer to all three is wrong. 13:27 [SPEAKER_01]: There is no water on the cell, there is no grocery store. 13:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, nearby, and Brown County neighbors will not trust their daughters to work for the steels. 13:35 [SPEAKER_01]: They're considered foreigners, artists, they're not from here. 13:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Daughters who work in-house, usually live in-house, these are who do we don't know, these people are. 13:46 [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know what they'll see in this home, now they may not work for you. 13:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And now suddenly it's almost job to figure out what are we going to eat, where are you going to drink, how are we going to live? 13:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Because in Brown County in 1907, if you don't shoot it or grow it, you don't eat it. 13:58 [SPEAKER_01]: P.C. 13:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Steel's not a hunter. 14:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Gardens take a while to grow. 14:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Mr. Steel Plants? 14:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Flowers. 14:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Neighbors tell her it is vain and foolish and feminine to plant flowers. 14:09 [SPEAKER_01]: She should be planting food. 14:11 [SPEAKER_01]: They're not wrong about the food part, but Salma basically says, I have planted flowers. 14:15 [SPEAKER_01]: My husband puts my flowers in the pictures. 14:17 [SPEAKER_01]: We sell the pictures. 14:18 [SPEAKER_01]: This is land use. 14:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And the neighbors are glad to have that explanation, because otherwise they can't figure out what the deals are doing here, who buys a farm doesn't farm it in 1907. 14:27 [SPEAKER_01]: brown county. 14:29 [SPEAKER_01]: But the problem of food is a challenge which will endure. 14:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Selma Steele discovers what she gets here that the store at the bottom of the hill is a dry goods store which has meat in a barrel and that's it. 14:45 [SPEAKER_01]: She's told when she comes out with her grocery list, butter, cheese, fruits, vegetables, bread. 14:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody makes their own. 14:52 [SPEAKER_01]: So there she is. 14:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to bloom in the beginning to fill up the wagon. 14:56 [SPEAKER_01]: They come back here. 14:57 [SPEAKER_01]: This is what we would call today a food desert. 15:00 [SPEAKER_01]: There's no place to go and buy fresh food. 15:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Two artists living on top of the hill in a so-called food desert resulted in a very predictable outcome. 15:11 [SPEAKER_00]: lots of really terrible food. 15:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Barely edible meals that involved eating unburnt scrapings on the bottom of the pan. 15:21 [SPEAKER_00]: In the corner of the turquoise colored dining room is a small closet full of cups and plates. 15:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't work like much, but people came from all over the county to look at it. 15:34 [SPEAKER_01]: She makes things listo, they refer to the things that come out of the stove as steel's mixtures. 15:39 [SPEAKER_01]: She gets herself a better stove pretty quickly. 15:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Convert to this into the dining room. 15:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Take down the wall, glass is in the porch. 15:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Cuts a hole in the wall and makes the first built-in closet in Brown County. 15:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone says she's going to ruin a good plaster wall. 15:54 [SPEAKER_01]: She says, don't think you heard me I'm cutting a hole in this wall. 15:57 [SPEAKER_01]: That's me imagining what her, what you would say. 16:00 [SPEAKER_01]: But then the neighbors all come to see the closet, because it's the first built-in closet in Brad County. 16:05 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a miracle you open the wall, you put things inside, things you don't need right now, and then you close the wall. 16:13 [SPEAKER_01]: So there'd be a voice in the driveway, so we're here to see the closet and then comes the whole wagon. 16:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Granny and everyone, see the closet. 16:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Closets were taxed as extra rooms in a home. 16:24 [SPEAKER_01]: So you go into these beautiful old houses and you open the closet for the shoebox in their sideways. 16:30 [SPEAKER_01]: There were rules about the dimensions that a closet could be before it became another room. 16:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I know. 16:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Totally bizarre. 16:37 [SPEAKER_01]: You need to use old houses, and you're like, let's take a look at the closet first, okay, okay? 16:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Because the storage situation also, we have many more things. 17:10 [SPEAKER_00]: It's really a brilliant place to put a changing room for a house without modern heating. 17:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Heat will explain that in a moment. 17:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But this area would be where you needed if you needed to take a tub, you'd haul the bathtub in here or you'd fill it with water from the sister and that you would have heated on the stove top, dumped it into the tub, and then haul it all outside again. 