High & Mighty: Five of Indy’s Best Rooftop Views
• On the fourth floor of the Small Mall (409 Massachusetts Ave.), you’ll find a huge deck and wraparound bench for appreciating the drone’s-eye view of the Cultural Trail and skyline. You wish you could bring a grill and invite all your friends.
• Set five floors up in the thick of downtown, summertime Rooftop Thursdays at Regions Tower (211 N. Pennsylvania St.) have the firepits, live music, and suggested attire (“ladies, please come tastefully dressed to impress”) to out-sex every other cocktail hour in town.
• Downtown bikers know this secret: At dusk, pack cheese, crackers, and wine, and head to the top floor of the 11-story parking garage at 327 N. Illinois St. Look west. It’s your private urban sunset picnic.
• Every new apartment building downtown touts its rooftop access, but Axis’s furnished Sky Bar (401 N. Senate Ave.), where weekly resident happy hours have taken place, has the advantage of a west-downtown location—and the attending sunset vista.
• There’s urban gardening, then there’s The Sky Farm at Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital (720 Eskenazi Ave.). It’s open 24/7, and if you have a green thumb, you can volunteer to help harvest more than 3,300 pounds of product from the rooftop’s verdant raised beds.
