Speedway Window Treatment, Indianapolis, IN

Local Window Treatment Experience in Speedway

6,546 units, median construction year 1963, and five built since 2020

Speedway's housing is older and lower than the city that surrounds it. The census counts 6,546 housing units with a median construction year of 1963, against 1973 for Indianapolis, and the decade counts tell the story: 756 units built 1939 or earlier, 802 in the 1940s, 1,377 in the 1950s, 1,205 in the 1960s, 506 in the 1970s, 655 in the 1980s, 521 in the 1990s, 587 in the 2000s, 132 in the 2010s and just 5 built in 2020 or later. That puts 59.4 percent of the town between 1940 and 1979, against 43.5 percent citywide. Almost nothing here is new.

The plat record runs eighty three years. West Speedway Addition was recorded 8 April 1914 and Speedway City on 13 April 1914, followed by Speedway City 2nd Section on 24 April 1916 and the Schofield, Henry and Holloway Speedway Terrace plat on 14 February 1917. Then Leonard's Speedway Addition on 20 June 1928, Alma Pottebaum's on 18 June 1929 with its 2nd Section on 26 June 1930, Rosner's Speedway Place Amended on 2 March 1941, J M Ryan's on 6 November 1948 and Speedway Gardens on 11 August 1949. A second surge opened with Farley's Speedway Homeplace 1st Section on 2 January 1970 and ran to a 17th Section on 3 July 1985, alongside Speedway Cunningham Park in February 1971, Speedway Manor in May 1972 and Speedway Estates in September 1975. Speedway Woods closed the record with six sections between 20 September 1994 and 4 July 1997.

Two casing regimes you can find on a map

The regimes here are geographically separable, which is unusual and useful. The 756 units built 1939 or earlier concentrate in the National Register core between 10th and 16th and between Main and Winton. They have real wood jambs with applied casing, counterweight pockets in the frame and frequent storm panels, and the nomination records walls of brick, wood weatherboard and aluminum siding over foundations of concrete block, rusticated concrete, brick and stone. That aluminum siding matters to us: wrapped over original trim it can bury the very casing depth an inside mount needs, and you can't see that from the street.

The 3,890 units built between 1940 and 1979 are the shallow jamb regime. Thin frame jambs on the Cape Cods and the limestone and brick ranches, and aluminum framed units whose track hardware eats what depth there is. On a Speedway bungalow the casing is narrow and the reveal shallow, which is the opposite of the deep masonry reveals in the near downtown Indianapolis districts, and it catches out crews who assume that old means deep. The oldest stock is 112 to 114 years old measured from the 1914 plats and sits on Eagle Creek drainage rather than flat clay, so assume the head and the sill differ, assume the width at the top isn't the width at the sill, and run a diagonal on every opening.

What we specify in Speedway

Two things shape the recommendation. The stock is old, shallow and out of square, so outside mounts done properly are the norm rather than a fallback, and product that tolerates an imperfect opening beats product that demands a perfect one. And the town is majority renter, with 3,343 renter occupied households against 2,752 owner occupied, so alongside the owner conversation there's a real landlord and small multifamily conversation about durability, turnover and repeatability. The Main Street corridor and the racing industry employers add a third, commercial, conversation.

Streets, landmarks and schools

The 1912 plan is a cardinal grid. The numbered streets from 10th through 16th run east and west, and Main Street, Auburn, Winton and Ford run north and south, so one side of each of those north south streets carries full afternoon sun on the front elevation. The Speedway itself sits on the northeast side with 16th Street as the boundary, so the north edge of the historic district looks across open, unbuilt ground with no tall obstruction. Crawfordsville Road and West 16th Street are how residents describe getting in and out. Main Street runs from the simple classicism of the early 1900s to Art Deco inspired storefronts of the 1930s, with Allison Plant One at 1200 Main Street, built 1925 in Neoclassical Revival with large window openings over an internal concrete frame. The Speedway Redevelopment Commission, established in 2005, put a $10 million streetscape into Main Street and brought the racing industry back to the town center, with Dallara in 2011, Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing in 2012 and A.J. Foyt Racing in 2014.

The town is the authority here, not the city

No homeowners association was found anywhere in Speedway, and the body that matters instead is the town government. It operates a Board of Zoning Appeals, a Housing Advisory Council and the Speedway Redevelopment Commission, and it issues its own building, planning, driveway and sidewalk permits through the clerk treasurer's office at 5300 Crawfordsville Road. Whether any of that reaches an exterior awning or an exterior shade was not something we could establish, and we won't invent a standard we couldn't read. What we can say precisely is where to ask. Not the City of Indianapolis, and not the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, because neither has jurisdiction inside an excluded city. The town publishes municipal codes, ordinances and resolutions, and no historic preservation ordinance or design review standard appears among them. If you're planning anything fixed to the outside of the building, one call to the town office settles it, and we'll write the specification to whatever they say.

Window Treatment Services in Speedway

Every service Indianapolis Window Treatments offers across Indianapolis is available to Speedway homeowners.

Not Only Indianapolis

Speedway is one of several Indianapolis communities we serve. We measure and install across Indianapolis, Marion County, and surrounding areas.

Speedway Window Treatment FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Speedway homeowners.