Few thrift stores can claim a literary pedigree, but Audrey’s Place Thrift Store, at 3210 East 10th Street on Indianapolis’s Near East Side, sits on ground once occupied by the Vonnegut family’s hardware store, the same family that produced novelist Kurt Vonnegut. That history gives an extra layer of meaning to a shop already built on the idea of objects with a past: used furniture, antiques, and everyday household goods that have already lived one life and are ready for another.
The family behind Audrey’s Place opened its first Indianapolis store more than four decades ago, and within a year of starting out they were, by their own account, hooked on the business of picking and reselling. The shop settled into its current East 10th Street building in 1991 and has been buying, collecting, and selling from that location ever since. In 2000, the family expanded just four doors to the west, opening a second storefront that specializes in new and name brand furniture, so the same family now runs a used and antique thrift operation alongside a separate new furniture showroom on the same short stretch of street, letting shoppers move between vintage finds and brand new pieces without leaving the block.
The Near East Side is one of Indianapolis’s older residential neighborhoods, and the shop describes itself as deeply tied to its ongoing renovation and revival, drawing much of its secondhand inventory from estate cleanouts, downsizing households, and donations from the surrounding community. That local sourcing keeps the sales floor stocked with genuine vintage and antique furniture, from case pieces to upholstered seating, alongside everyday household goods, decor, and the occasional unexpected find, visitors have described everything from vintage signage to a pinball machine turning up on the floor. The shop leans into that variety as part of the draw, positioning itself less as a standard resale outlet and more as a browsing destination where the next find is never quite predictable.
Audrey’s Place keeps generous hours for a thrift store, open nine to six Monday through Friday and nine to five on Saturdays, making it accessible for both weekday errands and weekend treasure hunting. The business has built a substantial local following, with several thousand people engaging with its social media pages and well over a thousand visitors marking that they have shopped there in person, reviews that consistently praise the range of furniture and the sense of stepping into a working piece of neighborhood history rather than a generic secondhand store. Regulars often follow along online for a daily deal highlight, a habit the shop encourages by posting standout finds and price drops as they hit the floor.
What sets Audrey’s Place apart from typical thrift and antique competitors in Indianapolis is that combination of scale, longevity, and place: a family business now in its fifth decade, operating from a building with a direct connection to one of Indianapolis’s most famous literary families, still sourcing and reselling furniture from the same Near East Side neighborhood it has served since the early 1990s. For furniture hunters, the appeal is straightforward, a large, constantly changing selection of used and antique pieces priced well below new retail, with the family’s original new furniture storefront just a few doors away for anyone who prefers something brand new. In short, Audrey’s Place Thrift Store is a longstanding, family run used furniture and antique shop on Indianapolis’s Near East Side, built on the site of the historic Vonnegut family hardware store and stocked through decades of local estate and household finds.
