Downtown Zionsville

See the downtown map

Looking for a quick way to find your way around the Village? The downtown Zionsville map shows Main Street and the surrounding side streets, with numbered markers for restaurants, retail shops, public parking lots, and key landmarks. Download the printable PDF before your visit or save the JPEG to your phone for a quick reference while walking downtown.

The Village Through the Years

Downtown Zionsville, commonly known as “The Village,” began as a railroad town in the early 1850s. William Zion and landowner Elijah Cross established the town beside the new railroad, and the original plat was filed in 1852. The rail line ran roughly where First Street is today, with the depot near the present-day site of Lincoln Park.

Businesses followed quickly: Vaughan & Wiley opened the first store in 1853, and John Miller built the first house, which was later used as a hotel. By 1885, Zionsville had two banks, a weekly newspaper, flour and saw mills, a carriage and wagon manufacturer, four churches, and a dairy.

Main Street’s brick paving came later. An electric trolley line began running along the street in 1903, and the dirt-and-gravel roadway was paved with brick alongside the tracks by 1911. Trolley service ended in 1930, and the tracks were removed, leaving a center strip that eventually deteriorated.

In 1969, resident John Parks organized the “Save the Bricks” Committee, and when asphalt was considered as a replacement a few years later, residents proposed rebuilding the street instead. Volunteers completed a test section in 1974 and went on to rebrick portions of Main Street by hand, beginning a preservation effort that continued through several major reconstruction projects until the final section was completed in 2003.

Much of the Village’s personality comes from the changing uses of its older buildings. The building now home to Rosie’s Place operated as a drugstore in various forms for almost a century.

The Friendly Tavern occupies a former carriage factory that once had a dirt-floor forge and a second-story ramp for rolling finished carriages toward a railroad loading dock. The building later served as wagon works, a tin shop, a harness shop, and even a church.

The buildings that include Cobblestone originally housed the Cropper Company, a furniture and dry-goods business. Other Main Street storefronts have served as banks, lumber stores, hardware stores, grocers, saloons, professional offices, and auto-related businesses.

Those earlier uses have not completely disappeared. A former bank at 98 S. Main still contains two original vaults. The town’s old lumber-store property retains the public water pump that once stood outside with a shared tin drinking cup.

Another Main Street building is believed to have begun as an opera house, later hosted early suffrage meetings, became a carriage repair shop, and eventually housed the longtime Akard’s Village Hardware. Castle Hall, built in 1902, has served as Zionsville’s town hall, a fraternal lodge, and a movie theater and remains in commercial use today.

That continual reuse is part of what makes the Village feel different from a newly built shopping district. The drugstore became a breakfast café, the carriage factory became a tavern, and the furniture and dry-goods buildings became restaurants and shops.

Former banks, homes, offices, and hardware stores continue to find new uses. The Village has changed considerably since its railroad days, but much of its history is still part of everyday downtown life—in the brick street, in the buildings, and in the businesses people walk into today.