The history of Fountain Square, Indianapolis is traditionally said to begin with Calvin Fletcher and Nicholas McCarthy’s purchase of the 264-acre farm of Dr. John H. Sanders in December 1835. Fletcher and McCarthy purchased the farm with the intent to lay out this area southeast of the city center as ‘town lots’ and to sell the small parcels for a handsome advance. Included among those lots was what is now known as the Fountain Square neighborhood. Although the Fletcher family is credited with being the first settlers in the area, a band of Delaware Indians resided at the present site of the Abraham Lincoln School 18 as late as 1820.
From 1970 to the present Fountain Square increasingly has become the focus of local attempts to revitalize the surrounding neighborhood. Symbolic of the beginning of this new phase in the neighborhood’s history was the return of Fountain Square’s fountain in 1969. (source)
