Long before author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. became famous, his family was making a name for themselves in Indianapolis. Great grandfather Clemens took over a profitable hardware store and increased the family fortune.

But his grandfather, Bernard, like the author himself, took a different path. He became an architect and in 1893, his firm, Vonnegut and Bohn, designed Das Deutsche Haus. It’s architectural style is German Renaissance Revival building with 14 foot high ceilings, a gabled roof, semi-circular limestone arched entrance flanked by two free standing Roman Doric Columns and stone lions with shields and lyres. The building was constructed for a group with the tongue twister name of Sozialer Turnverein, one of several liberal German societies of Indianapolis.

For many decades Das Deutsche Haus, its first wing was built in 1893 and the second was completed in 1898, thrived as a meeting place for literary, cultural and social minded Germans who lived in Indianapolis and the surrounding area. Since the early 1800s, central and southern Indiana had thronged with German immigrants who retained their traditions in their new homeland.