We are not the first Tinker on 16th Street. Long before our building existed, the Tinker name was already part of this neighborhood’s map. Here is where it came from, and why ours ends in House.
The Tinker family
In 1850, Elizabeth Tinker, the daughter of a Captain Tinker of Cincinnati, bought 80 acres on what was then the north edge of Indianapolis. She later married William H. Talbott, a downtown jeweler, which is why old maps call the land both the Tinker and the Talbott property.
The family homestead stood at the corner of today’s 16th and Pennsylvania Streets, about a mile west of us. The dirt road along the south edge of the property became known as Tinker Street. During the Civil War, Camp Burnside used Tinker Street as its southern border, and in the 1880s the city’s ballpark nearby was even called Tinker Park.
From Tinker Street to 16th Street
By the mid-1880s the road had officially become Seventh Street, though plenty of people still called it Tinker Street. In 1897, when the city switched its east-west streets to numbers, Seventh became the 16th Street we know today.
A painter’s home
From the mid-1880s to 1901, the old Tinker homestead was home to T.C. Steele, one of Indiana’s best-known painters and a member of the Hoosier Group. Steele painted the house itself, in a canvas called “Tinker Place.” In 1901 the Art Association bought the property for the John Herron Art Institute, the old Tinker mansion came down in 1905, and today the site is Herron High School.
Where our name comes in
Our building was never the Tinker home. It was built in the 1910s as a bank furniture factory (read the full story of the building). In 2003 its owners renamed it Tinker Flats to honor the Tinker family, and when the building was reborn as an event venue in 2017, the name carried on as Tinker House.
So the name is a nod to the neighborhood’s roots: the family who owned this land, the painter who lived and worked a mile down the road, and the street that once carried their name.
Same street, different Tinkers
Because 16th Street was once Tinker Street, a few neighbors have borrowed the name too. They are great businesses, and they are separate companies from us:
- Tinker Coffee Co. started roasting on 16th Street in 2014 and now has cafés around the city.
- Tinker Street is a restaurant at 402 E. 16th Street that opened in 2015.
We are Tinker House Events, the wedding and event venue at 1101 E. 16th Street on the Monon Trail, with Provider Café on our first floor. If you are sending guests our way, “Tinker House” is the name to put on the invitation.
See it for yourself
The Tinker story is easy to explore on foot. From our door, the Monon Trail runs south toward downtown and north toward Broad Ripple, and Herron High School and the Old Northside are a short walk west. It makes for a lovely photo walk on a wedding day, or a stroll for out-of-town guests the morning after.
