The 1911 mansion of James Allison — co-founder of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Allison Engineering Company — sits on the campus of Marian University. The 25,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style house contains a marble-domed conservatory with a sunken garden, a music room with a Skinner pipe organ, and a private aviary lined with rare South American marble.
The university offers free guided tours of the public rooms most weekday afternoons (check ahead). Allison's contemporary and friend Carl Fisher's mansion is no longer standing — this is the best-preserved relic of the original Speedway-founding crowd.