Jose Aguilar and his family have lived in their Lynn Street home in Stringtown for nearly two decades. It’s a safe place to live now, but they said that crime was all around them when they moved there in 2006.
They said people would deal and use drugs and fight just feet away from their property, but police were a rare sight despite many phone calls.
“It would always feel risky, letting your kids outside,” Jose Aguilar said in an interview conducted in Spanish. “You couldn’t sleep some nights because you lived in fear of what could happen.”
All they had to protect themselves was a fence at the western end of their property that was there when they moved in. They built a rolling fence gate at the other end of their property to close it off.
When the fence is open, it looks like they have a driveway going from Lynn Street to their back fence, but it’s actually a mostly-forgotten city street called Moorefield Avenue.
It once stretched about 300 feet west of Lynn Street, giving residents a shortcut to Belmont Avenue, the main street in the area, and the old Marion County Health Department building at the end of Lynn Street.
But in the late 1980s, the city gave the western half of Moorefield Avenue to a private land owner. Only about half of the street remains today.
The health department building is gone, and there’s nowhere to go on Moorefield Avenue but private property owned by Aguilar’s neighbor at 272 Lynn St.
Despite that, some Stringtown residents have fond memories of the street, and they want the city to reclaim it.
Left: Moorefield Avenue as seen in the 1941 Indianapolis Baist Atlas map. Right: Moorefield Avenue as seen on Map Indy today. The plots to the south, west and northwest of Moorefield Ave. are all the private property of 272 Lynn St.
Memories of Moorefield Avenue
When Frank Staples was a boy growing up in Stringtown in the 1980s, his mother would take him by the hand and walk him down Moorefield Avenue to School 50.
“Everybody from Stringtown played in this area back in the day,” Staples said.
Staples says it’s time for the neighborhood to get its street back from the Aguilars.
“I don’t want anybody coming in and thinking they can just take something from the neighborhood,” Staples said.
Staples called District 18 Councilor Kristin Jones, who told Mirror Indy she verified the street was owned by the city. Then he called the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services (BNS).
BNS sent an inspector to check it out, and on Oct. 6, it issued Aguilar and his wife, Felicia, a violation notice for unlicensed encroachment, the unauthorized use of a public right-of-way.
The city gave the Aguilars 14 days to take down the gate at the entrance to Moorefield Avenue and fence at its end, along with any debris on the street.
If that doesn’t happen, the city could clear the street and the fence and charge them for the work.
As of Oct. 29, the Aguilars cleared their property from the street, but the fence was still up. BNS has issued a second notice of violation.
Who wants a road to nowhere?
The Aguilars say they have cared for Mooresville Avenue like it was their own property.
When trees abutting the street fell during a storm several years ago, they worked to clean it up. They also trim overgrown shrubs on the southern end of the street.
They said the city has not contacted them about the street since January 2007, when a Department of Code Enforcement inspector responded to a Mayor’s Action Center report about the fence. But the inspector closed the case, commenting that the fence wasn’t close to an alley or the right-of-way.
The Aguilars wonder why the city would want the street back.
“We’re conscious of the fact that it’s not ours, but the street leads to nowhere,” Jose Aguilar said. “The other side of this street is private property. It’s never open, and it hasn’t been for many years.”
Staples, who is the president of the Stringtown Neighborhood Association, said the street’s utility isn’t as important as ensuring that a public road remains public.
“You can’t steal a street — that’s my main thing,” Staples said.
Aguilar said they would open the fence up if the city asked. But, they would rather buy the land if the city is willing to sell it, or try to get the city to vacate it for them like it did for other landowners.
Getting the city to vacate the property would require the Aguilars to file a petition with the Department of Metropolitan Development’s Plat Committee, which would consider the application. If that happens, Staples and any other residents who are against the city giving up the street would have a chance to oppose their petition.
The Aguilars haven’t decided what they will do next, but Staples hopes the city opens up the street as soon as possible.
“This guy’s gonna lose a little property. I’m sorry for that, but in reality he should have never had it in the first place,” he said.
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.
Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on Bluesky at @enriquesaenz.bsky.social.
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