The mid-century order

1933 – 1985

The system restated: The banks that emerged from 1933 — the new Fort Wayne National Bank at 110 West Berry, the Lincoln National Bank and Trust in its 1930 tower, the Peoples Trust and the Dime — were joined in 1933 by a thrift of the new federal kind: the First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Fort Wayne, established 1 January 1933 at 719 Court Street and federally insured from 10 October 1934. Fort Wayne's banks also stood at the centre of a regional web: already in 1900 the Rand McNally directory shows country banks across northeast Indiana listing Fort Wayne nationals among their New York and Chicago correspondents' local counterparts — the White National appears as correspondent for banks in Angola and Auburn — the plumbing of a correspondent system that made the city the region's banking seat.

The order at work: For four decades the system barely changed its names. The Dime, under Charles Doermer from 1957, grew from $11 million in assets in 1956 to $400 million by the end of 1983 and took the name Indiana Bank and Trust Company; the Anthony Wayne Bank, profiled in the Businesses section, built its fifteen-story headquarters in 1964 and held it until 1985; the Fort Wayne National Bank crowned the order with a new twenty-six-story headquarters opened 11 May 1970 on the Berry Street site, the building that stands today as the PNC Center. Local credit stayed local: the men who ran these banks sat on the city's industrial boards, and a Fort Wayne loan was still decided in Fort Wayne.

The order's end: It ended by statute and by sale, in the entry below: Indiana's 1984 banking-structure law let holding companies gather the state's banks, the thrifts were folded away in 1983, and between 1983 and 1998 every one of the mid-century headquarters was merged into an out-of-state company.

Sources:

1. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, institution history, First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Fort Wayne (certificate 28768) — established 1 January 1933; insured 10 October 1934.
2. Rand McNally Bankers Directory, 1900 (FRASER) — Fort Wayne banks listed as correspondents of northeast Indiana country banks.
3. The business record and the Businesses section — the Fort Wayne National Bank profile (the 1970 headquarters), the Dime/Indiana Bank profile (the Doermer growth figures), the Anthony Wayne Bank profile.