Adam Henze and his wife, Siren Hand, love typewriters. When Henze got his Ph.D. in literacy, culture and language education in 2020, Hand wanted to get him a gift.
“Both of us being writers, I’m like, ‘What’s the perfect thing?’” Hand asked. “I wanted to get him the most beautiful typewriter I could find.”
But the couple didn’t stop there.
“I got his typewriter, and then I wanted to use a typewriter, so I got me a typewriter. And then he got a cooler typewriter, and then we got a hundred typewriters,” Hand said.
One Christmas, they surprised each other with the same gift – the LEGO typewriter.
In May, the couple plans to open Indy Type Shop in Garfield Park, across from Parkside Public House and Pen and Pink Vintage. The shop will be stocked with typewriters, antique books and zines. It will be a gathering space, too, where they’ll serve teas from around the world and host performances such as poetry and comedy in a black box theater.
“We’re hoping to build a community here, a place where people can go to the park, go get a cup of coffee at one store, a bagel from Cafe Babette, and then come and get a book,” Henze said.
It’s an extension of the work they already do. Henze is the literary director at Ujamaa Community Bookstore. Henze and Hand are both professional poets, and they run a business called Our Type Love together, where they do things like writing live poetry on typewriters at weddings.
“Our Type Love was born out of the pandemic, in that we were both artists and educators who suddenly couldn’t go to festivals or go to school, so we had to kind of just prepare for the future. And part of that was hoarding books and typewriters because we knew we wanted to invest in this programming,” Henze said.
Right now, their books and collection of vintage typewriters live in two storage units. They’ve got collectibles like the tins that typewriter ribbons used to come in and a typewriter table with folding leaves.
Indy Type Shop will be at 2621 Shelby St., which used to be a gun shop and then a cell phone store.
Hand, who uses they/them pronouns, is a disabled veteran. During their nearly 10 years in the military, they learned to clean guns, take them apart and put them back together. Those skills translated to repairing typewriters, which is one service the Indy Type Shop will offer.
“I moved to Indy in 2019 after my time in the army,” they said. “So there was the pandemic, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’m terrible at sourdough. But what I did know how to do was how to clean mechanical parts.”
Sitting in Parkside Public House last week, Henze pulled a 1920s Remington typewriter out of its case.
These are some of the typewriters that will be on display at Indy Type Shop in Garfield Park. The shop will feature antique typewriters, books and pamphlets, plus a small performance stage.
Adam Henze (left) shows off antiques that will be on display at Indy Type Shop in Garfield Park.
“A lot of these machines of this age were lost to time,” he said. “They were lost to war drives where they were taking scrap metal. They were lost to the landfill. So this is a survivor, and we still feel like we’re saving machines.”
Through his work with Ujamaa Community Bookstore at Flanner House, Henze loves to teach kids how to use typewriters. The kids have seen typewriters that characters like Bluey and Wednesday Addams use, and get to try using one for the first time.
One student asked Henze to borrow a typewriter to write a family member a letter. He’d never written a letter before. Henze is looking forward to hosting type-ins at the new store, to hang out with people and let them have fun with typewriters.
“We feel very strongly that these machines carry history and they carry our stories, and that’s why we want to do something,” Henze said.
Mirror Indy reporter Sophie Young covers services and resources. Contact her at sophie.young@mirrorindy.org.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