17:35 [SPEAKER_01]: This is also probably where you would use a chamber pot in the middle of the night. 17:38 [SPEAKER_01]: You'll see it's on the other side of the fireplace, so it would be a nice warm room and spring and fall to get changed in the morning. 17:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Not only was someone a creative homemaker, she had a neck for turning a profit. 17:53 [SPEAKER_01]: She was charging people a quarter when they came up here and wanted to walk around, because she still had to pay her taxes. 18:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And she had it in mind already that she was going to leave this place as a memorial to her husband's legacy. 18:05 [SPEAKER_01]: But she watched as people who did not pay their taxes lost everything. 18:11 [SPEAKER_01]: So, very lean widowhood for her. 18:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Keep this place together because she didn't want to sell any of the paintings. 18:18 [SPEAKER_01]: She did sell some to IU at the beginning. 18:21 [SPEAKER_01]: But she was very careful to try and keep this much of this together as possible, including the entire acreage, 211. 18:28 [SPEAKER_01]: because the steel is also believed in the beauty of nature and the importance of conservation. 18:33 [SPEAKER_01]: You can't get the trees back once you cut them all down. 18:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And the development, especially the rapidity that people were spreading through this country and doing a lot faster than everyone anticipated, which led to this interest in the preservation of the national parks, the strong of the state parks followed suit. 18:51 [SPEAKER_01]: These ideas that if we didn't buy this land and keep it in trust and protect it, it wouldn't be there. 18:57 [SPEAKER_01]: which was, I think, very careful thinking. 19:00 [SPEAKER_01]: So at the beginning, when the steels get here, there's no water. 19:02 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a little creek in water, the horse there, but it's not enough. 19:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the steels hire boys. 19:09 [SPEAKER_01]: I think the park's family, I think they're sons, bring water from the bottom of the hill every day. 19:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Two boys, two buckets, two miles up from the salt creek. 19:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you think about it, a tube bucket is for two adults in the summertime. 19:24 [SPEAKER_01]: You're just going to drink it. 19:25 [SPEAKER_01]: There's not going to be anything left for washing, bathing, anything else. 19:30 [SPEAKER_01]: So Selma Steele says, we need more water. 19:33 [SPEAKER_01]: T.C. 19:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Steele says, maybe we're using too much water. 19:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Selma says, we don't get more water. 19:37 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not coming back. 19:38 [SPEAKER_01]: So a sister is dug, and that collects the rain water on the in-eaps. 19:42 [SPEAKER_01]: If you go out and look at our gutters on the house, they'll look a little different. 19:45 [SPEAKER_01]: They are for collecting rainwater and they did pool in several places around the property. 19:50 [SPEAKER_01]: You could pump that water up and use it for washing and bathing, and of course you could also drink it if you needed to. 19:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Salt Creek was the closest freshwater source. 20:01 [SPEAKER_00]: As you might expect, Selma insisted on having one of the earliest refrigerators in Brown County. 20:08 [SPEAKER_00]: But for many years, the steels were lied on her root cellar built directly under the home, which was also highly unusual for this area. 20:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is a big deal. 20:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Because the brown county ladies have root sellers in fields. 20:22 [SPEAKER_01]: They have to go outside and all kinds of weather go to a hole in the ground and pull out food for their family of 12. 20:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine? 20:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And you can't make anything fresh because it's all going to spoil. 20:34 [SPEAKER_01]: So nobody makes extra. 20:36 [SPEAKER_01]: If the ladies accidentally make more butter than they need, Mrs. Steel will come over and buy it from them. 20:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Because they'll sell it knowing that they can't use it and it's going to go to waste. 20:47 [SPEAKER_01]: But nobody is going to sell food out of their family's mouths, so it's only when an accident like that happens. 20:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Then Mrs. Steel will get the benefit of it. 20:56 [SPEAKER_01]: But this root seller, someone with steel asked for two things in this house. 20:59 [SPEAKER_01]: One, a large open fireplace. 21:02 [SPEAKER_01]: She liked them a lot. 21:03 [SPEAKER_01]: They were out of fashion. 21:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Two, a root seller, accessible through the home. 21:08 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a very moderate list, considering what I would be asking for if I was moving to the middle of nowhere with my artist husband. 21:15 [SPEAKER_00]: leaving the kitchen, I asked Kate for the source of the name for the house of the singing winds. 21:21 [SPEAKER_00]: She walked us around to the sleeping porch in the back of the house to explain. 21:27 [SPEAKER_01]: It was disnamed by Selma Steele and it was designed to be a four-room summer bungalow, living room, bedroom, changing room kitchen, wrapped three quarters way around by screen 21:44 [SPEAKER_01]: No trees to get in the way. 21:45 [SPEAKER_01]: It would hit those metal screens. 