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In 1961 the Fine Arts Foundation of Fort Wayne — the organization now called Arts United — commissioned Louis I. Kahn to design a downtown arts complex on the scale of its ambition, which was frankly Lincoln Center's. Kahn answered with a campus of nine buildings — a philharmonic hall, a civic theatre, an art school, a gallery and more — disposed around courts and gardens. The budget never existed for nine buildings. It existed, after a decade of work, for one: the Theatre of Performing Arts at 303 East Main Street, built from working drawings completed in the summer of 1970 and inaugurated in 1973.
Kahn conceived the theatre as "a violin and its case": the concrete shell of the 660-seat auditorium nested inside a wrapping brick case of lobbies, studios and shops, the interior carried on great brick arches and vaults. It is Kahn's only theatre, his only building in the Midwest, and the last of his buildings to be completed in his lifetime — he died in March 1974. The theatre, listed on the National Register as the Fort Wayne Performing Arts Theatre, is the longtime home of the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre and the Fort Wayne Ballet. A renovation devoted chiefly to accessibility — for audiences, performers and production — was completed and the building reopened in October 2025. The Arts Campus that grew up around it eventually included the Fort Wayne Museum of Art's building (opened 1984), designed by Walter Netsch, the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill partner known for his "field theory" planning.
Sources: ArchDaily, AD Classics: Arts United Center / Louis Kahn; Visit Fort Wayne, "Fort Wayne Architecture" and "Unique Architecture in Fort Wayne" (updated July 2026), for the 660 seats and the October 2025 reopening; Arts Campus Fort Wayne, "A Soaring Vision" campaign booklet, for the Netsch museum attribution; Input Fort Wayne, "7 places in Fort Wayne designed by architects who made history."