Home profile & gallery: Making space for art, books in Old Northside

Sheila and Bob Kennedy like to buy art from local painters and sculptors. And Bob, an architect. designed a house nearly two decades ago where they could show the pieces off. The couple has the house on the market, and Sheila said she'll miss a place to put the art most of all. (Photo courtesy of Everhart Studio)

Sheila and Bob Kennedy met while working in the administration of then-Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut (she was corporation counsel, he was director of metropolitan development), married and bought their first home in Lockerbie, the historic downtown neighborhood known for its brick homes and brick and cobblestone streets.

A few years later, they moved a bit north, to Riley Towers. Then the couple inched farther north, to 10th Street. “At the time, that was as far north as Bob wanted to go,” Sheila said.

So when they built a 3,500-square-foot house on Carrollton Avenue, just south of East 16th Street, the move felt “almost like going to the suburbs,” Sheila said. That was 19 years ago—part of the resurgence of the Old Northside and long before East 16th was anything close to hip or trendy.

But the two-story, three-bedroom house with a finished basement rec area was exactly what they wanted. Bob, an architect, designed it and served as general contractor. He created a brick home that feels traditional on the exterior but fully contemporary on the inside, with tall, open spaces; an open staircase; and an upstairs hallway open to the floor below.

Sheila—an attorney and professor of law and policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI—gave Bob detailed instructions about what she wanted.

“I’m a little obsessive,” she said. “So, I measured everything I wanted. I told him, ‘I want this much hanging space in my closet. I want this much shelf space. I want a pantry.’”

The goal, she said, “was just to see if we could build a house to our specifications that would make it easy for us to live in. I’m a neatnik, so I wanted a place for everything.”

That includes the couple’s expansive art collection. Every wall, nook and corner features original art, almost all of it purchased from central Indiana artists or from the local artists in places where the couple vacationed, including Alaska and Bhutan, a Buddhist kingdom on the Himalayas.

The home’s main level is wide open, with a two-story fireplace that has no mantel but niches at the sides to show off small sculptures. Above is a painting by Brenda Hayes, an internationally known painter and sculptor based in Indianapolis. Another of Hayes’ paintings also hangs in the great room, among some two dozen other works, including two by one of the Kennedys’ sons.

The great room also includes a baby grand piano, which the Kennedys purchased for lessons for their now-grown kids (something that never really took) and is played now only by a nephew. A glass dining table with wicker chairs and a kitchen filled with maple cabinetry completes the great room.

In 19 years, the only substantial changes to the kitchen are new appliances and a honed granite countertop with waterfall edges on the island, which is large enough to have four bar stools with room to spare.

The black granite counter and backsplash set off the maple cabinets, which have glass fronts on the back wall. Along the side, an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling cabinets frames a refrigerator and gives every small appliance a place to live.

A library—with leaded-glass French doors and two long walls of shelves—completes the main floor. “I love books,” said Sheila, who has written nine of her own. But she’s not a collector. The room has as many paperbacks as hardcovers. “I buy books to read them.”

Her favorite spot in the house is the office at the top of the stairs, which the couple shares.

The office “is right next to the laundry room, which is up on the second floor, and that’s next to the bedroom,” she said. “So, it is so easy to be working, throw a load in, put it away. I mean, everything is just within a couple of steps.”

In fact, that’s what Sheila loves about the home overall—its efficiency. For working. For entertaining. For family life (her grandkids—and Bob—love the basement, with its big TV, comfy chairs and pool table).

But after nearly two decades in the house, the Kennedys have put it on the market, listed by Everhart Studio at $725,000. Too many stairs. Too much space to take care of.

“Age is catching up with us,” Sheila said. “So we figured, let’s go ahead and sell it.”

But she knows that means downsizing the art collection, her furnishings and more.

“I’ll miss the art,” she said. “We’ll just take what we can.”•