As you settle your fork into a piece of your favorite pie this Thanksgiving, impress your friends and family with a few “bites” of Riley Hospital’s pie history.
The gorgeous grandfather clock in the original lobby of Riley Hospital for Children (just outside the Edward A. Block Family Library) has everything to do with pie. James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916) loved pie, all kinds of pie. And he ate lots of pie everywhere he went, but especially at downtown’s Union Station, once the center for all people coming and going daily by train. Trains were the only way Riley could travel across the country to his many public lectures during the last decades of the 19th century.
Long ago at Union Station, there was a lunch counter at the old Depot Restaurant where Riley was a regular, stopping in for his piece of pie and a talk with good friends. One of those friends was Tom Taggart (1856-1929), who early in his career managed that lunch counter. Taggart would go on to become a powerful political force for the Democratic Party in Indiana and the nation, but his lifelong friendship with Riley began at the lunch counter he once managed where he and Riley talked – over pie.
Thanks to partners at the Indiana State Library Rare Books and Manuscripts, which holds copies of original menus from Tom Taggart’s Union Station restaurant, for reviewing Taggart’s menus to find that Taggart served many pies, including lemon, apple, pumpkin, blackberry, cherry, huckleberry and many more.
No date is available as to when the grandfather clock in Riley Hospital’s original lobby was given in memory of Mr. and Mrs. A.A. Fendrick, but the best guess is that the gift of the clock was likely to honor a friendship with Riley forged long ago at the lunch counter at Union Station.
And, just a few other little bites of Riley Hospital’s pie history: Riley loved pie so much he wrote about pie in many of his poems, including “A Gustatory Achievement” and “The Diners in the Kitchen.” Riley even waged a campaign to sway his lifelong friend and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and celebrated Hoosier author Booth Tarkington to put down his cigarettes and join him at the shrine of pie, but Tarkington blew smoke at Riley’s efforts and refused.
So, this Thanksgiving, in tribute to Mr. Riley: Enjoy your favorite piece of pie, swap stories and Riley’s “pie” poems with friends and family, and celebrate the lasting power of a great piece of pie.
--Compiled by the Riley Hospital Historic Preservation Committee
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