From 1969 to 2024 this downtown campus was Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, IUPUI, the joint campus you are walking through along the White River and Fall Creek. For decades it was administered primarily through Indiana University as a core campus and secondarily through Purdue University as a regional campus. It served as Indiana's primary urban research and academic health sciences institution, located in downtown Indianapolis along the White River and Fall Creek.
This urban university offered more than 550 degree programs and hosted the primary campuses for the Indiana University School of Medicine—home to more than 2,000 students—and the Indiana University School of Dentistry, the only dental school in the state. The campus also included the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, one of the two Indiana University law schools. In 2024, IUPUI was split into two separate campuses, Indiana University Indianapolis and Purdue University in Indianapolis.
You can still trace the legacy here: high-level research classification followed, as the record notes, 'After excluding the research budget of the IU School of Medicine, IUPUI was classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity...' Notice the White River and Fall Creek framing downtown Indianapolis, the ground this campus once claimed.