21:46 [SPEAKER_01]: They would vibrate like a tar strings in the house and sing. 21:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how it takes its name, the house, the singing winds. 21:52 [SPEAKER_01]: It was also the fashion at the time to give your summer house a cutename. 21:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And this one stuck. 22:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Traditionally, painters have worked in doors with paints they mixed in bowls for that very moment. 22:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Painting was a very stationary activity. 22:12 [SPEAKER_00]: In the 1800s, manufacturers began selling paint and pre-mix tubes, and this changed everything. 22:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Most importantly, these tubes were portable. 22:26 [SPEAKER_00]: At any moment, you could grab your tubes of paint and go. 22:31 [SPEAKER_00]: You might compare this revolution in painting to the difference between listening to music on a turntable and listening to it on your iPhone, or if you're really old on a walkman. 22:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody ever went for a jog listening to music on a record on their turntable. 22:51 [SPEAKER_00]: As soon as painting became portable, painters did a very predictable thing. 22:57 [SPEAKER_00]: They went outside, and with so many tubes of premixed paint at their disposal, they painted fast, and they painted recklessly. 23:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Painting became fun again, and exciting again, and you didn't need a big fancy studio to do it. 23:22 [SPEAKER_00]: That's basically just a French phrase that means outdoors. 23:28 [SPEAKER_00]: TC Steel was one of the major American champions of this new style. 23:34 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll get back to the tour now, but I wanted you to have that background for some of what Kate will be referring to over the next few minutes. 23:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Over here. 23:47 [SPEAKER_01]: the study, the last room we visit in the home. 23:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is T.C. 23:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Steel's study. 23:52 [SPEAKER_01]: This is where he's going to do all of his writing. 23:55 [SPEAKER_01]: So, at the Plun Air landscape painter, on a day like today, on most days, T.C. 24:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Steel would be outside in all kinds of weather. 24:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Plain air painters, especially painters who work with oils, are geared up and ready for just about anything out there because they paint on location. 24:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And they don't paint from memory or photograph, at least steel did not paint from photograph. 24:19 [SPEAKER_01]: So he would have been outside, but on days where he had to do correspondence where he had lectures essays articles for the newspaper, this is the thing about Mr. Steele, when he comes here, he's a public man. 24:31 [SPEAKER_01]: people come up here like they know him. 24:35 [SPEAKER_01]: They sent him letters, they come to visit, they asked, they come for commissions, and they enter this home as if they have every right to be entering a private residence. 24:46 [SPEAKER_01]: When a large studio is built, it will become gallery showroom and essentially where Mr. Steel can hold court as needed in there. 24:55 [SPEAKER_01]: But when he is in here, he can write letters to his children. 24:59 [SPEAKER_01]: He has three grown children and a number of grand children, and nobody lives in Brown County. 25:04 [SPEAKER_01]: They're all married, and the crowd fan was of their own elsewhere. 25:11 [SPEAKER_01]: This is also where we see with his essays and articles of lectures. 25:15 [SPEAKER_01]: He is the first artist in a residence at Indiana University, who had pointed to the position by William Low-Brion University President in 1922. 25:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And he loads that position until his death in 1926. 25:26 [SPEAKER_01]: These chandeliers came out of a Montgomery Ward catalog. 25:31 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to steal hired an electrician to wire the house, and she ran her electricity, including that refrigerator, on a generator in the basement. 25:38 [SPEAKER_01]: It has glass batteries, because Brown County doesn't get electricity until the 1940s. 25:45 [SPEAKER_01]: I want you to imagine standing in your log cabin with your 10 children around you and looking up this hill and seeing warm electric light coming out of this house, a palace for two people and asking yourself, what else can the 20th century do? 26:01 [SPEAKER_00]: We stepped up side of the house and on the walk to the studio, Kate shared more about why she finds the house of the singing winds, so compelling. 26:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Historic homes are all surface. 26:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Everything in the house, the exception of the paintings, does not do what it's supposed to do. 26:18 [SPEAKER_01]: The couches will not be sat upon. 26:19 [SPEAKER_01]: The books will not be read. 26:21 [SPEAKER_01]: No one is sleeping in those beds anymore. 26:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And so when I look at that house, it is to me a house in Amber undisturbed. 26:32 [SPEAKER_00]: As we enter, the studio feels a bit like a clean, open-plan barn. 26:38 [SPEAKER_01]: So, Steel did use it as a studio. 26:41 [SPEAKER_01]: However, as a landscape painter and a plein air painter, when he's doing that kind of work, he's outside. 26:47 [SPEAKER_01]: When he is doing still life painting, 26:53 [SPEAKER_01]: He'll be doing it in here, probably. 