Baker Street Station (1914) — the Station That Refused to Fall

When the Pennsylvania Railroad elevated its tracks through downtown in 1911–1913, the old Pennsy depot near Calhoun Street was removed, and the railroad built its replacement two blocks west at 221 West Baker Street, to designs by Price and McLanahan of Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Railroad Station opened on March 23, 1914, before 10,000 visitors, at a cost of $550,000: semi-glazed buff brick in a cruciform plan mixing Craftsman and classical elements, a barrel-vaulted concourse lit by stained-glass skylights, terrazzo floors with green-veined marble borders, and bronze electrolier lamps. It served the Pennsylvania, then Penn Central from 1968, Conrail, and finally Amtrak's Broadway Limited, whose last stop came on November 11, 1990, when Amtrak service shifted to Waterloo.

The station then decayed in city ownership until, by early 1996, the city held two permits to demolish it. Architect Vic Martin of the Fort Wayne firm Martin Riley bought it on May 9, 1996 — it had no electricity, heat or sewer service — and, with volunteers, restored it as his firm's offices. The station was listed on the National Register in 1998; its concourse now serves as an event hall. It is the standing answer to the demolition ledger below.

Sources: Walter B. Sassmannshausen, "The Pennsylvania Railroad Station on Baker Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana: The Story of Service & Survival," via ACGSI, Baker Street Station page; West Central Neighborhood Association, Historic Buildings and Structures (221 W. Baker St.); News-Sentinel, Baker Street Station centenary feature (September 2014), via the Carole Lombard centenary account.