Lincoln Recreation Center

The Crawfordsville School Board sold the property to the city in 1952, and the Parks and Recreation Department reopened the building as the Lincoln Recreation Center, serving as a welcoming space and park for the Black community. Prior to city ownership, the Second Baptist Church and Black fraternal organizations rented the building, and adult education classes were held there.

The second Lincoln School building on Wabash Avenue, circa 1922

The second Lincoln School building was built with no windows on the front facade facing Wabash Avenue. It is unknown why this was the case. Some say it was to keep students from getting distracted by the traffic on Wabash Avenue. Others believe it was a cost-saving measure that was influenced by issues of race.

After years of service as a school and community space for Crawfordsville’s Black community, the Lincoln Recreation Center closed in the early 1980s, and the building was demolished in 1981. This erasure of the city’s last structure connected to segregated education occurred exactly one hundred years after Crawfordsville’s first Lincoln School for Colored Children was originally being built.