26:55 [SPEAKER_01]: And he'll be doing the other work of painting, too. 26:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So today, if you wanted to paint a planaire masterpiece, you can go to Michaels and get yourself a pre-stretched canvas, which is already on its boards, and just ready for you to paint it. 27:10 [SPEAKER_01]: But when T.C. 27:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Steel was doing this, he probably would have had to stretch his own canvas, build his own frames, or at least have a frames ordered, and then be stretching the canvas over them. 27:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He then would have had to just sew them and prepare them for the oil paint because if he didn't do that, the paint would go straight through. 27:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Wouldn't stay on it. 27:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Then 27:32 [SPEAKER_01]: When the painting's done, and sufficiently dry, he'll have to varnish it, which means he'll probably be mixing his own varnish from a number of different bottles here, and applying it and letting it dry. 27:44 [SPEAKER_01]: So there are a number of stops in the painting process. 27:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Today we've streamlined it quite a bit. 27:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Mr. Steel doesn't have to make his own paint. 27:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Paint is now available in these adorable little tubes that you can mail order and get almost everything that way. 28:01 [SPEAKER_01]: But artists of earlier periods, painters ground their own pigments and made their own paints. 28:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And they also studied geometry and chemistry, other things as well as basically biology and anatomy in order to be painting the way that they did. 28:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Seal is the premier portrait painter in the state of Indiana by the time for his death. 28:24 [SPEAKER_01]: In 1926, when he is sent to Germany by the business community in the Indianapolis, the Germans of Indianapolis, sponsor his education at the Royal Academy of Munich, which is to do one thing, portraiture, in the style of the old masters. 28:39 [SPEAKER_01]: This is German realism. 28:41 [SPEAKER_01]: This is what people want to buy. 28:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, for those of you unfamiliar with this kind of language art, realism is pretty much exactly what 28:54 [SPEAKER_00]: making things work realistic. 28:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The idea, really, is to get as close as you can to a photograph. 29:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And when it comes to realism, steel has natural genius. 29:08 [SPEAKER_00]: His ability to paint human faces and expressions is amazing. 29:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But he's bored with that. 29:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He falls in love with a new style of painting, 29:21 [SPEAKER_00]: rather than trying to paint things photographically. 29:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Impressionism is all about capturing a sense of what it feels like to encounter those things in real life. 29:32 [SPEAKER_00]: The impressions they give, because of how fleeting an impression can be, this style of painting happens quickly, in short, blunt brushstrokes of unmixed colors. 29:46 [SPEAKER_00]: As you might guess, one of the most common subjects for impressionism is landscape. 29:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Deal falls in love with landscape when he's in Germany. 29:58 [SPEAKER_01]: He's not the only American over there. 30:00 [SPEAKER_01]: There are a number of young American painters and there are painting landscape for fun in their free time. 30:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And that is why NTC Steel discovers that this is the work he loves. 30:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Just too bad, because this is what Americans want to buy. 30:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Kate's pointing to a pair of portraits, hanging on the wall of a studio. 30:23 [SPEAKER_00]: One of them is Steele's own son, Wimbrant, or Brant, for short. 30:28 [SPEAKER_01]: It might not seem like a big deal, but in the Analan escape is not being painted very often. 30:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I think you can probably think about why, any ideas. 30:38 [SPEAKER_00]: When Kate asked this question, I honestly didn't know the answer either. 30:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I figured, one landscape was as good as another. 30:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Who's going to buy it? 30:48 [SPEAKER_01]: If you live in Indiana, why do you need a painting of Indiana? 30:52 [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't live in Indiana, why do you want a painting of Indiana? 30:56 [SPEAKER_01]: If you have any money for a painting, it's going to be a portrait of a loved one. 31:01 [SPEAKER_01]: The camera has been invented. 31:03 [SPEAKER_01]: The Civil War, fortunately, those young soldiers went off and got their picture made. 31:10 [SPEAKER_01]: But we know that degarity types and tin types are not going to go behind the desk of the bank president. 31:16 [SPEAKER_01]: We also know that they don't last forever. 31:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Portraits last forever. 31:20 [SPEAKER_01]: If you have a beautiful husband or a my handsome family, you get that, paint it. 31:26 [SPEAKER_01]: and T.C. 31:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Steel as a child knows that the only painters who make a life who'll make a living to support a family are portrait painters. 