Indianapolis Athletic Club

A 10-story Renaissance Revival building constructed in 1922. The club featured a swimming pool, gymnasium, bowling alley, and hotel rooms for members. Now converted to a boutique hotel.

The Indianapolis Athletic Club was incorporated in 1920 by a group of businessmen to promote clean sports, amusement, and sociability, and opened its Italian Renaissance clubhouse at 350 North Meridian Street in January 1924. Designed by architect Robert Frost Daggett, who modeled the bronze doorway and carved limestone surround after the Venice Palace in Rome, the building featured three floors with 160 sleeping rooms for members, a swimming pool, basketball gymnasium, billiard and smoking lounges, dining rooms, and a separate apartment for women. The IAC grew in prominence with membership exceeding 2,000, counting mayors, governors, state legislators, business leaders, and future Olympic athletes among its ranks.

The tragedy that spawned the haunting occurred on the night of February 4, 1992, when a faulty refrigerator wire on the third floor ignited a devastating fire. The blaze killed three people: Indianapolis firefighters Corporal Ellwood M. "Woody" Gelenius, age 47, and Private John J. Lorenzano, age 29, along with hotel guest Thomas Mutz, age 71. Four additional firefighters sustained serious injuries, two with severe burns requiring months of rehabilitation. It was the Indianapolis Fire Department's first line-of-duty deaths in 23 years. The fire received intense national media coverage because it occurred while the building was housing the jury hearing testimony in heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson's rape trial.

After the IAC shuttered in 2004, a private developer purchased and restored the building into luxury condominiums, retaining many of the original architectural features. But the residents quickly discovered they were not alone. The ghosts are believed to be the spirits of the firefighters who died trying to save others, continuing their protective mission from beyond the grave. Tenants report loud banging at their doors in the middle of the night, and when they go to investigate, they find nothing but empty hallways. People claim to hear the voice of a young man telling them to get out of the building, believed to be 29-year-old John Lorenzano still issuing his final warning. Shadow figures are seen in the long hallway where the firefighters lost their lives on the third floor, and electronics on that floor cease to operate without explanation. A security guard named Gary Burton reported in 2015 that while working alone at night, coffee pots and lights turned on and off all evening with no explanation; management initially doubted his account and required a drug test, which came back negative. During the building's renovation, construction worker Robert Hough noted in 2018 that the basement levels were deeply unsettling. Each year during Indianapolis's St. Patrick's Day Parade, firefighters pause to salute their fallen colleagues at the building.