Columbia Street: the first garages and agencies

1902 – 1920

The first commercial garage: The trade began, as it did in most American cities, in a bicycle shop. Alfred C. Randall had been in the bicycle business since 1893; in 1902 he switched to an automobile garage and salesroom. A biographical sketch published in a 1917 city history — a sketch Randall bought, as businessmen then did, which is stated here because the superlative is his own — describes him as "one of the prominent representatives of the automobile trade in Fort Wayne, his having been the first commercial garage established in the city." His Randall Motor Car Company worked out of the old livery stable at 118–120 West Wayne Street, where, as DeVinney reconstructs it, chauffeur-driven touring cars were kept for hire — as much an early taxi service as a dealership. Randall sold the car business in 1916 and continued selling trucks.

The first Ford dealer: The honor the local record is firmest about belongs to the Brosius brothers. "The Columbia Street Story" names Andy and Jesse Brosius as the city's first Ford dealers, and DeVinney's 1910 city directory confirms the firm and its address: the Brosius-Sesline Auto Co., 117 East Columbia Street. Bates and Keller describe the showroom as little more than a "hole in the wall." DeVinney's general judgment of the era stands for the whole entry: the first dealerships were modest affairs, "more like agencies where buyers could make contact with the manufacturers than showrooms," and the early garages and agencies were often allied with livery stables — the horse trade's buildings, staff, and customers passing directly into the car trade.

The cluster: By 1908–1910 the agencies stood in a loose downtown cluster, and the directory and newspaper record names them: the Peters-Roussy Auto Co., the Ohnhaus Automobile Co. at 215 West Berry Street, and the Mitchell Motor Car Co., all listed in the Journal Gazette of 23 August 1908, with Ohnhaus advertising Ford touring cars the following month; the Fort Wayne Auburn Auto Co. at 205 East Columbia in 1909, its owners Charles LaDue of New York City and J. M. Carmer of Auburn, selling Auburn cars — Fort Wayne sold Auburns, but the Auburn marque's own story belongs to Auburn in DeKalb County and is not retold here; the Ideal Auto Co. at 714–716 Maiden Lane, owned in 1910 by George D. Hall, F. K. Safford, and M. Blitz; and the Roussey Automobile Co. at 219–223 Pearl Street. By 1911 the trade had its own category — "Automobiles and Garages" — in the patrons listing of the booster volume Fort Wayne: Indiana's Busiest Happy City.

The trade shows itself: The measure of the trade's arrival is its show. The Fort Wayne Auto Show of 2–6 March 1920 was billed in the Journal Gazette of 15 and 29 February 1920 as the "Greatest Ever Held in Indiana." Eighteen years after Randall's garage opened in a bicycle shop's successor premises, the city's automobile trade was staging the largest exhibition in the state.

Sources:

1. Connie Haas Zuber, "Horseless carriages paved way into century," News-Sentinel (2000), reporting Bob DeVinney's research and Bates and Keller, The Columbia Street Story (1994) — Randall, the 1917 sketch and the "first commercial garage" claim, the livery-stable premises, Brosius-Sesline at 117 E. Columbia, the Fort Wayne Auburn Auto Co. at 205 E. Columbia and its owners, Ideal Auto Co. and its owners, Roussey Automobile Co., and the 1911 booster volume's "Automobiles and Garages" category.
2. ACGSI, Automobile History in Allen County — the Journal Gazette of 23 August 1908 listing Peters-Roussy, Ohnhaus, and Mitchell; Ohnhaus's Ford advertising, 27 September 1908; the Fort Wayne Auto Show of 2–6 March 1920 as billed in the Journal Gazette of 15 and 29 February 1920.