31:34 [SPEAKER_01]: You're looking at all the paintings in here that nobody wanted to buy. 31:37 [SPEAKER_01]: As some of these wouldn't have been for sale, for example, Brant's portrait over here, that was something that he had, which was passed down to his children, and has only just lately come back to us. 31:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So not everything in this room would have been on the walls in 1926 when Mr. Steel died and part of Selma's steel state. 31:56 [SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of it was. 31:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Mrs. Steel, Selma's steel left us everything. 32:02 [SPEAKER_01]: She knew that she wanted to leave a museum. 32:05 [SPEAKER_01]: She called it a memorial. 32:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And she saved paintbrushes. 32:11 [SPEAKER_01]: The cigar butts turned back there in the ash tray. 32:16 [SPEAKER_01]: The used paint tubes, the pallets, the varnish's, TAC steel is a smoker of cigars. 32:24 [SPEAKER_01]: You look around and you see all the different cigar boxes. 32:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The house of the singing winds isn't just a memorial to the lives and legacies of T.C. 32:33 [SPEAKER_00]: and Selma Steele. 32:35 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a tribute to a turning point in the history of Brown County. 32:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It also represents something of a turning point for the way the rest of the country viewed the state of Indiana as a whole. 32:47 [SPEAKER_01]: When he lived in downtown Indianapolis, following his return from Germany, his home at 16th and Pennsylvania Street, the Tinker Talbot Place home become his Indiana School of Art. 33:00 [SPEAKER_01]: He opens his studios on the weekends and invites people to come in, which is really the first time, probably a lot of people in Indiana get to see fine art of Indiana on the walls. 33:14 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, steel is painting these landscapes of Indiana at a time when no one cares and no one is buying. 33:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Eager to promote the growing husher art scene, T.C. 33:25 [SPEAKER_00]: collaborated with other German trained husher impressionists, like William Forcith and Otto Stark, on a large art show in downtown Indianapolis, 33:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And these guys get a show in downtown Indianapolis showing off in the Analandscape and it's a hit. 33:43 [SPEAKER_01]: The city turns out to see it. 33:45 [SPEAKER_01]: It's so big and fact, so successful that they decide to send some of those paintings up to the Columbia and exposition of 1893. 33:53 [SPEAKER_01]: which is what we call the world's fair. 33:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And steel exhibits at the world's fair, which is really what gets a lot of attention back to this state is to say, oh, there are painters in Indiana, look what they can do. 34:07 [SPEAKER_01]: These guys are from Indiana. 34:11 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a pretty big deal with that. 34:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So his star continues to ascend, and this is also one of the things I love about this story, most artists' stories we tell are sad stories, where there's a lack of recognition there are troubles along the way, stories of weakness or failure, or... 34:32 [SPEAKER_01]: kind of the inability to cope with fame and T.C. 34:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Steel manages a fairly even keel all the way through. 34:41 [SPEAKER_01]: He gets up in the morning at 4 a.m. 34:44 [SPEAKER_01]: He says a landscape painter has no business being in bed after 4 a.m. in the summer time. 34:48 [SPEAKER_01]: He's at work at five. 34:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Retility paints every day of his life until the last week of his life. 34:55 [SPEAKER_01]: And he is considered the dean of the art colony of the Midwest of the Brown County art colony. 35:01 [SPEAKER_01]: because he doesn't invite people here. 35:04 [SPEAKER_01]: They come because he's here. 35:06 [SPEAKER_01]: He acts as a magnet for this area. 35:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Artists come to Brown County and they set up for what they think is going to be the summer in downtown Nashville. 35:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And then many decide to stay. 35:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And they make it a permanent residence. 35:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And the Brown County art column is so successful that Eleanor Roosevelt will go shopping in the galleries of Nashville. 35:30 [SPEAKER_01]: During her husband's presidency, we have photographs of her coming out of a gallery with paintings under her arms. 35:36 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not a cute little thing, it's a big deal. 35:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And what's really amazing about it, of course, is that the art story of Indiana is a... 35:45 [SPEAKER_01]: It's really fascinating when nobody really tells it, because it's not one of the stories that Indiana really chooses to tell about itself, but there's a lot here for people who want to look. 35:57 [SPEAKER_00]: So much of the best history works this way. 36:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It's right there in front of you if you take the time to look. 36:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Fortunately, we're looking enough in this case to be able to do that. 36:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. 36:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
Show full transcript (438 segments)
