The dealer trade after Columbia Street

1920s – present

Downtown's long tail: The trade stayed downtown for decades after the Columbia Street beginnings. The Poinsatte Auto Company, a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer, was photographed across the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s in the Allen County Public Library's Goldstine/Wesner collection — the brass-era agency grown into a fixture. Its downtown site is occupied today by the law firm of Rothberg, Logan & Warsco, a measure of how completely the trade eventually left the centre.

The war years, in brief: From February 1942 the federal government stopped the production and sale of new cars for the duration, and gasoline rationing cut the driving that remained; Fort Wayne's dealers, like dealers everywhere, lived on service, parts, and the used-car lot until production resumed in late 1945. The city's own war — the truck plant's M-5-6 line among it — is told in the war entries of this section and the home-front sections, and is not retold here.

The postwar houses: The dealership names the modern record sustains are family foundings. The Kelley Automotive Group dates itself to 21 August 1952, when Jim Kelley signed for a Dodge store in Fort Wayne — on the day, the family's account has it, that his son Tom was born; Tom Kelley joined the company in 1974, and the group has grown to more than a dozen franchises across the region. DeHaven Chevrolet was founded in 1964 by Jack DeHaven Sr.; when he died in 1995 his wife Jane took the store over, trained through the National Automobile Dealers Association's dealer academy, and ran it — one of the era's documented woman-owned dealerships in the city. Fort Wayne Toyota, at 6162 Illinois Road, has been part of the Bob Rohrman Automotive Group since 1988; the group itself was founded by Bob Rohrman in 1963.

The geography, by era: The addresses tell the migration. The brass-era trade stood on Columbia, Berry, Pearl, and Maiden Lane, in and beside the livery stables. The postwar trade spread along the arterials — Coliseum Boulevard and Lima Road among them. The modern trade clusters where the land is: on Illinois Road and the streets built for it, where Kelley's BMW store stands at 715 Grand National Drive — a street name that is itself a piece of dealer-row history. Business and Founders & CEOs hold the company profiles and the people's stories; this entry keeps only the trade's own arc.

Sources:

1. Allen County Public Library, Goldstine/Wesner Collection, and the Genealogy Center's account of it (September 2025) — the Poinsatte Auto Company photographs, 1920s–40s, and the site's later occupancy by Rothberg, Logan & Warsco.
2. Kelley Automotive Group, company history — Jim Kelley's founding of 21 August 1952, Tom Kelley's 1974 arrival, and the group's present scale; BMW of Fort Wayne — 715 Grand National Drive.
3. DeHaven Chevrolet, dealership history — the 1964 founding by Jack DeHaven Sr. and Jane DeHaven's succession in 1995 and dealer-academy training.
4. Fort Wayne Toyota, dealership record — part of the Bob Rohrman Automotive Group since 1988, the group founded 1963, at 6162 Illinois Road.