Retro Riley: Setting the table with festive china

The 1971 opening of Phase II of Riley Hospital for Children offered Louise Irwin and Arlene Wilson of Indiana University Medical Center Nutrition and Dietetics an opportunity to design a new hospital china to use for serving meals to children that was in sync with the new surroundings of the hospital. The color scheme for the Phase II lobby was bright red, white and blue. As part of the total project, Tri Kappa Sorority decorated the lobby of the hospital’s newest wing with toy soldiers, drums, a ballet dancer, Little Orphant Annie and a globe with circling airplanes on the walls. A small garden was also maintained in the lobby.

Sue Brady, now professor emeritus of nutrition and dietetics, and then a new dietitian at Riley Hospital in 1971, recalls that Irwin and Wilson turned to Jackson China, at the time a premier china company based in Falls Creek, Pennsylvania, to help make their vision for a new hospital china a reality.

Irwin and Wilson designed a new hospital china in the red, white and blue colors of Phase II. The carousel horse on the plate was in keeping with the large carousel horse in the lobby of Phase II. The waterfall carousel in the lobby center was a gift honoring Tri Kappa’s 70^th anniversary, given on Riley Hospital’s 50^th anniversary and Indiana University’s 150^th. A colorful water curtain and green plants surrounded a near life-size revolving horse. When Tri Kappa officers and members toured Phase II in early 1972, they had a chance to see dinner plates decorated with the carousel theme. The clown on the cup came from James Whitcomb Riley’s poem “The Circus-Day Parade.” The china was used until the early 1990s.

Mary Ann Underwood, longtime assistant to Dr. Morris Green, chairman of the Department of Pediatrics from 1967-1987, recalls: “In those days, the kitchen was still on the first floor of the original Riley. Early hospital pictures show children being brought to a table on the ward to eat family-style meals. The plates and cups were another means of providing a more family-like atmosphere that was cheerful and happy like the carrousel and the clown.”

The Phase II addition featured 133 new beds and included 12 rooms in the Baxter Parent Care unit; a comprehensive newborn intensive care unit; enlarged ambulatory care facilities; new departments of occupational and physical therapy; and a child development section with staff offices, testing and observation rooms and classrooms. The addition also included comprehensive clinical laboratories for prenatal genetic diagnosis and the management of genetic disorders.

Another major service provided by the new wing included an eight-bed unit for children with burns, the first in Indiana. Tri Kappa provided a major contribution for the burn unit. Riley Hospital for Children has received more than $1 million in support from Tri Kappa since the hospital opened in 1924.

--Compiled by the Riley Hospital Historic Preservation Committee, with thanks to Ann Hannan, director of the Riley Cheer Guild, for recognizing the history behind the china recently donated to the Cheer Guild. Photos provided by Ann Hannan and IU Indianapolis Special Collections and Archives