The Landing's anchor: Columbia Street West

Bar since 1903 — Columbia Street West, 1985–2020

A bar since 1903: The Landing, the old canal-era Columbia Street blocks where the county's first taverns were licensed in 1824, kept a drinking room at its west end for most of the modern era: the building at 135 West Columbia Street, at Harrison, had been used as a bar since 1903, interrupted only by the Prohibition years, when it was a tire store. In 1985 the brothers Hank and John Freistroffer — Henry's family — bought the building and renovated it completely into Columbia Street West, known everywhere as C-Street. For more than thirty years it was downtown's nightlife anchor: food, drinks, and live music of local and national caliber, and for local musicians the Midwest Original Music Showcase at CSW was a proving ground of the scene. A second room, the Bourbon Street Hideaway, operated in the same building. "There's not a bar that's more iconic in the city," a later developer said of it, "where everyone's parents had their 21st birthday here."

The closing and the return: Late in the Landing's redevelopment, the Freistroffers sold; in 2020 the Allen County–Fort Wayne Development Trust purchased the building, and Columbia Street West and the Bourbon Street Hideaway closed. The room stood empty through the street's reconstruction, its stained glass, doors, and back bar preserved in place. In March 2024 the hospitality group Be Better Hospitality reopened 135 West Columbia as three rooms at once — Dana's, an elevated cocktail bar in the old main room, named for Dana Columbia, the canal captain the street itself is named for; Night Train, a basement cocktail bar; and Blue Bottle, a bottle shop in the room the pool tables once occupied. Nightlife had returned to the Landing's west end in the building that had held a bar, with one dry interruption, since 1903.

Sources:

1. Columbia Street West, venue history as published (Eventsfy venue record) — the building a bar since 1903 except the Prohibition tire-store years, and the Freistroffer purchase of 1985.
2. Whatzup, "Iconic Columbia Street West changes hands" (2020) — the sale after more than thirty years of John and Hank Freistroffer, the live-music standing, and the Midwest Original Music Showcase.
3. Input Fort Wayne, "Dana's, Night Train and Blue Bottle usher in a new era of nightlife on The Landing" (March 13, 2024) — the 2020-era closings of Columbia Street West and Bourbon Street Hideaway, the preserved back bar and stained glass, and the March 2024 reopening as Dana's, Night Train, and Blue Bottle under Be Better Hospitality.
4. Greater Fort Wayne Inc. — the former Columbia Street West building's acquisition and historic-preservation redevelopment within The Landing project.