By Nolan Leahy
Russell Irving is the new restaurant owner in Muncie who created The Neely House. It’s a place that tries to reflect Thomas Neely’s diaries into a temporal reality, while also serving food.
Russell Irving said that he previously lived in the house back when it was an apartment building, but the structure served an even greater purpose many years ago.
Irving said that the Neely family helped roll bandages during the civil war.
While the building was a spot for medical assistance during the war, it currently has historic paintings hanging on the walls.
“Three of the paintings [in the house] are mentioned in a book about Jared Flagg, and the paintings that are lost of his,” said Irving. “The wedding portrait of [one of the women featured in the paintings] is featured in The Smithsonian.”
He plans on rotating the paintings at a certain time period.
“You know when you go to a restaurant, they want to stimulate your imagination. We thought it would be nice to theme the type of art on the walls to give you an idea of what it would look like in the 1860s,” Irving said.
Despite the amount of history and art in the house, his goal is to have a careful balance.
“You can kind of construe it as a house museum at times, but that’s not our goal. I mean our goal is to be a really nice restaurant set in a historic house,” Irving said.
“[But] when someone comes here for their anniversary, we want it to be about their anniversary, not about what Thomas and Matilda Neely did that day.”
While the goal is for the restaurant to be a finer addition to Muncie, its historical significance to Muncie is what makes it meaningful for Irving. He said that Neely’s role in the community is how the Ball Brothers came into town.
“I’ve always wanted to do this house and fix those major repairs. I think that it’s –historically- a really significant house for Muncie in that Thomas Neely organized the railroad spur from the Bellefontaine railroad,” Irving said. “I think without Thomas Neely, we wouldn’t have much of a community.”